Integrating WL1271 SDIO/any wifi SDIO with the beagleboard?

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1

Hi,

I'm currently exploring various options in order to achieve a working
integration between an OMAP processor and a WIFI solution, by
maintaining a low total cost. This is going to be used for a
University project.

The natural choice is the beagleboard, perhaps with a WL1271 based
SDIO card. Yet it seems that this is prone to problems, and requires
manipulating drivers and a lot of testing (if a all possiblle). As
this is just the entry point of the project, I'd prefer to avoid these
kind of time consuming tasks, as other issues in many different areas
will surely arise.

I'd like to hear any advices you may have. Perhaps there's a better
choice overall than the beagleboard for this, or is there a working
and tested solution to this issue?

I'd like to avoid using a USB WIFI dongle as the space limitations are
quite strict in this project (not to mention the use of hub if I don't
get the xM version)

Thanks,

   Guy.

2

Hi,

I'm currently exploring various options in order to achieve a working
integration between an OMAP processor and a WIFI solution, by
maintaining a low total cost. This is going to be used for a
University project.

Maybe you can consider gumstix:
http://www.gumstix.com/store/catalog/index.php?cPath=27_33

They use same OMAP processor as BB and have intergrated WLAN.

Regards,
Andrey.

3

Hi,

I'm currently exploring various options in order to achieve a working
integration between an OMAP processor and a WIFI solution, by
maintaining a low total cost. This is going to be used for a
University project.

The natural choice is the beagleboard, perhaps with a WL1271 based
SDIO card. Yet it seems that this is prone to problems, and requires
manipulating drivers and a lot of testing (if a all possiblle). As
this is just the entry point of the project, I'd prefer to avoid these
kind of time consuming tasks, as other issues in many different areas
will surely arise.

Quite many people have been using the wl1271 driver with SDIO in
different platforms. We are also using it ourselves in our internal
development. So it should work.

The only thing you will probably have to tweak is the board
configuraition file. I have also been using a wl1271 daughter card
connected via SDIO to my beagleboard. Take a look at this (unofficial)
patch I sent:

http://groups.google.com/group/beagleboard/browse_thread/thread/8f12c1e69d644e86

This is not the right way to do it in upstream kernel, but if you want
to have your custom kernel that you know for sure will be used only with
the wl1271 extension, it should be fine. This patch is based on
2.6.37-rc1.

I'd like to hear any advices you may have. Perhaps there's a better
choice overall than the beagleboard for this, or is there a working
and tested solution to this issue?

You could consider the pandaboard also. It comes with the wl1271. It
is still very new and full support for it is still work in progress,
though. If you're interested you might want to check
http://pandaboard.org for more information.