Stuffing Serial Bluetooth Module Inside C1k Casing, share your success stories ... Options

[bam]

totally killer! I know what my next project is...as soon as he puts up the schematics...


wait 802.11b....wifi? wonder if there is room for that....after the microdrive-->cf upgrade.

[Antikx]

Man, you rule!

So say we all!

[speculatrix]

indeed, albertr, if you started converting 3100's, you'd have people queing up for them.

if you could offer both bluetooth AND wifi, you'd be fighting people off with a sharp stick!

one little thing though... does the USB wifi adaptor support WPA? the SL6000's wifi is usb prism thing and as far as I know there's no WPA support yet.

[albertr]

Prism3 usb chipset is supported by wlan-ng drivers only afaik, so no WPA support for it.

I do have another usb dongle that uses ZyDAS ZD1211 chipset, and its Linux driver while is alittle bit funky, has WPA/WPA2 support. But there's no OBSD driver exists.

The plan is to have both wi-fi and bt on my C1K in near future (C1K has plenty of free space inside the case). I'm tied up with other projects, but I hope to take a look at BTUART lines sometime soon.
-albertr

[Da_Blitz]

I am so happy now all i need is a small hub and to build a false bottom for my c3k!! wifi and bluetooth here i come.

now i can have the mini connector for client mode and and have a full sized connector at the back so i dont need a connector.

you are thinking too small, get a dlink with the athereos chipset and get 802.11g, even if you cant use the extra speed you should see a range improvment for 802.11g routers (better modulation scheme) and yes i am aware that you cant reach full 802.11 speeds but when did you ever reach the max with any wifi gear

[speculatrix]

I agree that we want 802.11g with WPA.

for work I got an Intel minipci 2915abg adaptor, and it suddenly occurred to me that if we had a minipci adaptor, perhaps thru a "sled", on the zaurus then things would get very interesting.

[Da_Blitz]

would be nice but wont work without a bridge chip they exsist but you dont want to know how much work it is and the garentee that your zarus will not work for awhile (this is why i keep a backup PDA, i use them so often that its handy to have a reserve)

dont suppose we could get a pic of where you soldered the lines so i can start modding?

[albertr]

I think there's a possibility that I have found the BTUART lines too.
For these who are waiting for pictures and schemantics - I'll post it this Sunday night. Not sure that I would have all pictures ready by that time, but I'll post what I have.
-albertr

[Da_Blitz]

Yeah sorry bout that, i tend to forget about time zones (im GMT +10 ie sydney)

the uart would be nice but i think it is secondary, IMHO haging everything off the usb bus is a better idea., however if you want to save space by leaving out the hub then its a great idea

cant wait to be the second pearson to do this

[albertr]

Take a look here:

http://www.iral.com/~albertr/linux/zaurus/wireless/

I didn't have time to post all pictures including BTUART, I hope to do it sometime next weekend.

-albertr

[Da_Blitz]

THat was very informative, espesially the part about the regulator catching fire , one thing i might mention because i am unsure if you nticed it but PORT 2 is MULTIPLEXED with the USB client port meaning you can have PORT 2 and client at the same time

not that i am worried about losing usb client if i gain wifi, however i just noticed that USB host ports would fit perfectly in the 2nd CF slot and it would be easy to have 2

as for yaur power calculations it would be the Voltage drop across the regulator * current accross the device so power in watts (P) = ((voltage to the chip) -5v) * 500ma or for those not comfterble with unit conversion in electronics P = (Vin - 5) * 0.5 i would assunme this chip is getting about 5v to 6v so at 6v it would be 0.5 watt

power disipation can be improved by lowering the voltage, cool ambeint temp, active cooling (fan or peltier) heatsink (mainly for disipating heat not moving it) if you look at my calacs above i would say the chip is getting 5v or 2 * battery voltage it depends if it is getting its power off the zarus,s 5v rail or has another arangment (like a voltage doubler)

atm i am wondering how hard it would be to repackage my zaurus and blend it with my targus keyboard and add VGA out, or mabey i should finish porting linux to the Dell x30 and use that instead. (it has a nice daughter board that has 802.11b on the CF bus and bluetooth connected to the BTUART)

BTUART support would be good as it has a larger buffer for comms

[bam]

I think this is enough to install my mini bt module(usb dongle ripped apart)

[Boris]

Take a look here:

Nice work Albert!

About your concerns about 3850 power dissipation: if it powered from 5V rails we can assume that it will be in 4.9 - 5.6V range. For input voltage below 5.17V power dissipation will be 0.5A * 0.17V = 85mW which will get the chip slightly warm.
At input of 5.6V it will be 0.5A * 0.6V = 300mW which isn't also very high. Unfortunately, datasheet doesn't specify case thermal resistance to ambient so I can only guess that the chip temperature will be within 60C which is well in range of working
temperature. In addition, this IC have thermal protection, so it should be safe to draw 500mA from it.

[bam]

Take a look here:

Nice work Albert!

About your concerns about 3850 power dissipation: if it powered from 5V rails we can assume that it will be in 4.9 - 5.6V range. For input voltage below 5.17V power dissipation will be 0.5A * 0.17V = 85mW which will get the chip slightly warm.
At input of 5.6V it will be 0.5A * 0.6V = 300mW which isn't also very high. Unfortunately, datasheet doesn't specify case thermal resistance to ambient so I can only guess that the chip temperature will be within 60C which is well in range of working
temperature. In addition, this IC have thermal protection, so it should be safe to draw 500mA from it.

you could always use thermal epoxy and a small chunk of aluminum...

[maslovsky]

I wonder if there is a wasy to have both client and host funcitonality...

Albert, if your driver is unloaded and internal USB host is powered down, can then Sharp's driver along with usb-monitor be loaded and used? In this case this could be some kind of a solution - a way to switch back and forth between using internal USB devices and external USB port.