RPi3: Bluetooth impedes wifi

[giddyhup]

Linux berry 4.4.13-v7+ #894 SMP Mon Jun 13 13:13:27 BST 2016 armv7l GNU/Linux

Wifi gets extremely sluggish when Bluetooth is active. See forum topic for reference. Try pinging your next hop and resolve a (nonexistant) Bluetooth device (hcitool name 11:11:11:11:11:11) simultaneously.

[mweal-ed]

see bug #1444

[Ruffio]

@giddyhup did you read the #1444 ? Did it solve your issue?

[giddyhup]

@Ruffio I read #1444 . There is no solution there just some more observations. I gave up using BT on a RPi3.

[Molodax]

Is there any update regarding the issue?

[pelwell]

I don't think there is anything we can do without Broadcom/Cypress. They have expressed an interest and we have pointed them at the relevant threads, prodding occasionally, but so far I've heard no feedback.

[Ruffio]

@pelwell Any reference at Cypress that I can ping? I would like to help if I can...

[pelwell]

They will see your comment, but I'd rather not overwhelm them.

[Ruffio]

Ok, if there is anything that 'we' can help with regarding test etc., please let us know

[Ruffio]

#1410
#1402

[Molodax]

I would add this issue #1342 in bunch of the issues with WiFi and Bluetooth in RPi3, probably, they are interconnected.
At the moment, WiFi is very unreliable by itself and using of Bluetooth and WiFi together is not possible at all in RPi3.

[thomasf]

I already referenced this issue from #1342 .. The only reliable solution for a
project I was working on with ~40rpi3's was to use an external usb wifi dongle.
We wanted both bt and wifi and after many hours of systematic testing the only
stable solution was to use an usb wifi.. Doing the opposite (usb bluetooth and
internal wifi) caused problems less often but in the end it still failed from
time to time.

IIRC we created a modprobe.d-file to blacklist a couple of kernel modules
related to the wifi functionality, looking quickly at our provisioning scrips
these ones seems to been have added to our prod setup:

no-rpi-wifi.conf:

blacklist brcmfmac
blacklist mrcmutil

[Molodax]

Perhaps, using an external usb wifi dongle could be a workaround for some projects but it is not a solution for users of RPi3 project as such.

[thomasf]

I would also have preferred things to just work and not having to spend some weeks on testing scenarios.. In the end the usb wifi path was a practical solution/workaround about 6-8 months ago (probably still is) if you do need it to work right now and not maybe work at a unknown future date.

[Ruffio]

Hmmm, considering that Cypress have expressed an interest but these issues are now more than half a year old, it doesn't look like it has been that that high prioritised :-( It is a little bit sad as IMHO the wifi/bluetooth combo is really a key selling point for RPi3. Hopefully Cypress will give it some (more) attention.