Topic: Wifi Hardware

Hey all. I'm not sure if you can post it here, or if it's already on the dev hardware page...

What brand/make/model of wireless USB dongle is it? I assume it has native compatibility with linux... ndiswrapper doesn't like me very much.

Re: Wifi Hardware

It should be on the devhardware page, but we're currently using an XTERASYS XN-3134G.  There are native open source drivers for it.

"ndiswrapper" would be useless to use because we're not using an x86 processor.

Re: Wifi Hardware

There are also other USB Wifi dongles that use the same ZD1211 chipset and have the same USB ID (07b8:6001) as the XTERASYS XN-3134G, but have all been untested as of this point. A good list can be found here: http://zd1211.ath.cx/

Joe

Re: Wifi Hardware

could you not put the wi-fi onboard?

need upload space for the forums or a chumby blog? right here then
http://www.nophus.com/useru
username is chumby
password is chumby

Re: Wifi Hardware

chedabob wrote:

could you not put the wi-fi onboard?

It would be cost prohibitive, as most wifi chipsets cost an arm and a leg, but when you're mass producing dongles like this company is, they're a lot cheaper per unit. In the future, it would be something to look into, but at this point in time, I would get used to the Wifi-on-USB.

Besides, Wifi-on-USB offers the ability to disconnect Wifi from Chumby and plug it into your older laptop or desktop if you want. Then you have two USB ports to play with on Chumby wink. Flexibility, gotta love it.

Re: Wifi Hardware

Have you considered using an adapter based on the Marvell 88W8338 that is being used in the OLPC? An example is Zonet ZEW2502, http://www.zonetusa.com/DispProduct.asp?ProductID=231 There are probably others, this is the first one I found.

The advantage with Marvell is the mesh networking firmware being developed for the OLPC. The Marvell chip is a small ARM processor with RAM. The firmware is able to forward packets between chips in a mesh without CPU intervention and it works out all of the routing problems. Marvell's Linux drivers are already open source for driving this chip. Because of the OLPC they are working on open sourcing the firmware too.

Think of the possibilities of bringing hundreds of Chumbies together and forming an ad hoc network.

Re: Wifi Hardware

"Think of the possibilities of bringing hundreds of Chumbies together and forming an ad hoc network."

Well- one possible early adopter group for Chumby is students living in dorms.
So a mesh network could bridge one "out to the net" port among many Chumby using
residents.

Oren

Re: Wifi Hardware

I had the wrong Marvell chip, the right one for mesh networking is the 88W8388.
If the Chumby people are interested in pursuing this I have contacts at Marvell.

Re: Wifi Hardware

orenbeck wrote:

"Think of the possibilities of bringing hundreds of Chumbies together and forming an ad hoc network."

Well- one possible early adopter group for Chumby is students living in dorms.
So a mesh network could bridge one "out to the net" port among many Chumby using
residents.

Oren

If anyone is pursuing something along these lines please get/keep in touch with me. I have an interest in creating a chumby meshwork and would like to discuss how people are implementing these ideas when there are more chumbys in the wild.

Re: Wifi Hardware

Mesh networking needs to be built into Chumby at the factory since it needs changes to the way the OS works. Normal wifi chips don't mesh very well, that's why Marvell made a new chip specifically for mesh networking.  The 88W8388 is the networking chip going into the Linux based OLPC laptop to provide it's mesh capabilities.

You can mesh with normal wifi but the throughput is really bad. The new mesh chips actually change the way CDMA works at the wifi MAC layer to get the throughput up.

88W8388 is only available on a USB 2.0 dongle. Current Chumbys only have a USB 1.1 USB port. It's USB 2.0 because it is 802.11S which runs at 54Mb/sec. You would need to switch from the MX21 to the MX27 to get a USB 2.0 port. USB 1.0 runs at 12MB/sec.  Marvell says they have software to run 802.11S on some of their older chips but I haven't seen it yet.

MX27 is an updated version of the MX21 that costs about the same and has a couple of new features on it like USB 2.0 support. It also has Linux 2.6 from Freescale, MX21 only has Linux 2.4 support.

Re: Wifi Hardware

Hmm...interesting. I will point bunnie in the direction of this post and see if he has any thoughts to add. There is probably a good reason why these features are not there but there have also been a few hardware changes since the alpha prototype was launched. They most likely aren't all reflected on the site as yet - the Chumbians seem to have hit a busy patch, I think. Stay tuned!

Re: Wifi Hardware

Hi there,

Sorry I've been delinquent on reading the hardware forums...been so busy trying to get the next generation chumby hardware out I haven't raised my head to look around lately. The MX27 was brought to our attention by Freescale, but it seems that their volume commitment date is somewhat later than our intended hardware volume date and the price is a bit higher than we'd like. It is a very good candidate, however, for the "next" chumby.

