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Simple Wi Fi client on ARC development boards

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Alexey Brodkin edited this page Dec 5, 2017 · 6 revisions

Software configuration on build host

Linux kernel configuration

For Wi-Fi to work it is essentially required to enable drivers for a Wi-Fi device available on the board or attached via USB. But before that it is required to enable 802.11:

  • CONFIG_CFG80211 - Wireless configuration API
  • CONFIG_MAC80211 - Hardware independent IEEE 802.11 networking stack

Once 2 options above enabled proceed to selection of Wi-Fi chip driver. For AXS10x boards we usually use USB Wi-Fi dongles (widely available one is TP-Link TL-WN722N) based on Atheros AR9271L chip. For that select:

  • CONFIG_ATH9K_HTC - Support for Atheros HTC based cards

On HSDK board we have RedPine RS-9113 module connected via SDIO bus, select it with:

  • CONFIG_RSI_SDIO

Note it's perfectly possible to have USB Wi-Fi dongle attached to HSDK as well so then just follow instructions for AXS10x board.

User-space configuration

Here we'll describe how to setup Buildroot but the same things could be done in any other build-system or even done manually.

In Buildroot we need to select:

  • Firmware for Wi-Fi chips
  • For AXS10x select BR2_PACKAGE_LINUX_FIRMWARE_ATHEROS_9271
  • For HSDK select BR2_PACKAGE_LINUX_FIRMWARE_REDPINE_RS9113
  • BR2_PACKAGE_WPA_SUPPLICANT - WPA supplicant for secure wireless networks. It will help to connect to secure Wi-Fi network.

Software configuration on target

Buildroot automatically installs default configuration file for WPA supplicant (hostapd.conf) but it won't work as it is. Comment with # the following line in /etc/hostapd.conf

eap_server=0

so it will be:

# eap_server=0

Otherwise hostapd refuces to start saying

Configuration file: /etc/hostapd.conf
Line 759: unknown configuration item 'eap_server'
1 errors found in configuration file '/etc/hostapd.conf'
Failed to set up interface with /etc/hostapd.conf
Failed to initialize interface
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