Help with WL1835 wifi cape

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1

I'd like to add a wifi board to my radio project that's currently running on a Debian distro from a few months ago. It's been modified a bit since then, and I can't currently log into it to verify if it's a 3.8 or 3.1x kernel. I thought it was 3.8, but I had to do a bunch of DTB stuff to it, so that makes me think it's a newer kernel.

Anyway, I have another BBB with 3.8.13-bone69 on it, figured that would be the place to start to get the WiFi cape working, so I don't screw up my radio project (which uses ADC and PRU and some GPIOs and took a lot of configuring to get working). I've plugged in the board, and looked online for help with it, but the main results point to this TI page:

  http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/WL18xx_AMxxx_Platform_Integration_Guide

Which is generic, and has lots of instructions for patching and building a custom kernel. Is all that really necessary? Do the current builds not support this chip out of the box?

Thanks,

2

It seems most people are using USB adapters. The wl1835 does not work out of the box…

3

I realize that, but I'm not able to do that in this project.

4

Hi Ricky,

I understand your pain. I had a hell of a time interfacing the WL1835 mod the first time as the resources seem to be scattered all over the internet with no very clear method on how to do it. I’ll try and supplement with the platform integration guide so you can get yours working.

  1. Download and install the ti-sdk for the am335x

http://www.ti.com/tool/linuxezsdk-sitara

  1. After installing find the create-sdcard.sh script in the bin folder of the SDK. Use it to to format and prepare an SD card for booting your BBB with the cape. Choose to install custom boot and rootfs files, use the ones you download from the platform integration guide.

  2. Once your SD card is prepared, place it in the BBB, and apply power to the board while holding down the S2 switch.

NOTE: The WL1835 disables a lot of the features inherent in the BBB, so you must interface using an FTDI cable to the pins. You will not be able to SSH, use HDMI, or VNC to log on! Use a terminal like putty to connect through the cable at a baud rate of 115200.