Non-USB WiFi options

i had a quick question. is it possible to make it to where the raspberry pi can use wifi without using a wifi dongle is there like a pcb or dev board that can be connected to save the usb port for other connectables.

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Former Member over 13 years ago

The general way is to use a powered USB hub so you can get more USB ports with sufficient power, and then plug your USB Wi-Fi dongle into the hub.
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AniGeek over 13 years ago in reply to Former Member

well yes but im trying to avoid using a dongle but want the wifi internal of the case ill be building
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fustini over 13 years ago in reply to AniGeek

It's possible to use a SPI or UART (serial) WiFi module which you might find used in a microcontroller project. However, you would then loose the native networking capabilities of Linux. If compactness is your goal, then you might want to look at a small USB WiFi adapter like the Asus USB-N10 (40T547440T5474).
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fustini over 13 years ago in reply to AniGeek

It's possible to use a SPI or UART (serial) WiFi module which you might find used in a microcontroller project. However, you would then loose the native networking capabilities of Linux. If compactness is your goal, then you might want to look at a small USB WiFi adapter like the Asus USB-N10 (40T547440T5474).
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AniGeek over 13 years ago in reply to fustini

would you be able to go into more detail mr fustini of how linux would lose its native networking capabilities. i only know how to use linux i dont know too deep anymore on advanced stuff on linux.
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fustini over 13 years ago in reply to AniGeek

Sure, so with microcontroller boards like the Arduino I've used a couple different WiFi modules similar to:

http://www.microchip.com/wwwproducts/Devices.aspx?dDocName=en548015
https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10822
https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11049

The external microcontroller communicates with the WiFi module via a simple serial protocol (either standard serial, e.g. UART, or SPI). These modules could be connected to the Raspberry Pi via it's GPIO pins (UART or SPI depending on the module). But the module won't appear as a network interface like the Ethernet port or a USB WiFi "dongle" would.

Instead, a program would have to be written to run on the Pi and communicate with the WiFi module to tell it do things like connect to remote server, send requests and receive responses. If you just want to grab specific data from a simple web page or RSS feed, then this is doable. But you won't be able to use a simple serial WiFi module to browse the web or run a server like Apache.

Cheers,
Drew
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AniGeek over 13 years ago in reply to fustini

ty for the info. ill see what i can figure out
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