Tools
Tools that we commonly use in ECE 398 VIP, both mechanical and electrical.
USB-WiFi Adapters
USB-WiFi adapters are useful for adding WiFi capabilities to devices that do not have built-in WiFi, or for adding an additional wireless interface to a device.
The USB-WiFi adapters VIP keeps in stock are:
- TP-Link Archer T2U Nano
Drivers
For Windows, you should be able to just download the following drivers from the TP-Link website and the adapters will work.
For Linux, the drivers seem to be in the mainline kernel, but have not reached most Ubuntu distributions yet. For now, you will have to manually install them following the instructions on the GitHub listed below.
- Windows - tplink.com
- Linux - github.com/lwfinger/rtw88 - These should be in the kernel soon and not necessary (hopefully)
USB-to-UART Adapters
Not all microcontrollers (Picos, Arduinos, etc) have built-in USB-to-UART converters that allow you to communicate to the board over USB. In these cases, you can use a USB-to-UART to communicate with the embedded system.
Note that most single-board computers will have a serial port you can access by using one of these cables instead of using a keyboard/monitor or ssh.