I am trying to decide how to connect my board to the outside world…
The WiFi RN171 Module (https://www.ghielectronics.com/catalog/product/444) looks pretty awesome (in that it is a WiFi hotspot). The description says that “his module also supports connecting to an existing network but as of now, this is not supported” - what exactly that does mean? It supports connecting, but it’s not supported? Is there an API that does this and it works, but if I encounter problems - don’t call tech support??? Is that what it means?
@ rgelb - I have toyed with the WiFi RN171 driver to support connecting to a wireless network. It has been awhile since I played around with it and I would need to resurrect the code, it was really just a test to see if/how it would work, but if anyone is interested in pursuing that as a community driver I would be happy to work on it.
The WiFi CC3000, is probably the better option esp. from the cost perspective, the driver is being developed by one of the community members
@ rgelb I can tell you what I use… I am using very cheap Nordic nrf24l01 radio modules with Arduino ATMega328 micro’s to make up a low ) bidirection serial pipe. I have also wired Gadgeteer connectors on them and can now use them to let anything talk to anything. And it is quite fast too. I’m not sending continuous data, but I set it up to work at 115200 baud and as long as I keep the strings that I send relatively short it works very reliability. The solution works quite well… if you are interested I can provide more details.
You didn’t really state what your requirements are, so it is hard to give specific advice. Last year, I faced a similar quandary. I was creating a freeze protection system for an outdoor faucet. While it didn’t really need to be internet connected, I wanted to keep an eye on it without having to go to the physical location, which is far from where I spend most of my time.
Since the data rate is low, one update every 30s, many solutions would have worked. I thought about using nrf24l01, but there was not a lot of support for it at the time. Since I already had a working system that used an internet connection and a CANxtra module with an Ethernet connection, I just needed a way to hook it up. Since the location was 65’ from a network connection and I did not want to dig a trench that long, I figured Wi-Fi was the answer. For Black-Friday last year, I got a really good deal on the TP-LINK TL-WR702N Wireless N150 Travel Router, Nano. It works great as a Wi-Fi to Ethernet adapter. It draws enough current that I have to use it’s own power supply and not the USB host port on the CANxtra. It appears that the two devices together draw 2-3W, which is more that I would like, but not so much that I have been motivated enough to do something about it.
The 702 has been really reliable, I can’t say the same about the first router I had at the other end. It would need to be rebooted every month or so. I ended up replacing it with the wr740 and while the UI on this is not great and it wasn’t designed to be just an access point, it does the job quite well. As a bonus, I now have Wi-Fi at the barnyard
No, this means that the firmware of the RN171 supports both Hotspot and WiFi device modes, however, current software support limits full implementation to the Hotspot mode. WiFi device mode can be achieved using command start, command write and command stop using the appropriate AT commands.
