HATs and other add-ons • QCA7000 SPI (RED-BEET-EVAL-BOARD-E 2.0) — eth1 missing MAC, plctool timeout on Raspberry Pi

Hello everyone,

I’m trying to interface a RED-BEET-EVAL-BOARD-E 2.0 with a Raspberry Pi using SPI, following the Host Controller Interface Selection documentation.

Setup details:

The RED-BEET-EVAL-BOARD-E 2.0 is connected directly to the Raspberry Pi via the GPIO header (no additional cables).
Hardware switch configuration:
Switch 7 → SPI mode
Switch 5 → Zero-cross detection disabled
BOOT → INT mode
SPI → BIT mode

Boot sequence followed:

Power ON the RED-BEET-EVAL-BOARD-E 2.0
Then power ON the Raspberry Pi

Observed behavior:

dmesg | grep qca shows expected QCA driver logs.
ifconfig eth1 shows the interface, but the MAC address is missing.
plctool -i eth1 -rI results in a timeout.
The eth1 interface remains down.

Even after following the documented procedure carefully, the MAC address is not assigned and the eth1 interface does not become operational.
Has anyone encountered a similar issue or can suggest troubleshooting steps to bring up eth1 and restore MAC detection?

Thanks in advance for any guidance.

Statistics: Posted by Harshit — Thu Feb 12, 2026 7:57 am

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