How to use custom wifi drivers with Nerves?

Nerves Forum Nerves Questions / Help
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Hi, for my project I need patched version of wifi drivers.
I already have custom nerves system but I have never done custom drivers.
How would I go about this after I compile drivers?
I will also need this card to be unmanaged, how does that work with VintageNet do I just not include it in config?

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Hi!

When I added a driver, kernel-module, before, I made a buildroot package like following.

Related Buildroot document is Chapter 18. Adding new packages to Buildroot.

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Thanks,

I found a package that is very similar to the one I am trying to compile, so I think it won’t be that hard using it as starting point.

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That’s good! Well, can you mark your comment as a solution?

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@Damirados At a quick glance, the repo you link is a hard fork from fariouche/rtl8812au-unified which is a soft fork of aircrack-ng/rtl8812au. Buildroot’s has a package for aircrack-ng/rtl8812au and since svpcom’s repo is also merging in upstream changes from fariouche’s repo, I see two options for you:

  1. Generate a patch that captures the differences between svpcom and fariouche’s repo and add it to your patches/rtl8812au-aircrack-ng directory. This allows you to use the package available in upstream buildroot and also bring in all the code changes from svpcom in the form of a single or multiple patch files. More importantly, you don’t need to redefine a package. (This is the approach I would take long term)

NOTE: User defined packages can’t use existing names used by upstream packages.

  1. Define a custom package by copying package/rtl8812au-aircrack-ng. Rename it. Modify RTL8821AU_SITE to point to svpcom repo and fix any compilation issues that might come up. This might be the easier option of the two approaches because generating a patch file might require dealing with conflicts.

Buildroot also has an alternative driver you might want to look at: package/rtl8821au

Once you have buildroot compiling your driver, you will need to enable it in the linux defconfig via make linux-menuconfig or by editing the system’s linux defconfig file directly.

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@abelino Thanks for the tips.I will go with option 2 just like openipc buildroot config does it.

Option 1 is not really good choice here.
aircrack-ng/rtl8812au is on version v5.6.4.2 while svpcom is on version v5.2.20 with some relevant upstream changes backported to it.

I need this version because it allows card to be used as wifi broadcast/monitor device at maximum tx power which I need to make low latency video link with 5+km range. It’s not wifi at all it’s just using cards as off the shelf radio transmitters and receivers.

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Here is PR that add this package to my nerves_system

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Hi! The Nerves system name is interesting!! nerves_system_rpi0_2_drone

I think everyone would be happy if you could share the progress of your Nerves drone project and how it is working!!

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I am currently building companion computer system for autonomous drones that enables live streaming.

As test drone I am using 5 inch FPV drone with flight controller capable of running ardupilot.

I am basically implementing OpenHD using nerves and membrane. So video transmission, bidirectional Mavlink and data tunnel over wifibroadcast

Once that is done I plan to experiment with features like object detection and tracking


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Thank you for sharing!! That’s interesting!

I’d like to ask several questions, like ‘Is the drone controlled separately from the Nerves? I mean it’s enough speed for controll?’ But it would be better to create a separate chat.

If you have time to share the project, create a chat on NervesForum and you might get a lot of questions!!!

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I will create chat thread once there is some code to show. It is probably going to take few weeks.

But to quickly answer you questions.

Currently drone is controlled separately with ELRS radio but that is only for testing purposes and manual flying.

Autonomous scenario is different. Flight controller is running ardupilot, FC software that is capable of autonomous flying. Autonomous mission is a list of 3D positions (waypoints) along with some parameters(orientation, velocity
). Mission can be controlled using mavlink connection (can be achieved in many ways, I am using UART to connect FC and RPI). But companion computer needs to just do it’s stuff fast enough to deliver Ardupilot it’s next waypoint before one that it’s heading to currently is reached.

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