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Fast RPi WiFi without USB

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David Lowe wrote 02/24/2016 at 22:02 point

1-bit mode still makes some sense - two components off the BoM and two fewer precious GPIOs claimed by the SDIO interface (with more chance to avoid conflicts with other add-on boards). To that end I've made a pull-request re adding another overlay specifically for 1-bit mode, configuring only pins 22-25.

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ajlitt wrote 02/24/2016 at 22:22 point

I agree, but for most of the people following the directions verbatim it doesn't make sense to not wire those last two.

It's a shame the Pi bootloader overlay system doesn't allow for more complexity with parameters.  It would be much easier if we could have a single boolean that could enable the correct number of GPIOs and set the bus width at the same time.

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vallabh rao wrote 01/22/2016 at 11:39 point

I am a newbie.. i very much need this in my project... but i am not able to understand the procedure.. is there any way that you can simplify the instructions or make a sort of video on how to do this step by step? thanks in advance

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ajlitt wrote 01/22/2016 at 16:11 point

The instructions concern my early hack / proof-of-concept. At the moment I'd rather put my efforts into something that's easy to assemble or manufacture. The version in the instructions works, but requires some moderate soldering skill and a little improvisation.

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vallabh rao wrote 01/24/2016 at 05:35 point

thanks any ways... waiting eagerly for a diy version.. so that i can get internet to my pi under $3 :)

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k wrote 01/21/2016 at 10:37 point

Thanks to those great instructions I was able to build this in less than half an hour. I did lame performance test (using my phone as an AP as I don't have any other at hand right now) and I'm getting 24Mbits/sec in iperf test, which is great. I'm not sure if it's not a phone limit, though.

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ajlitt wrote 01/21/2016 at 16:01 point

Excellent!

Is this using the ESP-03 and 4-bit mode?

I'm still not entirely certain where the bottlenecks are, though given that I've seen much higher rates than that on my custom board I don't entirely trust the ESP-03 modules I've tried to be optimal on the RF front.

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k wrote 01/21/2016 at 16:09 point

Yes, esp03, 4bit mode. I'm pretty sure that my phone acting as AP can't do much better than that so I'll retest this when I'm back home. Still this is higher tab I expected so this hack is awesome. Thanks!

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k wrote 01/22/2016 at 18:23 point

I'm getting reliably 30Mbit/s of UDP traffic without losses. What's interesting is that the speed is exactly the same when using 4bit and 1bit SDIO mode. iwconfig is reporting 54Mb/s which is maximum that is reported as supported rate by "iw list". Getting 30Mbit/s of real bandwidth on a 54Mb/s wifi link seems great to me. Even my (quite old) Thinkpad x201 that sits in the same place as ESP866 is performing slightly worse than that (~27Mbit/s).

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ajlitt wrote 01/22/2016 at 21:03 point

Great!

I have one of my custom boards rigged for 1-bit SDIO.  I'll do an iperf run on that one since it has historically performed better than the ESP-03s.

On the Pi,  the SDIO actually clocks at 41.66MHz and not 50MHz in high speed mode, so end-to-end throughput of 3/4 of the throughput of the bus itself is pretty good.

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k wrote 01/22/2016 at 21:45 point

Also I just tested hostapd. It works but unfortunately I can get "only" 10Mbit/s in iperf. Unfortunately combined AP/STA interface seems not supported but this still gives a lot of possibilities. 

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David Lowe wrote 01/22/2016 at 21:51 point

My ESP-03 hairball only gives ~7Mib/s, I'm jealous ! https://twitter.com/gregeric/status/685139725309591552

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jacksonliam wrote 01/23/2016 at 13:04 point

My ESP-12F hanging off the pi on dupoint cables gives me 28Mbit/s (1 bit mode) copying a file from my NAS. That's next to a decent N router. I expect its the antenna/SI of these modules is crap compared to the board that @ajlitt built. 

Note that the ESP8266 only supports upto HT20, MCS7 (65Mbps / 72.2Mbps) anyway. https://nurdspace.nl/ESP8266#RF_specifications

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leon010203 wrote 01/10/2016 at 12:58 point

pi@raspberrypi:~/esp8089 $ sudo make install

mkdir -p -m 755 /lib/modules/4.1.15+-v7/misc
install -m 0644 esp8089.ko /lib/modules/4.1.15+-v7/misc
/sbin/depmod -a 4.1.15+-v7
depmod: WARNING: could not open /lib/modules/4.1.15+-v7/modules.order: No such file or directory
depmod: WARNING: could not open /lib/modules/4.1.15+-v7/modules.builtin: No such file or directory


What is the error?

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jacksonliam wrote 01/16/2016 at 15:03 point

I also now have these warnings on a clean SD card reimage.

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ajlitt wrote 01/17/2016 at 16:25 point

Does it work despite the warnings?  Does the running kernel match what rpi-source pulled down?  Is there anything at all in the modules directory it's complaining about?

I haven't gone through the entire process since the last time I updated this, but I'm turning my attention back to the software end next week so I'll keep an eye out.

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jacksonliam wrote 01/17/2016 at 16:59 point

@ajlitt I think it was the rpi-source kernel, building the latest kernel (to get bus_widh fix) didn't give me this warning.

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jacksonliam wrote 01/20/2016 at 21:45 point

OK I solved this. The module is not being installed properly. It's a bug with rpi-source https://github.com/notro/rpi-source/issues/17

You need to go into the linux directory that rpi-source downloads. 'make clean' and then edit the Makefile to remove the EXTRAVERSION. then make an .scmversion file with a '+'  in it. Then 'make modules_prepare' 

Then go back to the esp8089 driver and 'make clean' it and then make/install it again. 

You might want to remove the invalid /lib/modules/4.1.15+-v7 directory 

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ajlitt wrote 01/21/2016 at 16:02 point

Great!

I'll look into making a separate install target for RPi in the driver makefile to work around this.

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sundin.mikael wrote 01/03/2016 at 09:06 point

The instructions works great, tested on RPI A+ with a ESP-03.

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