Receiver Wireless card ?

[coupesport]

Hi,

If the Receiver is set in Ethernet mode, is this card powered off ?.

I don't use wireless on mine and can see the card as just another device putting noise onto the internal powerlines.

Is it possible to remove the card (and antennas) - i know the SB3 could be bought without the wireless card. Would the receiver still function ok (apart from the wireless function !) with the card removed.

Thanks in advance

rgds

James

[mikeselectricstuff]

I've not tried running it without the wireless card, but it is quite difficult to remove due to the sticky rubber pads underneath, attatching it to the main PCB - you need to use a sharp knife to carefully cut these before you can lift he module out of the mini-PCI SIMM socket.

You can see the 4 black pads here : http://www.electricstuff.co.uk/sbduet.html

The list of error codes suggests it will not be happy without the wireless card :

Hard error codes:
Number of blinks Meaning
1 blink MAC address missing/bad (checked second upon boot-up)
2 blinks Wireless card missing/bad (checked first upon boot-up)

[coupesport]

Thanks Mike - i had a look at the internals in your other thread which was very useful. I'll see if Slimdevices come back with anything but perhaps i'll leave it. Just very tempting to get rid as i'm not using it.

Cheers

James

[coupesport]

Could anyone from Slimdevices comment ? - will it just register an error that no wireless card is present and then move on or will the receiver just not work ?

Thanks

James

[mikeselectricstuff]

Just tried running without the card - seems to sit doing flashy purple indefinitely. Can ping it but no joy trying to control it via wired Squeezecenter web interface. Couldn't try via controller as I don't have a wireless router.

[coupesport]

Many thanks Mike for doing that :-)

That's answered that one.

Cheers

James

[seanadams]

the wireless card is totally deactivated if you're using ethernet. There is no need to remove it.

[mikeselectricstuff]

Out of curiosity, how does it decide that wireless is not needed?
e.g. on my setup I use wired ethernet to the server but wireless via the receiver for the remote. How does it know that a controller isn't about to appear wanting a wireless connection, or is that decided as part of the setup/config process?

[seanadams]

Out of curiosity, how does it decide that wireless is not needed?
e.g. on my setup I use wired ethernet to the server but wireless via the receiver for the remote. How does it know that a controller isn't about to appear wanting a wireless connection, or is that decided as part of the setup/config process?

The wireless is active during setup - it creates a temporary ad-hoc network to which the SBC can connect in order to send it configuration info. Then if you configure the SBR to connect via ethernet, it will shut of the wireless (it actually does a quick reboot here) and proceed to the "connected" state. From that point on all communications for the SBR are strictly between it and the server.

[coupesport]

Thanks Sean - i did wonder if it was completely powered down.

Cheers

James