arduino wifi shield

Hi, i want to make a wifi project with my arduino uno, making my home wireless (light bulb, electronics, more) , i saw projects like LIFX which is a wireless led bulb that connect to your wifi in your house.
The problem is... wifi shields are expensive (50$+, and this is too big to enter a light bulb). I am wondering if there is a way to order parts seperately and create your own wifi arduino that connect to your router? Is there a tutorial for that? It will be expensive? It would be great to have small PCBs connecting to the wifi where you can put everywhere in your house for cheap. Thanks!

This is definitely not a beginner project.
If you really want to go this path, you should start with a regular wifi shield, make a working prototype, then optimize (it in terms of price and size).
PS One way to cut the price (save about $20) is to use make own arduino (instead of using the Uno).

Yes, thanks for reply, i did my own arduino board it cost like 6$ but i wanted a tutorial or some guidelines to build my own wifi shield which will be smaller, i found wifi modules for like 5-6 bucks but that doesnt tell me how to make a PCB with it and what other stuff are required to make it work with my arduino uno microcontroller.

Wifi is not cheap ! , but take a look to murata controllers, there is 2 version, basically those that work with TI chips MSP430xx and another one serial for all kind of mcu, as shown here.

http://www.murata-ws.com/datastore/media/wifi_sn8200_ds.pdf

Take a look at the JeeNode; they are cheaper than your typical Uno and already have a wireless radio attached. You could then connect one to an Arduino with Ethernet/WiFi to bridge the wireless connections.

Something to keep in mind about WiFi modules is that (usually) the cheaper they get, the less they handle, and the more they rely on what they're attached to in order to function.

i found wifi modules for like 5-6 bucks

Where?

Hi Guys,

I'm having a hard time finding an available wifi shield. I'm pricing a project that will need about 60 of them. Anyone know where I can get one or an arduino-compatible clone? If not, how about the components to build my own?

Thanks in advance.

EDIT:

Looking at the Murata SN8200. Anyone have an example of connecting this to an Arduino?

Thanks

This one is pretty nice and available. It shares a "feature" with several other WiFi shields - it's expensive :wink:

http://diysandbox.com/

That's about the going price for pre-assembled wifi these days.

Thanks for the link!