TiWi-SL WiFi Slice Usage

[shawza]

Greetings,

I had a few questions about the WiFi slice (TiWi-SL). Has XMOS abandoned this slice? The xTimeComposer libraries section (IP download system) seems to no long have anything related to the wifi slice. It is entirely possible that I just simple am blind, in which case would someone tell me how to locate it?

It is available through the XMOS GitHub page, but even that has not received attention for 2 years and is not fully documented.

I am trying to setup two sliceKits (each with a WiFi slice) and have them relay messages to each other, but the lack of documentation is slowing me down and making this tricky (for me at least).

It seems that the wifi client offers methods for creating a connection, xtcp_connect.

Code: Select all

void xtcp_connect(chanend c_xtcp, wifi_ap_config_t &ap_config)

But this is different to the xtcp_connect of the lib_xtcp module.

Code: Select all

void xtcp_connect(chanend c_xtcp, int port_number, xtcp_ipaddr_t ipaddr, xtcp_protocol_t p)

The xtcp_connect in module_wifi_tiwisl's xtcp_client.xc is for connecting to a wireless network, not for connection to an IP address to send messages.

It appears there is no currently available way for a new connection to be established from the SliceKIT running the wifi slice. It can connect and listen for incoming connections with an issue though, and once that connection is up it can send data. But I can't find a way to initiate this from the wifi slice side.

Has anyone done anything with this?

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

[mon2]

Do you wish to communicate between the 2 wifi slice boards as peer-to-peer (without an access point) ?

If yes, best to review this thread (TiWi-SL is onboard the XMOS wifi slice):

https://www.lsr.com/forumtopic/1170/

Hello Carsten, The TiWi-SL module supports client mode only. It cannot act as an AP nor can it work in AdHoc mode. TiWi-R2, TiWi-BLE, or TiWi5 would be better suited for your application. Thanks, Ryan

Perhaps consider to use an esp8266 based wifi module (many from China Inc. and now apparently FCC Certified - so they say). Also source a low cost Arduino to reflash the board as needed. Then proceed to interface with the XMOS processor. Note, with this approach, you could streamline much of the XMOS code since the ESP8266 is all self contained and you only need to communicate with the module using the UART model (or perhaps other supported modes onboard the ESP8266). It has been a while since we reviewed the ESP8266 but check the net and the following code releases (many more available on the net):

https://blog.nabto.com/2016/03/05/esp82 ... ule-nabto/

Digikey seems to sell Adafruit stuff.

and

https://github.com/beckdac/ESP8266-transparent-bridge

We do recall trying this demo which worked fine:

http://www.xmos.com/download/private/GP ... 0.a%29.pdf

https://www.xmos.com/support/boards?product=15833

Hope this helps.

Kumar

[jacqui]

The user guide for the TiWi-SL Wi-Fi component can be download from https://www.xmos.com/published/tiwi-sl- ... ntation%29

There are also a couple of simple getting started examples which might be helpful:
GPIO Wi-Fi Demo Quick Start Guide https://www.xmos.com/published/gpio-wi- ... tart-guide
TiWi-SL Simple Webserver Demo Quickstart Guide https://www.xmos.com/published/tiwi-sl- ... tart-guide

[shawza]

Thank you both for your responses.

I have used the guides and the demo's and have build web server based tests where I use the Wifi slice. The issue I am having is that is seems happy to wait (listen) for an incoming connection, and then respond to that, but I can't find documentation or code that would enable me to use it as a client on a WIFI network, where the slice actually initiates the connection, rather than waiting for something to connect to it.