Linux wifi development board

Linux wifi development board

[Ahmed A]

Hello,

I have been looking online for a Linux wifi development board.  I have come across a few from small companies (reasonably priced), but most of those companies seem to be out of business.  I would appreciate suggestions from anyone that may have used one recently, or suggest a link where I can more info some popular ones.

I am mostly interested in doing some software development, prototyping on the "application processor", not on the "baseband processor" (radio part).

If there is an alternate mailing list I can post my question, I would appreciate that also.

Thank you,
Ahmed A.


      

Re: Linux wifi development board

[David Acker]

Ahmed A wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I have been looking online for a Linux wifi development board.  I have come across a few from small companies (reasonably priced), but most of those companies seem to be out of business.  I would appreciate suggestions from anyone that may have used one recently, or suggest a link where I can more info some popular ones.
> 
> I am mostly interested in doing some software development, prototyping on the "application processor", not on the "baseband processor" (radio part).
> 
> If there is an alternate mailing list I can post my question, I would appreciate that also.

I have had good luck with boards from Gateworks, 
http://www.gateworks.com/ and radios from Ubiquiti, http://ubnt.com/ . 
All of it is supported by OpenWRT, although I believe that the gw2348-4 
(avila) has mainline support.
-ack

Re: Linux wifi development board

[Joerg Albert]

On 10/06/2009 03:14 PM, David Acker wrote:
> Ahmed A wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> I have been looking online for a Linux wifi development board.  I have
>> come across a few from small companies (reasonably priced), but most
>> of those companies seem to be out of business.  I would appreciate
>> suggestions from anyone that may have used one recently, or suggest a
>> link where I can more info some popular ones.
>>
>> I am mostly interested in doing some software development, prototyping
>> on the "application processor", not on the "baseband processor" (radio
>> part).
>>
>> If there is an alternate mailing list I can post my question, I would
>> appreciate that also.
> 
> I have had good luck with boards from Gateworks,
> http://www.gateworks.com/ and radios from Ubiquiti, http://ubnt.com/ .
> All of it is supported by OpenWRT, although I believe that the gw2348-4
> (avila) has mainline support.

If Avila boards are a bit to pricey, you may consider getting an Ubiquity Routerstation (Pro) instead.
It ships with OpenWrt.
Anyhow, just check which devices have OpenWRT mainline support (http://www.openwrt.org) and choose one of them.

If you prefer x86 hardware and more standard distributions you may consider an Alix board
(http://www.pcengines.ch/alix.htm). I've got one here running Debian Lenny on a 8 GByte CompactFlash card.

Both Routerstation and Alix require additional miniPCI (or USB) WLAN cards.

Regards,
Joerg.

Re: Linux wifi development board

[Ahmed A]

--- On Tue, 10/6/09, David Acker <dacker@roinet.com> wrote:

> From: David Acker <dacker@roinet.com>
> Subject: Re: Linux wifi development board
> To: "Ahmed A" <ahmedcali@yahoo.com>
> Cc: linux-wireless@vger.kernel.org
> Date: Tuesday, October 6, 2009, 6:14 AM
> Ahmed A wrote:
> > Hello,
> > 
> > I have been looking online for a Linux wifi
> development board.  I have come across a few from small
> companies (reasonably priced), but most of those companies
> seem to be out of business.  I would appreciate
> suggestions from anyone that may have used one recently, or
> suggest a link where I can more info some popular ones.
> > 
> > I am mostly interested in doing some software
> development, prototyping on the "application processor", not
> on the "baseband processor" (radio part).
> > 
> > If there is an alternate mailing list I can post my
> question, I would appreciate that also.
> 
> I have had good luck with boards from Gateworks, http://www.gateworks.com/ and radios from Ubiquiti, http://ubnt.com/
> . All of it is supported by OpenWRT, although I believe that
> the gw2348-4 (avila) has mainline support.
> -ack
> 

Hi David,

Thank you for your response.  I would like to explain what I am trying to setup, and would appreciate your feedback please.  My setup would comprise of two parts. One part would be the wifi router (base station), on which I load linux image bundled with my special app onto it.  The other part would be the wifi client (CPE), that would connect to the router.  I would also like to be able to load my own kernel image bundled with my special app.

I am guessing from your email, I would have to get a board from gateworks, hook up an antenna to it from ubnt, load image from OpenWRT, that would be my wifi router.  Is that right? Which product would you recommend, the Avilla platform? Which antenna from ubnt?  Would there be issues getting these to work?  How about the components on the client side, same deal?

I have done some work/programming on the IXP, but I do prefer a board with non-IXP CPU, like PowerPC or XScale.

Is there any solution out there, where the dev board and antenna come bundled, so I don't have to muck around getting them to work?

Any decent alternate board supplier, the prices of boards from gateworks are a bit pricey for me.

Thank you,
Ahmed A.



      

Re: Linux wifi development board

[David Acker]

Ahmed A wrote:
> Hi David,
> 
> Thank you for your response.  I would like to explain what I am trying to setup, and would appreciate your feedback please.  My setup would comprise of two parts. One part would be the wifi router (base station), on which I load linux image bundled with my special app onto it.  The other part would be the wifi client (CPE), that would connect to the router.  I would also like to be able to load my own kernel image bundled with my special app.
> 
> I am guessing from your email, I would have to get a board from gateworks, hook up an antenna to it from ubnt, load image from OpenWRT, that would be my wifi router.  Is that right? Which product would you recommend, the Avilla platform? Which antenna from ubnt?  Would there be issues getting these to work?  How about the components on the client side, same deal?
> 
> I have done some work/programming on the IXP, but I do prefer a board with non-IXP CPU, like PowerPC or XScale.
> 
> Is there any solution out there, where the dev board and antenna come bundled, so I don't have to muck around getting them to work?
> 
> Any decent alternate board supplier, the prices of boards from gateworks are a bit pricey for me.

As someone else noted, the RouterStation Pro from Ubiquiti 
http://ubnt.com/products/rspro.php is a pretty good deal.  $80 gets you 
quite the system.  You could add in any of Ubiquiti's atheros based 
miniPCI radios.  They have 802.11b/g, 802.11a, and 802.11N in both 2.4 
and 5 GHz.  They also have several other frequencies like 2.3, 2.6, 4, 
900 MHz, and 700 MHz.  All of their radios are supported by either 
madwifi/ath5k or ath9k.

For all in one less expensive systems, I would look for an off the shelf 
wifi router that is supported by OpenWRT.  They have a nice list of 
supported routers.

-ack