hmm I tried something similar but to no avail: https://gist.github.com/jgensler8/b92e7e180f2e9d24b4d25b501ac313f3

wlan0 is not created during boot and looks like wpa_supplicant can't create this either. I did find some odd formatting in the wpa_supplicant.conf file so maybe something else is wrong with the data I've flashed (or some other state/configuration that isn't cleaned during the flashing process)