How to use an integrated wifi chip on NI-9651

[cortexM]

Dear all,

I'd to customize my application with an integrated wifi transceiver to connect to SOM via PC without using any cables. Do you have a preferred wifi chip to use and the relative IP (intellectual propriety) to use with it?

Thank you,

M

[tannerite]

cortexM,

National Instruments does not have a wireless radio to recommend at this time. We do not have native wireless support in our OS but it would be possible to interface with either a USB radio and implement their driver or possibly SDIO with driver support as well. Regardless, the wireless radio would not be configurable in MAX.

I must lean on the community to see if there are others out there at this time who have successfully implemented a wireless solution with the SOM and provide any guidance.

- Tanner

[cortexM]

Thank you Tannerite,

I was thinking on the wifi module on the myRIO. Do you think is it possible to have that IP to import in the SOM?

Should be the same using the SOM platform.

M

[ABSIK]

Hi Tannerite, we're actually looking for a wifi solution as well, please let us know if you have any news, Armin

[tduffy]

If there is WiFi support in the myRIO, why isn't that support available with the SoM?

-TD

[sirluke]

Hi all,

wifi support is possible through usb. The tricky part is the compilation of the kernel drivers of the wifi chipset.

It took us a few weeks of development time but it works.

No support from MAX anyway!

Luca

[ABSIK]

Hi Luca, thanks, yes USB sounds like a great way to do it.

What do you think about connecting a wifi module to the RMII or SDIO interface? The wifi modules we intended to use (u-blox.com) only offer these interfaces. (They also offer SPI/UART, but I guess performance wouldn't be to good)

Armin

[Deagle]

tduffy wrote:

If there is WiFi support in the myRIO, why isn't that support available with the SoM?

-TD

The short answer is that wireless on the NI-9651 SoM is similar to myRIO, but because it's not integrated in you will need to do quite a bit of additional work to enable it.  For any 2.4 or 5 GHz radio you would need to abide by FCC/ETSI/other regulatory body rules including antennas, transmit power, transmit channels, listen-before-talk, and cable attenuation.  You would also need to include the user mode utilities such as wpa_supplicant, and configure utilities that are already present such as dhcpc.  For TiWi-BLE (the radio used on myRIO) you would need some additional steps to compile the driver modules and run the calibration utility with the correct options.

We are working with the marketing owner of NI Week presentation TS6943 to include some wireless content to demystify this process, and have a third party wireless partner co-present.  This wouldn't be a released product, but would be a "we got this to work following these directions" type information.

Bryan

[bnh1971]

It would be great if RMII was supported by the SOM. We are looking at implementing wireless also and have also considered the u-blox parts. It just seems a waste to have to add a RMII PHY to the u-blox part and a GMII PHY to the SOM to hook the 2 together.

-Brent

[Deagle]

Brent,

What is your motivation for selecting an RMII interface as opposed to an SDIO one? It looks like u-blox has WiFi modules which will interface with the SDIO lines on SOM.

Bryan