Setting up a wireless USB dongle
From ComputingPlugs
This is courtesy of jmknapp, posted here with his permission.
I got 802.11g wireless up and running using a USB dongle, Trendnet TEW-424UB. These cost $23 or so from Amazon. I got one from MicroCenter for $20 that had a $10 mail-in rebate, so only $10 effectively. It relies on the rtl8187 chip.
I'm using the 2.6.30 rc3 kernel & the following kernel modules were required:
eeprom_93cx6 rtl8187
Then it's just a matter of setting up the interface in /etc/network/interfaces. In my case (for WEP) adding these lines:
auto wlan0 iface wlan0 inet dhcp wireless-essid <ESSID> wireless-key <hex key>
I tried a file transfer over ssh (scp) and got 1.5 MB/sec.
A kill-a-watt power meter (resolution 1 watt) shows the power consumption rises from 4W to 6W with the interface active. I think that's still within spec for the plug's power supply.
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May 18 2009 2:24 pm
Please keep comments clean and constructive. Inappropriate comments will be removed. Thank you.
Jun 16 2009 11:17 am
I am curious about turning the plug into an AP via USB dongle. Has anyone tried this yet and succeeded? I assume the only requirements for success are master mode support by the wireless chipset and properly configuring the device.
Jun 16 2009 8:00 pm
I would image all you need is a usb wireless adapter that supports infrastructure mode. The hard part would be to find a working driver for Linux. But that's not really a sheevaplug specific problem....
Aug 13 2009 4:24 pm
where do i type this
"eeprom_93cx6 rtl8187"
?Aug 14 2009 9:50 pm
the eeprom_93cx6 and rtl8187 are kernel modules that you need to compile. You might want to check out the compiling your own kernel page for help with compile a custom kernel for the sheevaplug.
Dec 16 2009 1:24 pm
A kill-a-watt is NOT a power meter. It is an amp meter which makes two assumptions in guestimating power: that your mains voltage conforms exactly to the national nominal voltage of where-ever you bought it, and that the power factor is 1, IE a perfectly resistive load. Not sure how much the peaky current draw of of a switchmode supply confuses it. Therefore the display is really approximate VA (volt-amps), not Watts. The (wireless) ones sold here (AU) also generate interference on the 70 cm Amateur band.
Dec 16 2009 3:53 pm
The kill-a-watt has a readout for both VA and Watts. Actually the kill-a-watt reads both the voltage and current, and I suspect it calculates the power that way. You should take a look at http://www.ladyada.net/make/tweetawatt/make.html. It has a break down of someone that zigbee'fied their kill-a-watt. And it clearly shows that you can read both the AC voltage and current.