[Arm-netbook] Wifi

[lkcl luke]

On Sun, Dec 18, 2011 at 4:45 AM, jonsmirl at gmail.com <jonsmirl at gmail.com> wrote:
> Has putting wifi on the board been discussed?

 i've definitely considered it.

> Ralink chips are well under $5.00.

 did you see what happened on the openpandora?  they paid an ex-TI
engineer $USD 50,000 to *fail* to get the TI SIP module to behave.

 i'm simply not prepared to jeapordise the project by making that
mistake, nor delay it by seeking those level of funds, nor penalise
buyers of the resultant board with the extra NREs.

>  Putting it on the baseboard and getting it FCC/EU
> approved

 do you know how much that costs?

> Another option is what Chumby did and use a USB stick. But that gets
> into a lot of problems with physical form factor. They ended up with a
> short cable to another PCB with a USB socket in order to deal with
> form factor problems. The USB stick was done to avoid the FCC
> licensing issues. They bought sticks that already had FCC/EU approval.
>
> How are you going to get wifi if the OTG socket is taken up with power input?

 you mean, how is anyone going to get wifi?  there are several
methods: 1) there is an SDIO slot 2) there are on the allwinner 3 more
SDIO interfaces: at least one of them i will ask the factory to put
onto the expansion header 3) the USB-OTG port can take a hub 4)
there's a 2nd USB (Host) on the EOMA-PCMCIA specification / connector:
the fact that the allwinner happens to have a USB-OTG is an extra
benefit; thus it is possible to create motherboards that either have
on-board USB WIFI or provide a USB hub that then allows users to plug
in multiple devices.

> I'd rather see Ethernet on a daughter card and wifi on the baseboard.

 if you are prepared to raise the funds and get it done, i'm more than
happy for you to promote it through the rhombus-tech.net web site:
that's what it's there for.  i'll be happy to watch with interest what
happens and will, once you succeed, ask you how much it is in
mass-volume, and, if it's a reasonable competitive price, help sell it
through the hypermarket channels that we have lined up.

 remember also you need to get an antenna into the case, because it
will be a mass-volume part, sealed etc. just like a legacy PCMCIA wifi
card: you can't stick the antenna in the middle of the board, as
there's no way to determine if the antenna will be directly next to
components, metal or an earth plane on the motherboard.

 l.