Category: BeagleBone Black

I initially bought an Edimax EW-7811Un Dongle for use with my BeagleBone Black (BBB), but after a lof of fiddling and frustration I gave up on it. Turns out that I may have been using the wrong setting in the interfaces file, but after some research I found many instances of people complaining about the Edimax dongles in general, so I started looking for solutions that others were having good luck with.

Along with a lot of email threads I found WiFi Adapter http://www.elinux.org/Beagleboard:BeagleBoneBlack#WIFI_Adapters recommendations on the Embedded Linux Wiki BBB page. http://www.elinux.org/Beagleboard:BeagleBoneBlack After searching Amazon for the listed adapters I chose the NETGEAR N150 Wi-Fi USB Adapter (WNA1100) http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0036R9XRU/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 for $17.50, not the cheapest of the bunch but it comes with a "Desktop Dock" that is basically an USB extension cable which sounds good to me as it will let me place the adapter a distance away from the BBB to get the best WiFi signal.

With the latest build of Debian I was able to get the WNA1100 adapter to work just by editing the interfaces file and rebooting the BeagleBone. Pretty awesome!

Steps

1. Plugged the BBB into the computer with a USB cable and plugged in a power supply.
2. Logged into the BBB with the root account with my “fish” "ssh [email protected]"
3. # sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces and edited the "WiFi Example" to match my network ID and password

This is what the finished WiFi part of the file looks like:

# WiFi Example
auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
     wpa-ssid "ssid"
     wpa-psk  "password"

And BANG! it worked. I am now enjoying WiFi with my BeagleBone Black!