Wifi shield for beginners?

Projects Networking, Protocols, and Devices
1

Can someone suggest a wi-fi shield that I can get which will be suitable for beginners?

Ideally it would be able to connect to a WPA2 network and have some decent libraries and examples for people to get started with.

Thanks!
John

2

check sparkfun - http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9954 - might be a good start,
if you're not familiar with network programming you better first try with the ethershield

3

See also:

and

arduinology.tumblr.com

Libraries and examples do not require 'network' programming.

(full disclosure:yes, I wrote the libraries, no I don't have any association with the product vendor).

4

Thanks! That's helpful.

Does anyone know the differences between the Wifly and this module, which from what I can tell, is a rehash of the now discontinuted WiShield?

http://www.cutedigi.com/product_info.php?cPath=284&products_id=4564

Thanks!

5

Black Widow from AsyncLabs. :wink:

6

AsyncLabs has gone out of business and the Black Widow is no longer available.

7

A ethernet to serial device will use a serial port to do the communication and you have to send it commands and data much like the old modems or current XBees. One that hooks into a bus (SPI) has an interface library that you use the routines from. Both can work well and much depends on how much you want to learn about the interaction. The WiShield worked pretty well and was interrupt driven with call back routines that allowed several interactions to happen simultaneously. However, the code was mostly on the arduino so it ate up the programming space pretty quickly. The only problem I see with the WiShield replacement board is that the library is no longer centrally supported and could cause problems down the line. The problem with all the wifi solutions though is cost. If you're going to need more than one eventually, it may be wise to look into some other solution or a bank that can be easily robbed. I'm currently switching my home monitoring network over to XBee devices because wifi is just too darn expensive.

However, I wouldn't trade my experience with the WiShield boards for anything. They were a blast to mess with; wandering around the house with an ethernet connected arduino in hand was fun.