Not immediately successful, the BBBW boots from the latest Bela image, although (not unexpectedly) the wifi doesn't work. Unfortunately the BBBW won't boot with the Bela cape attached.

Oh that's interesting. Have you tested booting with the Bela cape attached with both the pre-flashed eMMC image and with the Bela image?

Yes, neither boots with the cape attached. The eMMC image is 8.6 so I didn't expect that to work. The Bela image does have a version of the wl1835 drivers but they're not recognizing the hardware.

2 months later

Any updates on this? Using the BBBW seems to a much more effective option than just trying to append BT / WIFI capabilities. (My project will likely require BT down the road). I don't have a BBBW right now, so I can't experiment.

We have ordered one to test, we will report back.

2 months later

Good news:
booted Debian Stretch with 4.4.61 xenomai-r98 kernel on the BBB-wireless, also managed to get the wifi chip recognized and the drivers seems to be working. Not managed to get wifi connectivity yet, but I could not get it with a USB wifi chip either (because I don't understand wpa_supplicant).

And Bela is working great on this by the way.

Actually, got the built-in wifi to work. It does not seem to have detrimental effects on the analog inputs (which was the case for the beaglebone green wifi (because the wifi module there was conflicting with some pins from the Bela cape). It does - however - make the quality of the audio input a bit worse especially at high gain levels.

    giuliomoro It does - however - make the quality of the audio input a bit worse especially at high gain levels.
    Have you spent any time to figure out why/where the noise gets into the audio?

    Any chance the wifi module is chewing up the 3V3 with high-current pulses?

      a month later

      Would say that, at this point, it's safe to get a BBB wireless to use with the Bela? Thanks

      Hi Francisco,
      there is a testing image we have laying around that should work with the BBGW, including the WiFi module, but no analog I/O because those are sharing the SPI bus with the WiFi module, so there is really no way around it.
      I will try to get it out there some time soon.

        giuliomoro thanks,

        I was really asking if I should get the BeagleBone Black Wireless.

        Unfortunately, I've put the BBGreen Wireless aside for Bela projects, but that testing image would be great.

        Cheers,


          13 days later

          giuliomoro Hi Guilio, i'm trying to use a Bela cape with a BeagleBone Black Wireless too, is there a (test) image around somewhere that might work? I don't need to use the wifi.

            Done:
            here is the Bela/BoneBlackWireless dtb.
            if you flash the image linked above, you can then put this file on the board on the BELABOOT partition and edit the uEnv.txt file in there to tell it to use this file rather than the default Bela one.

            #dtb=am335x-bone-bela.dtb
dtb=am335x-boneblack-wireless.dtb

            Then you could download this package (drivers for the WiFi module) and install it with

            dpkg -i firmware-ti-connectivity_20161130-3_all.deb

            OR you could just wait till tomorrow, as I am rebuilding the image now (with all the above changes) and will upload it on github tomorrow.

            7 days later

            Hi Guilio, thanks for this new image! I'm having troubles getting it to work though. I'm not sure if its a problem with the particular BBBW board i'm using. Basically the USB interface usb0 seems to be down; it isn't showing up on my laptop (which can see the normal BBB + bela version fine).

            Using the UART serial headers (without the Bela cape) to debug, I can logon to the board, and run "ip a" which gives me this output
            ...
            2: usb0: <NO-CARRIER,BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state DOWN group default qlen 1000
            link/ether 6a:5a:59:be:a3:0a brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
            inet 192.168.7.2/24 brd 192.168.7.255 scope global usb0
            valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
            3: wlan0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 qdisc noop state DOWN group default qlen 1000
            link/ether de:ad:be:ef:00:00 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
            ...
            I presume the DOWN means inactive?

            With the default BeagleBone Debian 8.0 image the Wifi is working: the BBBW acts as an Access Point which I can connect to, and navigate to 192.168.8.1 for the default BeagleBone start page. But with the image you posted the the wlan0 does not seem to be active (and is not broadcasting an SSID). I assume that you have set it up as a client (rather than an access point), and I tried uncommenting the wlan0 example in /etc/network/interfaces but that resulted in receiving a lot of "unexpected IRQ trap at vector 38" errors (I tried both dhcp and static IP addresses, using an address on the local WIFI network).

            I'm not sure if part of the issue is because I don't have the Bela cape plugged in. That is mainly because the only way I am able to get debug output is from the UART serial header, which gets in the way of plugging the Bela cape on. Does the Bela expose these pins somwhere? Or, if I make a special attachment that can fit onto the UART pins without getting in the way of the Bela cape, will that work? or is the cape using those pins for something else?

              dr-offig . Basically the USB interface usb0 seems to be down; it isn't showing up on my laptop (which can see the normal BBB + bela version fine).

              What operating system are you on? We expected problems with Windows, though the few machines we tested on worked fine. If that is on MacOS, then I guess it helps to do sudo kextunload /Library/Extensions/HoRNDIS.kext/; sudo kextload /Library/Extensions/HoRNDIS.kext/.
              Perhaps @LiamDonovan has some more thoughts on this.

              dr-offig I'm not sure if part of the issue is because I don't have the Bela cape plugged in.

              That should have no effect on the connection.

              dr-offig But with the image you posted the the wlan0 does not seem to be active (and is not broadcasting an SSID)

              This is expected: I did not put any effort in turning that into an access point, I only made sure that the interface works. Not sure how they do it in the original image, perhaps you can find out and reuse the method on this one.