[Arm-netbook] Wifi

jonsmirl at gmail.com jonsmirl at gmail.com
Sun Dec 18 04:45:43 GMT 2011


Has putting wifi on the board been discussed? Ralink chips are well
under $5.00.  Putting it on the baseboard and getting it FCC/EU
approved makes life a lot easier for people embedding the board.

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?
I'd rather see Ethernet on a daughter card and wifi on the baseboard.
If you are using Ethernet then you probably don't have a form factor
problem.

RaspberryPI has the same problem. They want you to plug this into a
TV. Most people don't have hardwire Ethernet run to their TVs, they
use wifi. Adding wifi would be a major advantage over RaspberryPI.

-- 
Jon Smirl
jonsmirl at gmail.com



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