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I'm still bothered by Raspberry Pi's choice not to include WIFI by default in all/some of its products. Almost every Raspberry Pi project I have encountered ne

by Raed667 11y ago

I'm still bothered by Raspberry Pi's choice not to include WIFI by default in all/some of its products. Almost every Raspberry Pi project I have encountered needs some sort of connectivity and doing this with 3rd party dongles (some don't even work on most recent versions of Raspbian) is just ridiculous in my opinion.

pjc50 11y ago
That raises the CE certification costs considerably.
- Raed667 11y ago
  but if they make like a B2 model + WIFI and just add 10$ to the unit price. That would cover it.
  - VLM 11y ago
    Highly unlikely. For a market as immense as the USA that is way too high. For small markets it'll never pay the labor and local-FCC-equivalent certification costs. There would be tradeoffs and other problems; some countries are very locked down and unamused at the idea of someone telling their wifi they are in Japan despite being somewhere else thus enabling unusual power and freq limitations. Small countries and markets would be discriminated against, likely never getting a pi legally shipped to them, an intentionally avoiding serving poor people is kind of counter to most of the politics and rhetoric of the group. There is a compromise of putting a port on the thing where a locally puchased wifi dongle could be installed. The port would have to provide power and be fast enough to be wifi usable. It would be really nice if that port were popular. The Pi People seem to like community building and a USA distributor could bundle a USA FCC certified wifi adapter with every board, just plug it in. That port is called the USB port. So the solution to various implementation problems devolves into the current situation.
    - Raed667 11y ago
      This seems now like a first world problem, a nice guide to find would be like "Cheap Wifi dongles that work on raspbian".
lsaferite 11y ago
Why does it need embedded WiFi when you can get micro sized USB WiFi dongles? The engineering and certification will surely raise the overall cost quite a bit. Let the companies that make WiFi equipment shoulder that cost. Sure, maybe you can bundle a low cost WiFi dongle if you like.
- macavity23 11y ago
  There's also power... a wifi module will probably double the power draw on this thing. Lots of projects don't need it.

by Raed667 11y ago

pjc50 11y ago

That raises the CE certification costs considerably.

Raed667 11y ago
but if they make like a B2 model + WIFI and just add 10$ to the unit price. That would cover it.
- VLM 11y ago
  Highly unlikely. For a market as immense as the USA that is way too high. For small markets it'll never pay the labor and local-FCC-equivalent certification costs. There would be tradeoffs and other problems; some countries are very locked down and unamused at the idea of someone telling their wifi they are in Japan despite being somewhere else thus enabling unusual power and freq limitations. Small countries and markets would be discriminated against, likely never getting a pi legally shipped to them, an intentionally avoiding serving poor people is kind of counter to most of the politics and rhetoric of the group. There is a compromise of putting a port on the thing where a locally puchased wifi dongle could be installed. The port would have to provide power and be fast enough to be wifi usable. It would be really nice if that port were popular. The Pi People seem to like community building and a USA distributor could bundle a USA FCC certified wifi adapter with every board, just plug it in. That port is called the USB port. So the solution to various implementation problems devolves into the current situation.
  - Raed667 11y ago
    This seems now like a first world problem, a nice guide to find would be like "Cheap Wifi dongles that work on raspbian".

lsaferite 11y ago

Why does it need embedded WiFi when you can get micro sized USB WiFi dongles? The engineering and certification will surely raise the overall cost quite a bit. Let the companies that make WiFi equipment shoulder that cost. Sure, maybe you can bundle a low cost WiFi dongle if you like.

macavity23 11y ago
There's also power... a wifi module will probably double the power draw on this thing. Lots of projects don't need it.