Current suggestions for Wifi Adapaters for UP boards

Kurt
Kurt New Member Posts: 146 ✭✭
edited April 2018 in UP Board Hardware Specification

Recently I ordered an Intel R200 Robotics development kit from Mouser, which came with a new UP board. I should have checked if it also came with a wifi adapter (it did not...).

I am soon going to mount this in a Turtlebot3 Waffle PI (to replace the PI and camera).

Wondering which Wifi Adapter to use. I am probably asking this after all of the horses left with the open barn door as I ordered a couple of adapters from Amazon, which should ship tonight, but...

I decided to not order the same one as the UP ships and I have on my other UP board as would prefer to not purchase another one that you have to replace the drivers to make work OK...

Likewise I have some older edimax dongles which I have used in Odroids and earlier RPI boards.

What I have ordered include:
Panda Mini Wifi 150Mbps Wireless N USB Adapter

SparkLAN WUBR-508N(PU) / 802.11a/b/g/n 2x2 MIMO / USB Module with Printed Antenna + USB Type A (Ralink RT5572)

I believe I saw reference to both of these either by name like Panda or by chip type RT5572.

Any better suggestion? If not I will probably start by trying the Sparklan adapter as it is higher speed...

Thanks
Kurt

Edit: Forgot to mention I am running Ubuntu 16.04 on this board

· Share on Facebook

Comments

  • Kurt
    Kurt New Member Posts: 146 ✭✭

    So far the SparkLan... Is working. Will see how it works when used with ROS...

    · Share on Facebook
  • Douwe van Nijnatten
    Douwe van Nijnatten New Member Posts: 5 ✭

    Hi Kurt,

    I am running into wifi adapter issues as well. Do you perhaps have an update on which adapters run smoothly on the UP and which didn't?

    Thanks,
    Douwe

    · Share on Facebook
  • Kurt
    Kurt New Member Posts: 146 ✭✭

    Hopefully someone will jump in and make some suggestions. I first tried the SparkLan one, but I ran into some issues, don't remember exactly what, so I have stuck using the Panda. So far I have not run into any issues with it, but I have not been doing much with it lately.

    · Share on Facebook
  • DoNcK
    DoNcK New Member Posts: 4 ✭
    edited November 2018

    I have two boards with two different USB WiFi adapters:

    The first one is a 802.11N Edimax EW-7811Un USB "N150 Nano dongle" :

    Despite being an "amazon's choice" and being recommended for Raspberry Pi setups on a lot of online shops, I could not get good results with this one. It encounters frequent WiFi drops. Periodically, it enters some sort of zombie mode: the system does not seem to notice anything wrong, but all packets get lost.
    I spent a lot of time trying tweaks I found on Internet (preventing powersave mode...) but none of them could fix the connection drops issue :-(
    I also tried improving the power supply but it did not fix the problem.
    I DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS ONE
    Regarding my tests, I was using Ubuntu Xenial 16.04 and the board was just a few meters from the AP with a good signal reception.

    lsusb reports:

    Bus 001 Device 028: ID 7392:7811 Edimax Technology Co., Ltd EW-7811Un 802.11n Wireless Adapter [Realtek RTL8188CUS]

    On my other board, I use an Alfa Network 802.11 B/G/N adapter:

    It is all but a nano dongle, but at least IT WORKS PERFECTLY FINE :-)
    The reference of the model is AWUS036NHA and it uses an Atheros AR9271. It has a clip an external 5 dBi antenna.
    This second test was run in the same conditions than for the first one.

    lsusb reports:

    Bus 001 Device 012: ID 0cf3:9271 Atheros Communications, Inc. AR9271 802.11n

    edit:
    I have another nano dongle: Realtek "mini wifi module #814b". This one seems to do the job, here is the lsusb report:

    Bus 002 Device 017: ID 0bda:8176 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL8188CUS 802.11n WLAN Adapter
    · Share on Facebook

Categories

Privacy Policy