Beagle Wifi Adapter

[Mennochio]

I just noticed that I said "BeagleBoard" in my post yesterday. I meant to say "BeagleBone".

[middleton]

I am having the same issue. Just got my Beaglebone a week ago and tried the adapter tonight. I installed the drives in the tutorial but no luck. Mine was not even recognized the first time I plugged it in. Not sure what to do next. Maybe try Debian on the Beaglebone. Or I can always try it in the RPI. I get mine tomorrow!

[tgalonso]

Has anybody tried to use Conman 1.2? Did it work?
Tgalonso

[Doug Kirk]

This post https://plus.google.com/105557068601771362265/posts/93rBVxskh9G helped a lot.

Particularly the part about running 'opkg upgrade'. I made a tmp directory under /home/root, and then 'opkg -t /home/root/tmp upgrade' to upgrade the software on the bone. Then you can delete the tmp directory. I found that without using a specified tmp path it would fill up /tmp and crash the upgrade.

After I did that, and of course removed the ethernet cable from it and reboot (with the Wifi adapter in), it just worked. (I'd already done the install of the firmware and the configuration step).

[engineerbynight]

I'm having the same troubles as everyone else... my screen after "dmesg" doesn't look like what it should (according to tutorial), and the "ifconfig wlan0" command doesn't report anything promising.

I do have the recommended AC adapter plugged in while doing this.

I also have the same results when plugging it into windows machine: RTL8188CU.

Has anyone figure anything out with this?

[tgalonso]

Well I finally got it running! Here is the recipe:
1) start with the A6 image
2) run opkg update and then opkg upgrade twice or setup a temp directory under /home/root and run opkg upgrade with it so that it doesn't run out of space. I stumbled onto the first technique last night, the second one comes from the previous posting which I found today after a late night finding the first one. Oh well!
3) follow the Adafruit tutorial. I used psk instead of wpa.
4) make sure that you unplug the Ethernet cable before rebooting
5) the antenna in the adapter is too small and you have to be close to your wifi router for it to work.
Adafruit you should update the tutorial. I would put my step 2 in the general setup section though. The rest could be added to the wifi section.
Thanks to all the folks in the forum for the help,

Tgalonso

[engineerbynight]

Wow! That did it for me... all is working great now. Thanks!

Now I just need to find a few examples of what I can do, now that I'm online

[adafruit]

thanks, thats a strange one - we've updated the tutorial page to note that a directory should be made

[engineerbynight]

FYI... I didn't make a directory... I just reran the update, and tried everything again. Magic.

[dogsop]

I followed the tutorial exactly, it didn't work. I tested the adapter on my PC and it worked perfectly.

I don't think this adapter is compatible with the Beaglebone at all.

[tgalonso]

see my posting above, do those upgrade steps before you do the tutorial
tgalonso

[AsH83]

@tgalonso
when you ran "opkg update and then opkg upgrade" did your PC stop seeing the board as USB drive? I remember when I tried this before my board stopped showing itself as flash drive?

Anyways I am desperate now to get this wifi to work so i will give it a try? because I followed the instructions as of July 24th and they did not work!!! sometime i see wlan0 with no IP and randomly it goes away then also randomly ifconfig stops responding.

my plan is to:
- start with a fresh image on A6 with the latest 6/18/12 image from Angstrom
- plug Ethernet cable, DC supply and usb cable for serial access.
- create temp folder.
- run update
- run upgrade on the folder.
- follow the instructions again and make sure to unplug the Ethernet cable as you mentioned.

[AsH83]

so still same problem: I do see the wifi adapter with dmesg but ifconfig sometime hangs:

root@beaglebone:~# dmesg | tail -6
[ 9.808044] rtlwifi: rx_max_size 15360, rx_urb_num 8, in_ep 1
[ 9.848937] ieee80211 phy0: Selected rate control algorithm 'rtl_rc'
[ 9.849975] usbcore: registered new interface driver rtl8192cu
[ 9.902923] rtl8192cu: MAC auto ON okay!
[ 9.948150] rtl8192cu: Tx queue select: 0x05
[ 9.949554] rtl8192c_common: Loading firmware file rtlwifi/rtl8192cufw.bin
root@beaglebone:~# ifconfig

[Doug Kirk]

Make sure you unplug the Ethernet cable from the bone when resetting; it won't run both wifi and wired ethernet at the same time.

As others have stated, also make sure you're booting from the latest image (from May '12). I have rev A3 but put the latest image onto a 8G micro SD (4G is required). After that, then do 'opkg update' and 'opkg upgrade'. IIRC, 'ifconfig' froze for me before the update and upgrade, but not after.

Finally, proceed with the steps in the tutorial, unplug the Ethernet cable and reset the bone with the wifi adapter plugged in.

I used CoolTerm over the USB connection until these steps were done. (I did connect wired Ethernet once to check it was working, but then went back to serial over USB)

Cheers!

[AsH83]

I did opkg update and opkg upgrade with temp folder..

The wifi works sometimes but if i leave it for 45 minutes or so i get an error in the logs about some task got hung.. I will try tonight to redo the steps with no temp folder.

and yes i did unplug my Ethernet cable.