Arduino’s Long-Awaited Improved WiFi Shield

October 1, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 45 Comments

Announced at the 2014 Maker Faire in New York, the latest Arduino WiFi shield is finally available. This shield replaces the old Arduino WiFi shield, while providing a few neat features that will come in very handy for the yet-to-be-developed Internet of Things.

While the WiFi Shield 101 was announced a year ago, the feature set was interesting. The new WiFi shield supports 802.11n, and thanks to a few of Atmel’s crypto chip offerings, this shield is the first official Arduino offering to support SSL.

The new Arduino WiFi Shield 101 features an Atmel ATWINC1500 module for 802.11 b/g/n WiFi connectivity. This module, like a dozen or so other WiFi modules, handles the heavy lifting of the WiFi protocol, including TCP and UDP protocols, leaving the rest of the Arduino free to do the actual work. While the addition of 802.11n will be increasingly appreciated as these networks become more commonplace, the speed offered by ~n isn’t really applicable; you’re not going to be pushing bits out of an Arduino at 300 Mbps.

Also included on the WiFi shield is an ATECC508A CryptoAuthentication chip. This is perhaps the most interesting improvement over the old Arduino WiFi shield, and allows for greater security for the upcoming Internet of Things. WiFi modules already in the space have their own support for SSL, including TI’s CC3200 series of modules, Particle‘s Internet of Things modules, and some support for the ESP8266.

A Different Type Of Arduino Internet Shield

July 12, 2013 by Mike Szczys 25 Comments

different-arduino-internet-shield

The cost of an Ethernet shield for an Arduino isn’t horrible; generally between $17 and $32 depending on which one you buy. But have you seen the cost of a WiFi shield? Those are running North of $70! [Martin Melchior] has a solution that provides your choice of Ethernet or WiFi at a low-cost and it’ll work for most applications. He’s using a WiFi router as an Arduino Internet shield.

This is the TP-Link WR703N which has been very popular with hackers because of its combination of low price (easy to find at $25 or less) and many features: the USB is super hand and, well, it’s a WiFi router! The Arduino Pro Mini shown dead-bug style is talking to the router using its serial port. [Martin] wires a pin socket to the router, which makes the rest of assembly as easy as plugging the two together. The rest of his post deals with handling bi-directional communications with Arduino code.

If you really just need that direct Ethernet pipe consider building an ENC28J60 chip into your designs.

Scrolling Tweets With A WiFi LED Matrix

September 17, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 4 Comments

For his most ambitious build to date, [Param] thought it would be a cool idea to have a LED matrix display spitting tweets out via a WiFi connection. The build is now done, and we’ve got to hand it to him for a very nice build.

The build is based on an Arduino with a Sparkfun WiFi shield providing the network connection. The Arduino pings a Javascript app that pulls down tweets from The Verge and displays them on an 8×8 LED matrix display.

What makes [Param]’s build so cool is its portable nature; the entire device is completely wireless, getting its power from a Sparkfun LiPower shield and an apparently extremely capacious LiPoly battery.

With a rat’s nest of wires hanging out the back of the LED display, [Param]’s build is crying out for a proper enclosure, but even given that it remains a quality project. You can see a video of the WiFi’d Twitter display after the break.

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