Pi compatible WIfi adaptor

[MrEngman]

For anyone searching for a Wifi adapter to plug directly into the Pi USB port try the Micronet Wireless LAN USB Adapter SP907NS. I bought mine from Maplin, order number N47HW. I have been using one now for a couple of weeks and have seen no problems.

This adapter uses a Realtek RTL8188CUS. Details for configuring with Debian can be found at http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewt ... f=6&t=4992 and http://www.ctrl-alt-del.cc/2012/05/rasp ... s-ada.html.

I have seen a spec for the rtl8188cus that would appear to indicate max current is 129mA at 85Mbps. This is for continuous transmit, the most power hungry mode. With the Pi I have yet to get a transfer rate faster than about 16Mbps and the max current I have seen used is about 115mA when writing. The idle current is around about 70mA.

[Thunder__X]

I have a no name nano wireless adapter that apparently uses Realtek RTL8192cu drivers. I'll see if I can try to get it working when I get my Raspberry Pi hopefully this week or sooner.

[trig]

Edimax EW-7711UAN 150Mbps Wireless 802.11n High Gain 3dBi USB Adapter, works for me

[MrEngman]

Hi Thunder__X,

If you type the command "lsusb" you should get a list of connect USB devices and it should give some idea of what your device actually is. Would be useful to know.

[miketuk]

Got the micro net wifi dongle from maplin on the basis it was proven.

With a bit of poking and a little help from this forum post, http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewt ... f=5&t=4992 its now working.

I found that reboot after copying the kernel module was key to success. After typing
iwconfig wlan1 essid MySSId, the blue light came on and we were off the starting blocks.

[rccapps]

Edimax EW-7711UAN 150Mbps Wireless 802.11n High Gain 3dBi USB Adapter, works for me

Does it work plugged directly into the board, or only via a powered hub?

[SN]

This last question is key. currently my belkin only works direct of the raspi NOT off my powered usb hub. i'm getting ready to buy another dongle and i dont want this issue

[MrEngman]

This last question is key. currently my belkin only works direct of the raspi NOT off my powered usb hub. i'm getting ready to buy another dongle and i dont want this issue

Was your keyboard plugged into the hub when you tried the wifi in the hub? I have a hub that causes problems if both keyboard and wifi adapter are plugged into it together. Moving one or the other and plugging directly into a USB port on the Pi and everything works fine.

[Drogyn]

Currently waiting for my pi but looking for peripherals for it and sorry if this has been asked but...

Is there sufficient power from the onboard usb to run a wifi dongle or will it have to be plugged into a powered hub?

Have seen some conflicting information and I'm curious if there is a dongle out there that will run from the pi's usb power as i intend on setting it up to access remotely

[MrEngman]

Currently waiting for my pi but looking for peripherals for it and sorry if this has been asked but...

Is there sufficient power from the onboard usb to run a wifi dongle or will it have to be plugged into a powered hub?

Have seen some conflicting information and I'm curious if there is a dongle out there that will run from the pi's usb power as i intend on setting it up to access remotely

I have my wifi adapter, a Micronet N150 adapter SP907NS, plugged directly into the Pi. It is base on the Realtek RTL8188CUS device. The max current I've seen with this device is about 115mA, slightly over the max 100ma spec for the low power USB port, but the fuses are rated 140mA and so there is a reasonable current to spare. There are a number of different manufacturers using this device in their adapters and I would expect the power consumption of those adapters to be similar. I believe there are a fair number of people using adapters based on the RTL8188CUS with the adapter plugged directly into the Pi. Power consumption is at a max during data transmission. Due to the relatively low transmission data rates from the Pi it is pointless looking at high speed devices, e.g. N300 devices which I expect take a relatively high current. Even a 54Mbps device is never likely to get anywhere near maximum speed but may be of relatively low power. Longer range devices will also take more power due to higher tansmission power rates needed to give the longer range. One difficulty is that power usage never seems to be mentioned in data publicly available. so unless someone has measure actual current usage finding a suitable part is near impossible. I found some info for my part on a data sheet on some obscure Chinese web site after a lengthy search on the internet. This gave a max transmission current of 129mA at 86Mbps, a far higher transmission rate that the Pi is ever likely to achieve.

