Feeling interest for a WiFi shield

Forum 2005-2010 (read only) Hardware Interfacing
13

Sorry I haven't been on the thread in a while. It was a busy weekend! :slight_smile: Thanks for all the great input. Here are some thoughts I have on what my solution will have:

  • definitely support for wep and wpa encryption, so it should work seamlessly on all existing networks
  • we will definitely have some type of ethernet interface. We are putting some more thought into making the interface as easy as possible.
  • hard reset via a push button will be on the shield. This will reset both the arduino and the wifi shield. Alternatively there will be a method exposed that will do a shield reset from code.
  • we have a couple of power savings techniques in mind. We can probably support low power polling and a form of standby/disconnect for times you want to maximize battery longevity.
  • price will definitely be closer to $50 than $100. I'm trying my hardest to work my suppliers down, and hope that we'll be at the very bottom of the $50-$100 range. :slight_smile:
  • definitely will be a true shield, with the same form factor (even the fancy cuts on the side opposite the USB port). Our shield will only cover the pin portion of the arduino.
  • for now, it'll be b only. I don't have the power to change that. From a compatibility standpoint, I can see the concern of having to mix b and g together on the network. However, from a pure data standpoint, most applications of our shield won't come near the maximum throughput of even b, so there shouldn't be any concern regarding performance.

This is a rough idea of what is coming down the pipe.

Note that this is not final and is actually our engineering prototype. Things will be slightly different on our first production board. We are hoping to make a small run of these boards, get them out to people, get good feedback, and make the next revision of the board even better.

I hope to have a video up in a few days showing a demo of at least a simple web page being served that can trigger some leds to turn on and off. We have some other interesting demos we are working on as well, so you can stay tuned for that. :sunglasses:

Thanks for all the help and feedback!

AsyncLabs