The ZD1211 choice
As mentioned in previous posts, the Camera Probe (that is, the RPIslave2) will include a WiFi connection. To make the board more compact and use a cheap but reliable WiFi connection the choice was the ZD1211. In the Linux environment it is a sort of "standard" as the os firmware and kernel modules to support this device is widely diffused on many linux distributions, especially for the embedded linux devices.
As a matter of fact any kind of WiFi dongle supporting this firmware maybe considered working for our environment. I have tested in past several WiFi dongles based on the ZD1211 under Ubuntu 8 and 10, OpenWRT, Ltib and other very custom linux including a small linux embedded device developed for the Nintendo a couple of year ago. The other advantage is that this firmware is so diffused that it is probably one of the first that will be supported by any new linux distribution; and we can consider the raspbian a recent Debian distro without doubts.
In attach to this post there is the working procedure to install the kernel module (loaded automatically) to have the WiFi working on the Raspberry PI. At the actual date I have tested it on all the models of PI with no problems at all.
| zd1211rw - Debian Wiki.pdf |
