Electronic – Adding WiFi to OSLess embedded device

embeddedvideowifi

I'm looking for some advice as to the best way to achieve wireless
video streaming from an OSLess embedded system we are building.

I have never done any work with WiFi before so all the help I can get would
be appreciated.

Since we are looking to stream video we will need a high throughput connection
on both the WiFi and interface ends of the device (we are looking for an add on
module type solution). I have been researching on the web for a week or so now
and haven't really had much luck.

our system is based on a Freescale i.mx 233 processor (USB and SDIO interfaces)

The possible solutions we have come up with would be:

  1. an SDIO Wifi N module (as SDIO seems to be the only interface fast enough (excluding USB), am I correct?)
  2. a USB stack with WiFi over USB class drivers allowing the use of a WiFi dongle.
  3. using a minimal RTOS that has support for WiFi over USB dongles

    • Whiznet provides SDIO modules that suit our need
    • Jungo USBWare has an OSLess WiFi over USB stack and class driver
    • Freescale provides the MQX RTOS that has an optional USB stack with the CDC USB class driver (as well as a few other minimal RTOS that provide this kind of support)

Whiznet has been very slow getting back to me with information (I don't even know there prices yet and they don't seem to sell through distributors which makes me think I won't have much luck with them)

I haven't even heard back from Jungo and I would rather stay away from USB if possible as it seems like an unnecessary complication.

I would like to avoid an RTOS as much as possible as we're doing some image processing and I would like to be in control of as much of the overhead as possible, though if there are no other solutions we will probably go down this path.

Does anyone have any experience doing a similar thing?
What do you think, what's my best option and have I missed any?

It feels a lot harder than it seems it should be.

edit

We are looking at streaming video with an absolute minimum resolution and frame-rate of 320×480 @ 15FPS

Best Answer

TI sells the CC3000 that is very much RTOSless. The stack and everything is on the chip/module, and you just need a driver that's about 6k of code, 3k of RAM (sometimes even less if you're willing to sacrifice throughput).

Last I saw, the Evaluation board which is just CC3000 (or booster pack for launch pad) was going for around $30.