The other item you need to concider is the power supply. I have used my Pi powered from a rather old powered hub and the voltages were on the low side but this didn't seem to affect the wifi. I now use a small switched mode supply which can supply at least 3A. The voltage output is very stable and is adjustable over a small range, about 4.5-5.5v so I can adjust the voltage to take care of voltage losses in the USB power cable to the Pi and the main power fuse to give a specific value on the Pi's 5.v test pins. I set the voltage on the Pi's test pins to be slightly on the high side which helps maintain voltages in spec on the USB port. The wifi adapter is the only device on the Pi's USB taking power. I have a powered hub in the other port but it takes zero current from the USB 5v power line.

There will be a number of people who will probably recommend that you should only use a wifi adapter in an external powered hub. From my own experience, however, I have had no problems with the adapter I have and having used it for several weeks with a powered hub supplying the power to the Pi at a rather lower voltage than should be used and giving a voltage on the USB port of only 4.2v the adapter also appears quite tolerent of low voltages.

[BagpussBoy]

Using a Zyxel NWD2105 which work pretty much out of the box.

Was wrestling with a Netgear WN111v2 with no luck.

[williamhbell]

Hi,

What did you do to get the Zyxel NWD2105 working? I have the latest Debian squeeze, Zyxel and installed the no-free driver for the card. The lsusb sees the device correctly, but attempts to use it cause the console to be flooded with

"DEBUG:handle_hc_chhltd_intr_dma:: XactErr with NYET/NAK/ACK"

Thanks and best regards,

Will

[jbuehl]

I was able to get an ASUS USB-N10 adapter to work using Arch Linux which includes the r8712u driver if you upgrade the distro. I used netcfg to configure and bring up the interface. I had a lot of intermittent problems with the adapter plugged directly into the board which went away when I began using a powered USB hub. I don't know how much current the ASUS adapter draws, but it gets awfully hot, so it must be quite a lot. I like the small form factor, but I need to find one that doesn't need the hub.

[ers]

i'm planning to stream 1080p movies from a unp server over wireless, do you think this wifi adaptor will have enough speed ? I was thinking to buy a 150mbs one but what I understand from your post is r-pi is not able to handle up to that speeds in any case?

[jbuehl]

It depends on the encoding of the video, but h.264 encoded 1080p video should be around 6Mb/sec. I just did a quick test where I copied a 20MB file from the RPi and it transferred at about 10Mb/sec so I think there's no inherent bottleneck in the hardware.

[StephenR]

I was able to get an ASUS USB-N10 adapter to work using Arch Linux which includes the r8712u driver if you upgrade the distro. I used netcfg to configure and bring up the interface. I had a lot of intermittent problems with the adapter plugged directly into the board which went away when I began using a powered USB hub. I don't know how much current the ASUS adapter draws, but it gets awfully hot, so it must be quite a lot. I like the small form factor, but I need to find one that doesn't need the hub.

I too have the same problem with the N10 on the Pi running Squeezeplug. Powered hub no issue but that is a nuisance and requires two power supplies. I can't run the Pi off the hub even though I have a 2A power supply feeding the hub. Maybe the hub limits the power to the Pi causing the same issue. I can communicate with the Pi and the app works but the sound out is badly distorted. So I can only assume the N10 chews too much power and the audio goes wrong.

Would love a solution to this as Squeezeplug is exactly what I'm after.

cheers,

Stephen

[redstone]

Hey guys,
This is my first post on the forum. I just purchased a R Pi and I am in the process of setting it up. I purchased the Edimax EW-7811Un 150 Mbps Wireless 11n Nano. I dont know if it will work or not but I will post when it comes in.

Im pretty excited about the whole process, my purpose is a catalyst to teach my daughter about hardware, OS, and software. Anyway, good to meet you guys, looks like a fun and helpful crowd.

Dave

[raygan]

Just an PSA for US users. I'm a frequent shopper of Monoprice.com for cheap cables and accessories, so I decided to take a gamble on their "Ultra-Mini USB Wireless Lan 802.11N Adapter - 1T1R (150Mbps)"

http://www.monoprice.com/products/produ ... 1&format=2

It's only $7.44, which makes it the cheapest option I could find.

Turns out it uses the Realtek RTL8188CUS chipset, which makes it very compatible with the Pi. I was able to set it up immediately with the GUI tool in the current Raspbian build.

(I'd add it to the wiki article on verified peripherals but I can't seem to get past their request account screen.)

