This page documents various hardware experiments started 5th of July 2016. Using new types of hardware as home nodes and external antennas and wifi usb sticks.
Omega2 single board computer
- Actually $5 including tax and shipping
- Single 2.4 GHz radio with on-board antenna and u.fl connector
- Has USB and ethernet but no ethernet transformer or plug.
- Power usage: Unknown but probably small.
- Runs OpenWRT
- You can order as many as you want now
- Doesn't ship until November (estimated)
Raspberry PI zero
- Not actually $5 since they can't keep up with demand (more like $15 on ebay)
- No wifi, no ethernet.
- A three-port USB hub with built-in ethernet and micro-usb cable is ~$3 on aliexpress
- Single micro-usb port. You can get $3
- Power usage: Unknown but probably small.
- Runs Debian (well "raspbian")
The Next Thing Co. C.H.I.P. single board "$9 computer"
- Power usage: Unknown but probably small.
- Actually costs $12 in CA with tax and shipping if you order the maximum of 5 units at a time
- Single 2.4 GHz wifi with no external antenna plug (not even u.fl)
- Single USB port
- Runs Debian
Nexx WT3020F - Very cheap home node ($12.50)
- Cheap: $12.50 shipped
- Power usage: Only 1 watt!
- Single band 2.4 GHz
- Two PCB trace antennas. No plugs, not even internal.
- Two ethernet interfaces
- One USB plug for host mode USB
- Tiny physical form factor
- USB powered (comes with usb cable but no power adaptor)
- Not AR71xx (ramips mt7620)
Juul (talk) loaded OpenWRT onto one of these and started a compile of sudowrt for this chipset. OpenWRT seems to work fine.
The firmware was flashed via the existing web UI which is available on 192.168.8.1 with user/pass admin/admin.
RT5572N - Dual-band single radio USB wifi adapter ($6)
- Two PCB trace radios
- Two u.fl connectors
- Does either 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz
Juul (talk) tested this on a Nexx WT3020F and it seems to work quite well. Here's how to install the driver:
opkg update opkg install kmod-rt2800-lib kmod-rt2800-usb kmod-rt2x00-lib kmod-rt2x00-usb
Seems to support an arbitrary number of ad-hoc/client/master mode wifi interfaces (tested up to 8).