Adafruit Pi Wifi

alastroct

Has anyone tried using one of these wifi extenders on an ASIAir Pro?

https://www.adafruit.com/product/1030

Thought I'd check here before buying one.

w7ay

alastroct Thought I'd check here before buying one.

I have a couple of EDIMAX USB WiFi adapters that work with Raspbian (and thus, with ASIAIR).

However, they are based on the ancient 802.11b/g/n standards. The 802.11ac ones don't work on ASIAIR. The EDIMAX ones that work on ASIAIR are only capable of 150 Mbps.

ASIAIR is nothing but programs that run on Rasbian. If something works with Raspberry Pi, it will work on ASIAIR unless ZWO has removed that function to save memory.

Email Ms. Fried (Ms. Adafruit :-) to see if she knows the speed of the unit that she rebrands. Check too if they work at subzero temperatures outdoors in winter. Most of the very low power consumer devices will flake out unless you heat them.

Amazon still sells the EDIMAX EW-7811Un, if 150 Mbps speed is good enough for you. And that one works on ASIAIR for sure. ASIAIR (Rasbian) switches to using it instead of the internal WiFi radio when you plug them in and reboot.

Chen

jrrjrr

w7ay

w7ay Amazon still sells the EDIMAX EW-7811Un, if 150 Mbps speed is good enough for you.

Chen,

That tiny USB plug dongle would really be an improvement over the WiFi that the AIR struggles with because of the metal enclosure? Seems a good enough so simple fix if it works.

Joel

alastroct

Thanks Chen, appreciate your thoughts on this. I went ahead and ordered one from Adafruit, will post here how it works out.

w7ay

jrrjrr Seems a good enough so simple fix if it works.

Hi Joel,

It works quite seamlessly in fact (Raspbian handles it all). Just plug it in, power up the Raspberry PI and ASIAIR boots up talking through the little radio. And you don'r need to spare a USB3 port for it either.

The speed is abysmal, though. It is advertised as an N150 device, but I didn't measure the actual throughput through ASIAIR's Samba server. At least the more expensive of the TP-Link is an N750 (capable of to to 430 Mbps through the 5 GHz WiFi band, but really half that speed as a half duplex repeater).

None of these are fast enough, so I have been using a dedicated eero mesh router that is directly connected to the ASIAIR. It is also much more seamless in my home network, which had already been eero based.

Chen

jrrjrr

150 is what I get “stock“, up close and when the spirits will it, so I‘d at least be gaining stability and range. And plug and go will get me outside a day earlier, with nothing to play with inside first.