Using Bifferboard as WLAN client

Hi,

I just want to write my steps down which I have done until now to get my Wireless USB dongle to work on bifferboard.

I have a “PHILIPS” usb stick with a “zd1211b” chipset. To make it work you have to choice the following packages in menuconfig:

Kernel modules -> Wireless Drivers -> kmow_zd1211rw

Network -> wpa_supplicant

After compiling and uploading on bifferboard I get a wlan0 device.

Now we have to set-up the wlan0 device to connect to our access point. For now I try a connection without encryption to minimise our error sources.

To get a clean config remove /etc/config/wireless and  create a new one with wifi detect > /etc/config/wireless. Open this file now and edit it, here is my example config:

#/etc/config/wireless
config wifi-device  wlan0
option type     mac80211
option channel  5
option macaddr  00:1d:19:68:25:e3
option hwmode   11g
# REMOVE THIS LINE TO ENABLE WIFI:
#option disabled 0
 
config wifi-iface
option device   wlan0
option network  wlan
option mode     sta
option ssid     Ollum
option encryption none

If you want to test your settings just type ‘wifi’. If everything is on the right place then you can set the dhcpclient on the /etc/config/network file, to set-up the wireless lan automaticly if you boot your system for example.

#/etc/config/network
config interface loopback
        option ifname   lo
        option proto    static
        option ipaddr   127.0.0.1
        option netmask  255.0.0.0
 
config interface lan
        option ifname   eth0
        option proto    dhcp
        option hostname biffer
 
config interface wlan
        option proto dhcp

Just add the last two lines to your config, thats it!

WEP Encryption

If you can connect to your open wlan, then it is time to test if you can connect to a wep encrypted wlan. To do this add this two lines to your ‘config wifi-iface’ section in /etc/config/wireless.

config 'wifi-iface'
*..
option 'encryption' 'wep'
option 'key' 'mykey'

Any Encription

If you have another encryption in your network, then look at thisto get the right value for the encryption option. I am using WPA+TKIP in my WLAN, because of this my config looks like this.

Here my complete config again.

#/etc/config/wireless
config wifi-device  wlan0
        option type     mac80211
        option channel  5
        option macaddr  00:1f:39:68:25:a3
        option hwmode   11g
 
        # REMOVE THIS LINE TO ENABLE WIFI:
        #option disabled 0
 
config wifi-iface
        option device   wlan0
        option network  wlan
        option mode     sta
        option ssid     myAP
        option encryption psk+tkip
        option key      mysecret

#/etc/config/network
config interface loopback
        option ifname   lo
        option proto    static
        option ipaddr   127.0.0.1
        option netmask  255.0.0.0
 
config interface lan
        option ifname   eth0
        option proto    dhcp
        option hostname biffer
 
config interface wlan
        option proto dhcp

Troubleshooting

I had problems to connect to SSH over WLAN and also mjpg_streamer want work. To fix this problem I set my MTU value to 448. This can be done with this command “ifconfig wlan0 mtu 448“. For more information read here.

To set the value on every time you boot up your system, add this line into your /etc/config/network file in the wlan section

#/etc/config/wireless
config interface wlan
        option proto dhcp
        option mtu 448