I’ve been having some issues with my network card on my new Minisforum UM690S. The issue is related to both WiFi and Bluetooth, but seeing as I have now a cabled connection for internet (and it will stay that way), I am really just in need of solving this for the Bluetooth-issue. I’ve been trying to figure out how to solve this using iwconfig and hciconfig, but so far I am coming up empty with a concrete solution.

The problem: The Bluetooth signal strength seems to be very poor. The computer is in a cupboard under my TV, with a wooden panel blocking the line of sight (this will need to stay closed). I use a Bluetooth keyboard with mousepad, and otherwise I connect game controllers when I want to play games. If I am close enough to the machine, especially the controllers work just fine while the keyboard is a bit wonky, but when I am in my couch (about 3 m / 10 ft away), the keyboard stops working and the game controllers are behaving mad. There will be many lines in dmesg reporting from the controller that says something like “compensating for 27 dropped IMU reports”. This is a big problem for me, because the computer’s main function is as an entertainment station where I will spend 99% of my time using the computer in the couch.

The keyboard has been used with no problems with a previous computer at the same distance, never had any issues with it then. I also had a similar issue with my WiFi - when the computer was temporarily placed in a room further from my WiFi hotspot, the dl/ul speeds were extremely slow. Moving the computer much closer to the hotspot fixed this issue.

I suspect the root of the issue is the low transmitting power, which for WiFi is reported to be 3 dBm (output from iwconfig). My laptop outputs 22 dBm, and the previous computer would output the same (if not 20 dBm). I don’t understand the output that hciconfig inqtpl yields, but the number following “TX bytes” is significantly lower than on my laptop. I think I need to change this, but I am not entirely sure how and to what, and if it is even a good idea to mess around with this.

Some relevant (?) output: Let me know if there are other output that can be helpful in diagnosing / fixing the problem.

$ inxi -Fxpmrz
...
Network:  
    Device-2: MEDIATEK MT7921 802.11ax PCI Express Wireless Network Adapter.
        driver: mt7921e v: kernel bus-ID: 03:00.0
...
Bluetooth:
    Device-1: MediaTek Wireless_Device type: USB driver: btusb v: 0.8
        bus-ID: 5-3:2
    Report: hciconfig ID: hci0 rfk-id: 0 state: up address: <filter>
        bt-v: 3.0 lmp-v: 5.2

$ hciconfig inqtpl
hci0:        Type: Primary    Bus: USB
             BD Address: XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX    ACL MTU: 1021:6    SCO MTU:  240:8
             UP RUNNING PSCAN
             RX bytes:12353226  acl:217808  sco:0  events:496   errors:0
             TX bytes:10815  acl:145   sco:0    commands:193  errors.0

$ iwconfig
wlan0            IEEE 802.11   ESSID:"MyNetwork"
                 Mode:Managed    Frequency: 5.5 GHz   Access Point: XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX
                 Bit Rate=780 Mb/s   Tx-Power=3 dBm
                 Retry short limit:7    RTS thr:off      Fragment thr:off 
                 Power Management:off
                 Link Quality=70/70    Signal level=-32 dBm
                 Rx invalid nwid:0   Rx invalid crypt:0    Rx invalid frag:0
                 Tx excessive retries:0     Invalid misc:0       Missed beacon:0