I'm keen to see if anyone can get a USB WiFi device to work on a USB-enabled router such as the [WL500GP WL-500G Premium].  Doing so means we can cheaply and easily add extra radios without having to worry about extra CAT5 runs or extra power supplies for multiple routers.

The main problem with USB-WiFi radios is they tend to be lower power - typically 13dBi, and they rarely have external antenna connections - still, they may be useful in some situations.

!! Railink Chip Dongles

Someone on the (http://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?id=9623 OpenWRT forums) has gotten a Ralink RT2570 USB WiFi dongle to work with OpenWRT Kamikaze after compiling it themselves...

If you download the current Kamikaze source, or a known good revision of the Kamikaze source, you sould be able to easily add support for the RT2570 to the kernel and compile the driver just by doing "make menuconfig" and selecting the RT2570 package.


(https://dev.openwrt.org/browser/trunk/package/rt2570/Makefile OpenWRT makefile for the rt2570 driver)


(http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=106846 How to use the rt2570 driver)


(http://www.vendorwatch.org/index.php?title=Ralink Lists of devices that use the rt2570 driver)

(http://ralink.rapla.net/ http://ralink.rapla.net/)

How to get the Asus WL-167G to work (using the RT2570 driver)
(http://folk.ntnu.no/gronslet/blog/2005/06/05/asus-wl-167g-usb-wireless-wlan-adapter-in-linux/ http://folk.ntnu.no/gronslet/blog/2005/06/05/asus-wl-167g-usb-wireless-wlan-adapter-in-linux/)
(http://staticice.com.au Staticice) shows the Asus WL-167G for $AU33 at msy.com.au

Link to the (http://www.dynalink.com.au/products/wlg25usb.htm Netcomm wlg25usb adapter) which has a non-removable external antenna (which might be easier to hack another antenna onto)
(http://staticice.com.au Staticice) lists these as AU$32.39 from Minidigital in WA.

!! ZyDAS chip dongles

The following device, FCC ID PANWL2203, is a USB dongle with an external RPSMA connector.  It is available from (http://au.wifi-link.com/product.php?action=product&class1_id=13&class2_id=409&class3_id=410&product_id=994 au.wifi-link.com) and is AU$47 for one.

Doing a google search I found a few devices with the model number WL2203 or similar that use a ZyDAS ZD1211 chipset.  There is an Open Source Linux (http://zd1211.ath.cx/ driver project) for it.

This driver seems to have been included into the OpenWRT Kamikaze snapshots for broadcom routers using a 2.6 Linux kernel:

(http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/brcm-2.6/packages/ OpenWRT Kamikaze brcm-2.6 packages)

Do a search for zd1211 on the above page to find the two packages you need to test it.

I would like to see a performance test for this dongle to see how good it's radio really is.

!! Other stuff

(http://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?id=9412 This is a funny USB-wireless solution which might actually be useful)
I.e. you could use the USB power from a WL-500GP to power a Meraki Mini, and connect the two routers with a crossover cable inside a weatherproof box.  Or it might be possible to power the Meraki with PoE and then pick 5V off the Meraki's board to power the WL-500GP.