The 88w8388 is an interesting chip. We have been talking to Marvell but for some reason we aren't seeing the magic pricing that everyone is talking about. Perhaps chumby is a bit too small still. smile hopefully that will be fixed in a few months and we can get the attention of a Marvell, as well as some better pricing.

7BAA 2E53 01C1 DCFF 497B  E7F0 9699 A303 78F0 D9B9

Re: Wifi Hardware

I'm working on an embedded design similar to a Chumby but the end application is nothing like a Chumby. Because of the USB 1.0 limitations of the MX21 and the six months or so until the MX27 is ready, we bit the bullet and switched to the MX31L. MX31L is cheaper than adding an external USB 2.0 chip to the MX21. Plus it has more horsepower for video processing. On the other hand I'm not excited about the additional $5 or the 450 pin BGA.

Another reason we switched to the MX31L is to get Linux 2.6 support. Only Microcross is providing 2.6 on the MX21 and they don't have a functioning driver for the on-chip USB port. You can plug a USB storage stick into their driver, but plug in any other other USB device type and it will die.

Freescale is providing Linux 2.6 for the MX31L.  We have to have 2.6 since a lot of the USB devices we want to plug in are only supported on 2.6 and not on 2.4. Having the MX31 in the MS Zune and Sony Mylo should help get the volume prices down.

I was unable to locate another SOC that has camera, h.263 and USB 2.0 all on it.

Want to buy a slightly used MX21LITEKIT?

Re: Wifi Hardware

Want to buy a slightly used MX21LITEKIT?

How much? big_smile

I've been writing some Chumby-related software for a while now (kinda gone underground until the Chumby hardware becomes prevalent enough to start hardware-hacking), it'd be nice to see how it performs on the ARM (I've been cross-compiling it and running it qemu).

Re: Wifi Hardware

$450 for the MX21LITEKIT. It is only 10 days old and I paid $550.  I'll include shipping in the $450.

It has several good features like a QVGA touch screen and it boots Linux. I have 2.6 kernel form Microcross loaded on it. It comes with "support" from Microcross but their answer to all of my questions has been -  buy a $10,000 support package and we'll see what we can do.  The support that came with the MX21 kit seems to consist of a copy of their 2.6 kernel 'as is'.

Linux boot ROM is capable of NFS mounting the root volume. That makes it real easy to work on cross compiled apps from an x86 box. You can self host the compiler but it is a lot faster to cross compile with the NFS mount.

Another major feature is the integrated USB based JTAG. It only works under windows but you can use it to source debug interrupt handlers in the kernel if you want. Can't do that on any x86 box. You can also use it to reflash the boot ROM if you brick it. If you want Linux host support for the JTAG you need to buy a $250 hardware upgrade from Macgreigor.

Only big downside, MX21 does not have USB 2.0 support which was a requirement for our project. The Microcross written USB 1.0 driver for 2.6 only works for storage cards and no other USB device types. The host side of the USB OTG hardware is not supported at all. Philips has shipped an MX21 based VOIP phone running Linux. The phone is only shipping in the Netherlands and I don't know Dutch so I can't figure out where to download the source.  Philips is good about making the source available, I just can't figure out the web site. I suspect there is a functional USB OTG driver in the download since their phone has working USB OTG. Freescale has a full OTG driver available for Linux 2.4.

The board has audio support and I have verified that the 2.6 ALSA drivers for it are functioning. The Ethernet is 10Mb only. I thought it was broken until I figured out that the switch I had it plugged into didn't support 10Mb - only 100Mb/1Gb. Kit comes with a power supply.

I have a copy of the Hantro MPEG4 encode/decode libraries. Royalties for those are included with the MX21 chip. The chip is capable of full duplex QVGA MPEG4 encode/decode. Adding a $6 camera to the Chumby would be cool but the socket for the connector has to be designed onto the Chumby board. MX21 supports most camera modules directly, there just need to be somewhere to plug them in. You need a 20 pin surface mount socket wired to the CSI pins. Then get a camera flex cable assembly. MX21LITEKIT does not have a camera socket on it.

Re: Wifi Hardware

As mentioned previously in this thread, Mesh networking really should be in the Chumby.
The advantages are innumberable.

For the people who were interested in Mesh networking with the Chumby, http://meraki.net/ might be an easy solution.

I agree that it would be best to have it built-in, and it would definitely sell more chumbies if I could have one in every room even if my little wi-fi router didnt have coverage throughout my house, but Meraki might be a good way around it to start.