Another PC Engines APU2 question - Atheros AR5008 chipset support

[altreality]

I bought an APU2 a couple of years ago but never actually set it up. I decided to give it a go with opnsense. It detects the 3 network ports on the front of the box, but not the wireless device. I can't see any more than the 3 ethernet ports in the interface assignment tab, and when I attempt to clone a wireless interface the drop-down is blank.
When I do a pciconf -lv | grep -B3 network I can see the following:

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none1@pci0:4:0:0:       class=0x020000 card=0x00000000 chip=0xff1c168c rev=0x01 hdr=0x00
    vendor     = 'Qualcomm Atheros'
    device     = 'AR5008 Wireless Network Adapter'
    class      = network
I know this is an older card...but I was hoping a simple driver install or conf tweak could get me in business. If that is not an option and this card is simply not supported by FreeBSD 11.1 ...What minipci card should I get? I am not opposed to picking up another card to replace this one.

thanks for the help!
-AltReality

[monstermania]

Hi,
at first i suggest you to choose an external AP for wifi whenever it's possible!

Every build in wifi solution is a bit of PITA due the bad freebsd wifi driver support.
In the past the best results i've made with cards with Atheros AR9280/9380 chipsets (i.e. AzureWare NE-772 or Compex WLE-200NX).
These cards work with 2.4 or 5 Ghz. But don't expect too much! The wlan range is really bad!

For home use i bought a cheap used AP for around 10€ (TP-LINK 801 with PoE). This AP work much better than any of my build in wifi solutions i've ever used in the past.
My company use ap from ubiquity (Unifi AC Pro) and these works like a charm.

best regards
Dirk

[altreality]

Why did they switch to FreeBSD if the wireless support is so terrible? I find it difficult to believe that an OS as old as FreeBSD can't support wireless very well..I mean it is one of the grandfathers of OSes (well....BSD itself, not necessarily FreeBSD) - Is work being done on this or is the official development stance "don't use our product for wireless"

I get not supporting older chipsets, even though I figure they would have had more time to get a viable driver solution figured out...but just a blanket "wireless sucks on FreeBSD" is a pretty crummy stance for what is supposed to be a professional and very useful software package.

[monstermania]

@altreality
Hey, stay calm. 
OPNsense is based on FreeBSD (like pfsense too) and therefore your hardware needs drivers for freebsd to work.
You're right. The driver solution for wifi devices is really bad (especially for host ap mode).
But into professionell environments no one uses an internal card for wifi. That's a typical soho thing.  I used internal wifi for about 1,5 years at home with less problems (and less speed )
But since some months we have a faster internet lane and need more wifi speed. So I've changed to an external wifi ap.