Adding a Wifi Microcontroller for a Raspberry Pi CMIO

Hi, what about using the ESP8266 which just needs a UART TX/RX lines.

Regards,

Steve Drake

Hi,

You have lots of choices, see here:

https://github.com/torvalds/linux/tree/master/drivers/net/wireless

RPIs aren't that expensive. I would just replace the pi2 with a pi3 that has WiFi on board.

He needs WiFi for a RPi CMIO (Compute Module) which are intended for industrial use, are not necessarily cheap to replace nor they bring all the extra features a regular Pi has.

HI,

I was thinking about using the ESP8266 but then read that due to the UART connection, the speed is only going to be in Kbps, which is fine for ssh and small file transfers. But I am going to be doing some reasonably sized transfers, like audio files and such, and I figured the speed wasn't going to be enough. Are there any other faster connections I can use?

You're probably better off integrating a USB Wi-Fi Chipset entirely into your design. If you still need the USB port, then integrate a USB Hub + a USB Wi-Fi Chipset. Of course, to do this will require that you also integrate the antenna and matching components which can be somewhat troublesome.

Of the chipsets available, the older 802.11n Atheros chipsets generally give the best range in my experience - something like the Atheros AR9271L is pretty much supported out of the box as the drivers are in the kernel already. Otherwise, the older 802.11n Ralink chipsets (e.g. RT2501, RT5201, RT2573, RT2671) might also be good choices. The Realtek devices mostly seem to need you to build your own kernel module and are a little flakey.

There are some companies which do make modules based on these chipsets for integration, still using the USB bus. Some of these (e.g. WUBA-171GN - 802.11b/g/n High-Power USB Module, Atheros AR9271, 1T1R (5-pin pin header) - SparkLAN ) are just the USB dongle without the USB connector. Others (mainly from China) are more designed for integration (e.g. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/AR9271-module-wireless-network-card-module-USB-wireless-network-card-module-haihua-AW-NU… ).

Short of this, you might be able to get a chipset that might interface over SPI or SDIO, but it's not going to be out of the box support. Other buses will be likely too slow for your desires.

- Gough

Just FYI the EP8266 statup baud rate is 115200 not 9600.

Sorry I didn``t know what you were doing this for, thought

just a hobbiest.  If this is industrial then you need to lookup

or talk to the people who make the module and ask them if

they have a solution that will be robust enough for your

application.

Regards,

Steve Drake

lordtyrion  wrote:

 

HI,

I was thinking about using the ESP8266

Why? It's the wrong solution if you're going to the effort of using a CM.. you need a device that operates as network processor, not a device with embedded application processor and TCP/IP. ESP.. is great for hobby use and that's about it.

There are many options (serial bus interfacing, including USB) as mentioned by everyone below.

A forum where problem like this is discussed and apparently there are few options to choose from.

Luis

I never really looked at the compute module. I used a lot of pi zero's and before the pi zero W came out I started using these modules from red bears kickstarter.

https://github.com/redbear/IoT_pHAT

They use the same chip as the pi 3 so support was great. Might be worth a look at integrating that chip into your design