Recommendation for an internal WLAN+Bluetooth USB stick

Everything relating to hacking, expanding and modifying the Joggler hardware.
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tomaszd
Posts: 11
Joined: Sat Nov 12, 2011 6:41 pm

Recommendation for an internal WLAN+Bluetooth USB stick

Post by tomaszd »

I use one of my Jogglers as an A2DP Bluetooth receiver for my phone and a bedside clock. The initial hardware configuration was crappy: remove the internal WLAN stick, add a Xubuntu 12.10 USB stick inside (super small A-DATA MicroSD reader), add a Bluetooth adapter in the external port. The clear disadvantage is I had to put the WLAN stick in every boot for syncing the time with the Ubuntu NTP servers... I also like to tinker with it using SSH, so no connectivity was really annoying.

I had to find a nicely integrated solution for having a Bluetooth adapter in the Joggler, without soldering in another USB port (don't ask...). The idea was to find a Bluetooth+WLAN USB stick that fits the internal USB port and put the small MicroSD reader in the external USB port.

I found a BW1518 WLAN+Bluetooth stick on EBay. Here's how it looks like: http://dx.com/p/2-in-1-bluetooth-v3-0-r ... ite-149168 . It gets detected as a 4-port USB hub with a Bluetooth device, a WLAN card, a keyboard and a mouse (...?).

Code: Select all

Bus 001 Device 003: ID 1a40:0101 Terminus Technology Inc. 4-Port HUB
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 148f:5370 Ralink Technology, Corp. RT5370 Wireless Adapter
Bus 001 Device 006: ID 0a5c:4500 Broadcom Corp. BCM2046B1 USB 2.0 Hub (part of BCM2046 Bluetooth)
Bus 001 Device 007: ID 0a5c:4502 Broadcom Corp. Keyboard (Boot Interface Subclass)
Bus 001 Device 008: ID 0a5c:4503 Broadcom Corp. Mouse (Boot Interface Subclass)
Bus 001 Device 009: ID 0a5c:2146 Broadcom Corp.
Well, shipping from China took almost a full month, but it was worth it. The stick fits perfectly inside the Joggler, even without taking off the plastic chassis (which is not glued together and can be taken apart very easily, but there's really no need).

Bluetooth works out of the box, but I had to compile the WLAN driver using an older version of the source package (2.5.0.3 - instructions and download available http://harkko.lattu.biz/notes/rt5370_ubuntu.html ), so that works fine as well.

I'm very happy with this elegant solution, recommended.
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pete
Posts: 2950
Joined: Mon Aug 01, 2011 6:33 am
Location: Time Traveler

Re: Recommendation for an internal WLAN+Bluetooth USB stick

Post by pete »

Very nice tomaszd!

Here also looking for a small footprint combo USB wireless card.

Concurrently also playing with small footprint wireless antennas on a similiar but different endeavor.
- Pete
O2 Jogglers running EFI Ubuntu / Squeezeplayer
OpenPeak Voip Telephony / Zigbee tabletops hardware modded with Seabios / RTC / Ethernet ROM edits / SSD drives running XPe for automation screens

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