Wireless Pmod For Zybo And Zedboard

[jamey.hicks]

We recently bought a PmodWifi for use with our Zybo board and discovered there is no Linux driver for it.

 

The download for the module does include a driver for use on the ChipKit microcontroller, which could be ported to Linux. However, we'd rather spend our development time on other tasks.

 

We're going to try an SD card with an Atheros AR6233 WiFi/Bluetooth module on it. This module contains an AR6003 chip, whose driver is in the Linux kernel.

 

Since we're booting from SD, we'll use the PmodSD to attach the WiFi. Assuming the card and driver works, it would be cool to have a periphal module containing the AR6233 to simplify assembly, purchasing, etc.

 

[sbobrowicz]

The PmodWiFi is really only feasible to use with our Microchip boards, because they are the only ones that can run the MLA driver for it. The MLA driver created by microchip is the only driver that I am aware of that exists for the Wifi module on the PmodWifi. I've submitted some requests to update the website and reference manual to make this more clear.

 

Your proposed solution should work, but you would probably have to run it in SPI mode in order to reduce development time (there isn't any 4-bit SDIO HDL cores out there with Linux drivers that I'm aware of). The main question then would be if the AR6003 driver and the Xilinx SPI driver will play nice. 

 

I typically just use a USB Wifi adapter if I need Wifi with the ZYBO. They are cheap and most are supported in Linux. You might need to be running a more advanced filesystem than busybox though, such as Linaro Ubuntu...

[LariSan]

I've posted this question to our support team to see if there is a WiFi driver in development somewhere. 

Otherwise, I'd love to see if the Atheros module worked on it. 

[LariSan]

Hi jamey.hicks, 

Did you purchase this wi-fi module recently?

If so, would you mind sending me a private message?

-Larissa

[Eddie.Vergara]

Jamey,

I'm considering playing around with the SX-SDCAN2 module which has the AR6233 chipset you refer to.  Were you successful in bringing up a wifi link on Zynq using this card?  Curious how it went.  

-Eddie

[jamey.hicks]

Hi Eddie,

We were able to bring up wifi with that module, although we did not fully test it, e.g., with secure access points. We moved our lab and project since then, but I'll try to find our wifi modules so I can give do some more testing.

Since then, I see that there are some TI WiLink wifi modules available that are much cheaper than the one we found. I'll take a look at them to see if they are useable.

Jamey