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Connecting Wifi Dongle directly to Jevois

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Hi,

I was wondering if is possible to directly connect a wifi-usb dongle to the jevois e.g. with a y-cable and to communicate within a wifi-network?

Thank you.
asked Apr 17, 2018 in Programmer Questions by phildue (420 points)

1 Answer

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Best answer
Not out of the box, this would require some hacking of the linux kernel that runs on JeVois. By default, JeVois is configured as a USB device. The USB port hardware is actually a dual-role port which could be configured as host, and then it would connect to your WIFI dongle device. The switching from host to device (OTG mode) was so buggy in the Allwinner USB drivers that we ended up configuring the kernel as device-only.

I am not sure what USB cable you would use, though. You would need USB-A to a power source, then mini-B to JeVois, then female type-A (like an OTG cable) to your USB WIFI dongle. My gut feeling is that USB specs are going to prevent this kind of combo to be assembled from standard cables, because you could then potentially end up with JeVois as host and the power source type-A as another host, hence conflict. So you would likely need a hacked cable that can power JeVois and also provide a link from the JeVois mini-B to a female type-A at the same time.
answered Apr 17, 2018 by JeVois (46,580 points)
selected Nov 13, 2018 by phildue
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