Wi-Fi Issues with Bela Multi

RafaeleAndrade

Hi Giulio and bela community,

I am reaching out because I’m struggling to get Wi-Fi working on my Bela, I had it working previously but because I had to refresh to a new image, I am not able to do it again anymore. I’ve hit a dead end with my technical troubleshooting. I have tried two different dongles and am running into different issues with each:

TP-Link Archer T3U: This is a newer generation dongle I bought based on some compatibility notes, but it doesn't seem to show up at all. I suspect the driver isn't supported out-of-the-box.
Ralink RT5370 (Old Version but worked in a previous version of bela multi image (Dec 2025): This one is detected, but I cannot get it to work. When I check the status, wlan0 stays in the "DOWN" state.

The main challenges I'm facing:

I followed the instructions on learn.bela.io, but I get stuck at the very first steps.

When I run iwctl, I get warnings immediately.

When I run device list (or similar commands), it reports "No devices." * I have tried manually forcing the state to "UP," but it doesn't stick or return a success.

I am find it quite difficult to navigate the terminal commands for driver compilation. Is there a specific configuration change I should make in wpa_supplicant or /etc/network/interfaces to get the RT5370 to stay "UP"? Or is there a known image update that handles these newer chipsets?

Any guidance you could provide to get me back on track would be greatly appreciated!
Rafa

Ps: running lsusb I get:

Bus 001 Device 004: ID 148f:5370 Ralink Technology, Corp. RT5370 Wireless Adapter
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

giuliomoro

Did you update your image after flashing it? If not, do so via the IDE, then reboot and try again.

RafaeleAndrade

giuliomoro I just run an update, I still get this:

root@bela:~# systemctl enable --now iwd.service
Synchronizing state of iwd.service with SysV service script with /lib/systemd/systemd-sysv-install.
Executing: /lib/systemd/systemd-sysv-install enable iwd
perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
	LANGUAGE = (unset),
	LC_ALL = (unset),
	LC_CTYPE = "UTF-8",
	LANG = "C.UTF-8"
    are supported and installed on your system.
perl: warning: Falling back to a fallback locale ("C.UTF-8").
^[[A^[[A^[[Aperl: warning: Setting locale failed.
perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
	LANGUAGE = (unset),
	LC_ALL = (unset),
	LC_CTYPE = "UTF-8",
	LANG = "C.UTF-8"
    are supported and installed on your system.
perl: warning: Falling back to a fallback locale ("C.UTF-8").
root@bela:~# iwctl device list
                                    Devices                                    
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Name                  Address               Powered     Adapter     Mode      
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

root@bela:~#

RafaeleAndrade

giuliomoro Is there something else I can try?

giuliomoro

have you got the firmware-misc-nonfree package installed?