R36 (WiFi) RTL8188FTV Driver

This is a ready to use driver installer for R36S and R36H owners which don’t don’t have any internet access on their R36 unit but do need to install the drivers for their USB Wifi Dongle which uses the RTL8188FTV chipset (which is used by most of the cheap (Chinese) USB RTL8188 dongles)

IMPORTANT: Please read the information bellow before downloading and/or installing this driver on your device!

Current Version: 1.0

Helpful Resources:
Video Installation tutorial
Blog Post Tutorial

Download: 360KB

FREE DOWNLOAD(S) [?]

By clicking on the 'I Agree & Add to download basket', you confirm that you have read and agree to the License shown at the License tab.

Information

Compatibility Warning

This driver is ONLY intended for the R36S and R36H running on ArkOS 12242024 or later.  It is also important that your ArkOS/Linux uses the 4.4.189 kernel.

To be certain that your device is (well SHOULD BE) compatible with this driver, I HIGHLY recommend to first download the XNL Compatibility Check and running that tool on your console.  It will check for the correct ArkOS version, kernel, linux version, bootfiles etc.  And if everything checks out, then you can most likely install this driver without any issues

Installation Tutorial(s)

I have made two installation tutorials on how to install and configure this driver. One is a video tutorial on my YouTube here and the other a detailed blog post here.

Introduction

This driver is intended for the R36S and R36H and it’s basically nothing more than an installer package I’ve compiled and created from the original drivers from kelebek333 this repository.

For most regular users using the R36S or R36H it can be quite overwhelming if you need to installer kernel headers, package managers and more of the alike over SSH.
Which can be even a “bigger task” if you can’t even connect it to your network because your (USB) WiFi card isn’t working/recognized by the R36S/R36H 😉 Therefor I decided to do the ‘heavy lifting’ for those users by creating this installer package. This is basically a pre-compiled driver which users can easily install by just placing the folder XNL RTL8188FTV in this download on their SD-Card in the folder: /roms/Tools

Which USB Dongles are supported

Basically all USB Dongles which use the RTL8188FTV Chipset should work just fine with this driver. I have (by now) ordered 20+ different USB dongles (from different sellers) just to test the compatibility of these drivers, and basically all of them worked just fine. Two of them gave some ‘wonky messages’ over the SERIAL terminal (which is explained in the source code of this download), but they still seemed to work just fine (although those two felt a bit slower).

In general these USB dongles look like the ones illustrated bellow:

But mine doesn’t work?!
Sorry, can’t help you with that, you might try to use a different USB-A to USB-C adapter (I also had an issue with one of the cheap 5 cents adapters🤷🏽‍♀️). Or you might just have ‘bad-luck’ and gotten a dongle with (yet) another chipset which isn’t supported by either ArkOS itself or “my” drivers. It could however also be that you just have a defective dongle. Personally I would recommend to just order 3 or 4 of these dongles at once from different sellers if you want to be certain that you have at least one working USB Wifi dongle (for me only two had slight issues, so I don’t expect this would be needed, but just giving a general tip here).

Installation Instructions

1. Just copy paste the entire XNL RTL8188FTV folder into the /roms/tools folder so that it becomes:
/roms/Tools/XNL RTL8188FTV

If you are using the OS-TF card (SD-Card 1, which is RECOMMENDED!) then in Windows it would simply be something like (replacing the drive letter E: with the drive letter of your EASYROMS partition of course):
E:\Tools\XNL RTL8188FTV

2. Then after putting the SD-Card back into your R36S/R36H you’ll need to go to either Options or RetroPie (this depends on your theme, but for most it will most likely be options, it can however for some themes  also be system).

3. Then you’ll goto -> Tools and then to -> XNL RTL8188FTV and select Install Driver

The XNL RTL8188FTV Driver Installer should do the rest for you.

No Support or Updates

Please do realize that I myself DO NOT offer ANY support or updates to the driver files itself (the source) AT ALL! If the original developer creates an update, then I will update this installer package with the new version if needed, and if the ArkOS kernel changes/updates in the future I will also provide an update to be compatible with that version if needed. But I will NOT fix possible driver issues, add features or ANYTHING like that.

Why not? Simple: While I consider myself quite capable in programming quite a lot of stuff, ranging from microcontrollers, game-scripts, applications, games, engines and whatever, programming (messing with) Linux Kernel Drivers for PUBLIC RELEASE is not something I feel comfortable enough to do!

Yes, I have written/experimented with drivers, modified drivers etc for Linux which I do use myself, but I just don’t want to mess with that stuff when it comes to other peoples hardware when they install it, simple as that. I quite decently know my way around Linux, but my “Native Language” is Windows, .NET, compact framework etc. So sorry, no special/XNL Specific updates, modifications or whatever for these drivers.

IMPORTANT TIP: If you're planning to redistribute this project/product or if you are planning to use it for any commercial purpose (if the license permits these uses of course), then it is highly recommended that you 'copy-paste' this License and store it along with your download(s) for future reference.

License

BY DOWNLOADING, INSTALLING, COPYING OR OTHERWISE USING THIS PROJECT, PRODUCT, FILES OR ANY PART THEREOF (AND THE RELATED DOCUMENTATION) FROM XNL FUTURE TECHNOLOGIES, YOU ON BEHALF OF YOURSELF, OR ON BEHALF OF ANY ENTITY BY WHICH YOU ARE EMPLOYED AND/OR ENGAGED AGREE TO BE BOUND TO THIS LICENSE AGREEMENT.

IMPORTANT
Do note that all sections/'chapters' bellow constitute the entire license and that they are 'interconnected'. This for example means that if there is a section about Closed Source/Binaries License, that this doesn't mean that the rest of the license doesn't to those binaries. It just means that that section is specifically aimed at those files, while the rest of the license (where applicable) is also 'in effect' for those binaries.

