Looking for Wi-Fi
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From: Charles Lindsey on 24 Dec 2008 06:21 I am thinking of building an embedded system to control the heating of a building, and have identified the LPC2468-16 OEM Board from www.embeddedartists.com as a suitable Linux platform to host it (BTW, comments from those who have used those embeddedartists boards would be welcome). This board comes with built-in ethernet, USB, UART, I2C and A/D converters, and is very reasonably priced. BUT, I need a Wifi Adapter board to go with it, so it can be configured from afar (via an on-board web server, which seems to be the fashionable way to do these things). Since the board already has ethernet, and since Linux can easily do TCP/IP, and host the web server, I had expected to find a simple board that would just wire into the on-board ethernet, and simply provide the Wifi connection with configurable WPA, etc. (and even the WPA might be managed by a suitable Linux driver). But after an afternoon of Googling, I could not find a suitable product. Yes, there were lots of boards providing a huge overkill ("our magnificent board come with onboard TCP/IP stack, web server, and everything else you could possibly want") and lots of devices that wanted to be connected via USB or serial line (which presumably involves using some flavour of PPP as an intermediate); nothing that simply sends and receives IP packets over Wifi and nothing else. So suggestions please, and preferably one that will work with an external antenna, because I will be hoping to connect to a base station at quite some distance (though I can get by with a fairly low bitrate). -- Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------ Tel: +44 161 436 6131 Fax: +44 161 436 6133 Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl Email: chl(a)clerew.man.ac.uk Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K. PGP: 2C15F1A9 Fingerprint: 73 6D C2 51 93 A0 01 E7 65 E8 64 7E 14 A4 AB A5
From: Ian Rawlings on 24 Dec 2008 07:33 On 2008-12-24, Charles Lindsey <chl(a)clerew.man.ac.uk> wrote: > So suggestions please, and preferably one that will work with an external > antenna, because I will be hoping to connect to a base station at quite > some distance (though I can get by with a fairly low bitrate). Hmm, first thought is a USB wifi adapter as you can attach it on the end of a long lead, and are there not long-range wifi standards around now (wi-max?). A quick google shows up some promising stuff for wimax and linux. Another possibility would be a 3G modem but that depends on coverage and also needs a monthly subscription of some kind. -- Blast off and strike the evil Bydo empire! http://youtube.com/user/tarcus69 http://www.flickr.com/photos/tarcus/sets/
From: Ian on 24 Dec 2008 07:45 On 24 Dec, 11:21, "Charles Lindsey" <c...(a)clerew.man.ac.uk> wrote: > So suggestions please, and preferably one that will work with an external > antenna, because I will be hoping to connect to a base station at quite > some distance (though I can get by with a fairly low bitrate). What about a USB wifi dongle? Or just use a standard wireless access point? The cheapest at dabs.com is 4PK4WS at £30.03, about which they say "By setting this access point into station mode and connecting to a network device's Ethernet port, it can let a network device that originally only supports wired Ethernet access the wireless LAN easily without changing any configuration." Plenty of similar things on eBay, too. Ian
From: Ian Rawlings on 24 Dec 2008 08:03 On 2008-12-24, Ian Rawlings <news06(a)tarcus.org.uk> wrote: > Hmm, first thought is a USB wifi adapter as you can attach it on the > end of a long lead, and are there not long-range wifi standards around > now (wi-max?). A quick google shows up some promising stuff for wimax > and linux. On second thoughts, wimax appears not to be set up for consumer operation of a base station, so costs of setting up your own wimax network are probably going to be high. What kind of distances are involved? A USB adaptor with an external aerial connector might do with a high-gain antenna, like the Edimax EW-7318USg. -- Blast off and strike the evil Bydo empire! http://youtube.com/user/tarcus69 http://www.flickr.com/photos/tarcus/sets/
From: Andy Botterill on 24 Dec 2008 08:52
Charles Lindsey wrote: > I am thinking of building an embedded system to control the heating of a > building, and have identified the LPC2468-16 OEM Board from > www.embeddedartists.com as a suitable Linux platform to host it (BTW, > comments from those who have used those embeddedartists boards would be > welcome). This board comes with built-in ethernet, USB, UART, I2C and A/D > converters, and is very reasonably priced. > > BUT, I need a Wifi Adapter board to go with it, so it can be configured > from afar (via an on-board web server, which seems to be the fashionable > way to do these things). Since the board already has ethernet, and since > Linux can easily do TCP/IP, and host the web server, I had expected to > find a simple board that would just wire into the on-board ethernet, and > simply provide the Wifi connection with configurable WPA, etc. (and even > the WPA might be managed by a suitable Linux driver). The processor is suitable. Could you get a design with the motorola SPI interface? If so I could recommend a product. WiFi has a range of up to 700m. You may need a LNA/PA for the WiFi chip. > > But after an afternoon of Googling, I could not find a suitable product. > Yes, there were lots of boards providing a huge overkill ("our > magnificent board come with onboard TCP/IP stack, web server, and > everything else you could possibly want") and lots of devices that wanted to > be connected via USB or serial line (which presumably involves using some > flavour of PPP as an intermediate); nothing that simply sends and receives > IP packets over Wifi and nothing else. With respect to WiFi software I don't know. > > So suggestions please, and preferably one that will work with an external > antenna, because I will be hoping to connect to a base station at quite > some distance (though I can get by with a fairly low bitrate). > |