MonoPrice is a great place to get all kinds of cheap Pi accessories. I also picked up a ~$7.50 flexible roll-up USB keyboard, a cheap HDMI cable, and a nice $13 powered 7-port USB hub.

[savageautomate]

Hey guys,
This is my first post on the forum. I just purchased a R Pi and I am in the process of setting it up. I purchased the Edimax EW-7811Un 150 Mbps Wireless 11n Nano. I dont know if it will work or not but I will post when it comes in. Im pretty excited about the whole process, my purpose is a catalyst to teach my daughter about hardware, OS, and software. Anyway, good to meet you guys, looks like a fun and helpful crowd.

Dave

Hi Dave,

The Edimax EW-7811Un 150 Mbps Wireless 11n Nano is a great choice. I have this installed on three of my Raspberry Pi's and they work great!

Pros:

• It is on the approved list of known working peripherals.
• Works directly attached to the Raspberry Pi USB port, no powered USB hub required.
• The latest Raspbian distributions come with the driver for this adapter pre-installed.
• It's tiny! It does not block access to the second USB port on the Raspberry Pi (Model B).
• Affordable / Reasonably priced at $12.99 USD (Available on Amazon)

Here is an article with installation instructions to install if you need it:
http://www.savagehomeautomation.com/pro ... dapte.html

[strawberry]

I want to connect my Pi with my wifi. I could by the Edimax N150 Nano but I more like something with external antenna.

Is there anyone that can confirm if one of the following wifi adapters may (not) work on the pi?
http://www.conrad.be/ce/nl/product/9737 ... 5&ref=list
http://www.conrad.be/ce/nl/product/9903 ... 5&ref=list
http://www.conrad.be/ce/nl/product/9936 ... 5&ref=list
http://www.conrad.be/ce/nl/product/9862 ... 5&ref=list

Thanks a lot

[mcompiler]

I bought the Conrad WLAN Stick N150 Nano today.

It works out of the box with the current version of Raspbian "Wheezy" (2012-10-28) !

And it costs just 9.95 €

Code: Select all

Bus 001 Device 005: ID 0bda:8176 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL8188CUS 802.11n WLAN Adapter

[savageautomate]

The Edimax EW-7811Un 150 Mbps Wireless 11n Nano prices have also been reduced to $9.99 USD on Amazon and includes free shipping if you are a Prime member.

[iamyourfather]

Hi all,

I have an odd issue with my 150Mbps Mini Wireless N USB Adapter. My upload is always fine (1 Mb/s), while my download is sometimes fine (1 Mb/s) but can drop to 10Kb/s and even stall altogether (on scp/rsync). ifconfig shows an rx drop rate which moves up with the rx packet rate 1:1 in tandem! (in fact, it exceeds it slightly)

The device is a small dongle that I attach directly to the RaspPi. The stick appears as "Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL8188CUS 802.11n WLAN Adapter" in lsusb, so I guess that's what it is.

ifconfig (see the rx drop rates):

Code: Select all

wlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 64:70:02:1d:b3:99
          inet addr:192.168.0.3  Bcast:192.168.0.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::6670:2ff:fe1d:b399/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:2153173 errors:0 dropped:2155824 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:1190480 errors:0 dropped:1 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:3147379621 (2.9 GiB)  TX bytes:108047158 (103.0 MiB)

iwconfig (signal appears to be good):

Code: Select all

wlan0     IEEE 802.11bgn  ESSID:"<snip>"  Nickname:"<WIFI@REALTEK>"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.412 GHz  Access Point: C8:3A:35:F8:57:90
          Bit Rate:150 Mb/s   Sensitivity:0/0
          Retry:off   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=94/100  Signal level=67/100  Noise level=0/100
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

I am alone on Channel 1, with one other network in range on Channel 11.

Sometimes the download speed is excellent, but the drop rate still goes up in tandem - I am starting to wonder whether the drop rate means anything at all. Or could this be related to the fact that I have a range extender?

I would be happy for any pointers as to how to further debug this. Thanks.

[SomeEar]

I am fairly new to the raspberry pi. I am trying to connect it to the internet wirelessly, will a Linksys model WUSB54GC work? Thanks.

[SomeEar]

Well, I didn't get any replies, but I did a search on this model on the internet and it said it would work with a powered hub. Thanks anyway.