ECE497 Beagle Bone WiFi

This wiki is for anyone trying to use a WiFi adapter on the Beagle Bone. It is originally created by Michael Junge, EE senior at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, class of 2012. As new information is discovered please feel free to edit this wiki.

Required Hardware
You will need a WiFi adapter from Adafruit. (I had to buy mine, however as the class expands Dr. Yoder pay potentially have a few to hand out for experimentation.)

You will also need the A6 hardware version of the BeagleBone. This does not work with the A5 version. (again at a later date this may not be an issue)

You will finally need the A5 software version of Angstrom found from EBC Exercise 03 Installing a Beagle OS. Again make sure it is the A5 software, this does not work with the A6 Rev.

Finally you will need a 5V BeagleBone power supply. The power supply that comes with the Beagle XM Board is suffient as well.

Required Package Updates
When installing packages do not have the WiFi adapter plugged in.

beagle$ opkg update beagle$ opkg install linux-firmware-rtl8192cu bealge$ opkg install wireless-tools

Procedure for running WiFi
You must follow this procedure for enabling the WiFi.

1) Plug in the WiFi adapter (do not plug in an Ethernet cable, it may not work properly)

2) Plug in the usb and connect the BeagleBone to your laptop.

3) Plug in the power adapter for the BeagleBone

4) Connect to the BeagleBone either through screen command or the LAN set up by the usb (for connecting through screen or LAN refer to: EBC Exercise 02 Out-of-the-Box, Bone)

5) Run these lines of code:

beagle$ ifconfig wlan0                to see what wlan0 currently displays beagle$ iwconfig wlan0                to see if wlan0 is configured properly beagle$ iwconfig wlan0 essid x        x-your own personal ID beagle$ iwconfig wlan0 password y      y- your own personal password beagle$ iwconfig wlan0                to check if your essid and password are correct beagle$ ifconfig wlan0 up             to enable wlan0 beagle$ ifconfig wlan0 xxx.xxx.x.x    set to your own private network, usually 192.168.1,x beagle$ ping xxx.xxx.x.1              to check if your wireless is working correctly beagle$ ping google.com               to check DNS and Ethernet, because of campus security I have not been able to access DNS

Here is my personal screenshot of being connected to my wireless router as noted by wlan0 instead of eth0. The BeagleBone code is in the white box. My laptop is in red. This screenshot shows WiFi works, however it can be a pain to set up.

Closing Remarks
I have not been able to figure out how to connect to the campus network. I know it has to deal with wpa supplicant. However at this time, I have not done enough research into wpa supplicant to connect successfully.