This tutorial may not work on beaglebone black or the latest versions of Angstrom (kernel 3.8+) due to changes in the OS. We're working on a new/updated tutorial, but we don't have an ETA - we'll post it as soon as we can! Thank you for your patience.
Now that you have your Bone up and running, and Ethernet works, wouldn't it be nice to get rid of that Ethernet cable? Yeah, let's go WiFi! This tutorial is specifically for the verified WiFi adapter for Beagle Bone adapter in the Adafruit shop. It will not work with other WiFi adapters, as they all have different chipsets!
For this tutorial you will need:
Pick these parts up at the Adafruit shop!
Power and WiFi
The BeagleBone has the neat ability to power itself just through the mini USB port. However, this can cause some problems because the USB port cannot supply enough power for BOTH the Bone and a WiFi adapter.
An external power supply is required to use WiFi, due to the power requirements. Flaky behavior, crashes, etc will result if you do not plug in a 5V 2000mA adapter! If you're still having problems, try an external powered USB hub!
Driver Install
You'll need to have Internet connectivity using Ethernet , and also be logged into the terminal to install the WiFiadpater's driver, so make sure to complete those tutorials first!
While logged in with Internet working, run opkg update
Then run mkdir /home/root/tmp to make a new temp directory then run opkg -t /home/root/tmp upgrade
then type in opkg list 'linux-firmware-rt*' and hit return.
Finally type in opkg install linux-firmware-rtl8192cu and press return. Plug in the WiFi dongle, then type in reboot and return to reboot the machine.
Now that its rebooted, check dmesg - you should see the following
And if you type in ifconfig wlan0 there should be a link, it wont be connected yet so there's a lot of 0's and no inet addr
Now we can set up the connection manager to automatically manage the wifi. Edit /var/lib/connman/settings (I use vi but nano is also installed) and change WiFi from false to true, save it.
Create a file /var/lib/connman/wifi.config with your settings as shown below, starting with the [service_home] line and with a return after the Passphrase line, of course this should match your home network, not the adafruit one!
Restart connman to get it to accept the new settings:
root@beaglebone:~# systemctl restart connman.service
After less than 30 seconds or so, you should be connected:
root@beaglebone:~# ifconfig wlan0
There should now be an inet addr You can then test pinging an IP address and a domain name.
Finally, if you want more detailed information about your link you can opkg install wireless-tools to get the iwconfig command, which will give you tons of details.
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