Arudino Wifi Redback

INTRODUCTION

Adding wireless control/features to space constrained projects is usually a hard nut to crack. However, the WiFi Redback changes everything. Also known as the YellowJacket, the WiFi redback is an arduino compatible board that is based on the Arduino nano architecture. This enables it to fit in small spaces

BASIC LAYOUT

back

front

The Wifi redback is a two-sided surface mount board. On one side it has the Wireless module and on the other it has the arduino nano. There are several important parts of the redback that you should know.

• reset button — for resetting the board
• I/O LED — a green LED that lights up to indicate digital input and output on wifi module
• WiFi LED — a green LED that lights up to indicate that the wifi module is connected to a router or hotspot
• Power LED — a red LED that lights up when the board is powered up
• WiFi module — gives the board wireless capabilities

Just like the nano, the yellowjacket has no Serial/USB port. So, to program it, one needs has to connect it to a USB breakout board. The recommended USB breakout board is the FT232RL USB breakout board.

The reason why you should use the FT232RL breakout is because it has a DTR pin. The DTR pin is connected to the reset pin of the mega 328P microprocessor and is used by the arduino IDE to reset the redback every time code is uploaded to it.

For more information on the arduino wifi redback layout, you can check out the board schematics here.

FEATURES

• 12digital I/O pins
• 6 analog pins
• Atmel Mega 328P microprocessor
• Wireless Module (supports WEP,WPA,WPA2 secured networks)

For more features, go to this link: product wiki

GETTING STARTED

SETTING UP THE REDBACK

Mount the arduino wifi redback onto the FT232RL breakout board. Ensure you match the pins correctly. They are labeled DTR;TXO;RXI;VCC;GND on the reback and DTR; RXI; TXO; 3V3; CTS; GND on the FT232RL breakout. The DTR pin of the reback should go to DTR on the USB breakout board. Once you match those two, the rest of the pins will match.

Redback—USB breakout

DTR——–>DTR

TXO——–>RXI

RXI——→TXO

VCC——–>3V3

GND——–>CTS

GND——->GND

LIBRARY

Download the linksprite wireless library from here. It is a compressed file named ZG2100BasedWiFiShield-master.

Extract the contents of the library and rename the extracted folder from ZG2100BasedWiFiShield-masterto CuHead as shown in this link. After doing that, copy the folder named CuHead to the Arduino ‘libraries’ folder and then open the arduino IDE. Connect the redback to your computer via the FT232RL USB breakout board and upload some of the example codes that are available in the CuHead library and watch them run.

I am going to look at the simple web server example for the arduino wifi redback on my next post.

Article sourced from www.arduino-hacks.com