MIT License

Copyright (c) 2025 XNL Future Technologies

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
SOFTWARE.

Logo & Branding Copyright

XNL Future Technologies™, XNL TV™, XEWA™, TeamXNL™, System166™, The XNL Ft logo, The XNL Future Technologies logo, The XNL TV logo, The E-Series "Flamingo Logo", The XNL E-Academy Logo, The Overkill Edition Logo, The XEWA logo, The System166 Logo, The Sophie The Pigeon 8-Bit logo and others are trademarks or registered trademarks of XNL Future Technologies in The Netherlands and other countries. Other terms, project, product or brand-names and/or logo's may be trademarks of others.

XNL Future Technologies is not associated and does not claim to be associated with any company or product that might have been mentioned in their documentation unless explicitly stated otherwise.

Legal & Disclaimer(s)

SIMPLIFIED DISCLAIMER:
The use of our projects, products, schematics or other files is at your own responsibility and they are provided “AS-IS”, without ANY WARRANTY. Use of the content on or from our website(s) is 100% at your own risk. Please realize that most of the 'stuff' that we offer on our website is intended for the enthusiasts, and thus it is designed/meant to be adapted, expanded or adjusted for use in 'larger' projects. Or that it is meant as a basic guideline to get started on a project of your own. Some products that we used (or have used) internally in our company will be shared with the public so that others can enjoy these modules or products also. For all these projects, product, files etc goes: USE AT OWN RISK! Some projects or products that we use internally do not have build in security measures (like reverse polarity protection for example!), this is to keep the costs at internal (test) stages as low as possible or due to the fact that the product is intended to be used in only one particular way! Keep this in mind when using, building or even buying these projects or products. If you're not sure what you're doing or if you don't trust a certain product, schematic, sample or anything else: USE YOUR INSTINCT and DO NOT CONTINUE, If you DO want to continue working on or with the project, product, source-code, sample, printed circuit board, model, schematic etc: Again: AT YOUR OWN RISK. The same goes for using our software (either closed source or other included binaries): USE A YOUR OWN RISK.

OFFICIAL DISCLAIMER:
THE SOFTWARE, PROJECTS, SCHEMATICS, INFORMATION, SOURCE CODE, SAMPLES, FILES, 3D MODELS AND PRODUCTS ARE PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL XNL FUTURE TECHNOLOGIES BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE, PROJECTS, SCHEMATICS, INFORMATION, SOURCE CODE, SAMPLES, PRODUCTS OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE, PROJECTS, SCHEMATICS, INFORMATION, SOURCE CODE, SAMPLES AND PRODUCTS. XNL FUTURE TECHNOLOGIES ASSUMES NO LIABILITY WHATSOEVER AND DISCLAIMS ANY EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY WARRANTY RELATING TO ITS SOFTWARE, PROJECTS, SCHEMATICS, INFORMATION, SOURCE CODE, SAMPLES AND PRODUCTS INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, OR NON-INFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL XNL FUTURE TECHNOLOGIES BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE, SPECIAL OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, DAMAGES FOR LOSS AND PROFITS, BUSINESS INTERRUPTION, PERSONAL INJURY OR DEATH, MATERIAL, OR LOSS OF INFORMATION) ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THIS DOCUMENT EVEN IF XNL FUTURE TECHNOLOGIES HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. XNL Future Technologies makes no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this publication and reserves the right to make changes to specifications and product descriptions at any time without notice. The information contained herein may be of a preliminary or advance nature and is subject to change without notice. No license, whether express, implied, arising by estoppel or other-wise, to any intellectual property rights is granted by this publication. XNL Future Technologies software, projects, schematics, information, source codes, samples or products are not designed, intended, authorized or warranted for use in or as systems for applications intended to support or sustain life, or in any other application in which the failure of XNL Future Technologies software, project, schematics, information, source code, model, sample, files or product could create a situation where personal injury, death, or severe property or environmental damage may occur. XNL Future Technologies products, projects or samples are not designed nor intended for use in weapon systems, this applies to offense and defense systems. XNL Future Technologies projects and products shall never be used to cause harm to living creatures including but not limited to humans and animals. XNL Future Technologies projects and products shall never be used to cause damage to property of any kind. Any use of XNL Future Technologies projects or products to cause harm, death or damage in any kind is strictly prohibited.

XNL Future Technologies reserves the right to discontinue or make changes to its projects, products or files at any time without notice.

SAFETY-CRITICAL, MILITARY, LIFE SUPPORT, MEDICAL AND AUTOMOTIVE APPLICATIONS DISCLAIMER: XNL Future Technologies products, projects, samples, source-codes, documentation, tutorials, software or any other content is not designed for and will not be used in connection with any applications where the failure of such would reasonably be expected to result in significant personal injury or death (“Safety-Critical Applications”). Safety-Critical Applications include, without limitation, life systems or devices, health (monitoring) equipment, safety or security systems, equipment or systems for the operation of nuclear facilities or other “large impact” facilities. XNL Future Technologies products, projects, samples, source-codes, documentation, tutorials, software or any other content is not designed nor intended for use in government, military or aerospace applications or environments or in any other “high-risk” facility, location or environment.

Additional Resources

For a collection of information, links downloads and resources for the R36S/R36H and ArkOS, I’ve created the XNL R36S / R36H ArkOS Central. Here you can basically find all the relevant information you quickly need for the R36S and R36H.

 

Reviews

There are no reviews yet, be the first one to add a review.

Only logged in users who have downloaded this project/product can leave a review.