Bought a TI CC3100MOD WiFi module ... now what?

Bought a TI CC3100MOD WiFi module ... now what?
Posted by homebrew on 26 Jan, 2018 10:55
Hi,

I recently bought TI's CC3100 WiFi module and designed a small board around it.
The advertisement of the module as well as the available data sheets looked fantastic:

"The CC3100MOD [...] dramatically simplifies the implementation of Internet connectivity. The CC3100MOD integrates all protocols for Wi-Fi and Internet, which greatly minimizes host MCU software requirements. [...]
The CC3100MOD module can connect to any 8-, 16-, or 32-bit MCU over the SPI or UART Interface." (Source: http://www.ti.com/product/cc3100mod)

However, looking into the SDK it seems to be far away from simple. I couldn't find ANY information on the serial protocol whatsoever - instead several MB of driver source code to be run in conjunction with FreeRTOS. There are some porting hints available but still it would require some sort of OS functionality such as memory management and the like.

But - I don't want/need ANY of that. I just need to connect to an access point using WPA2 and then send a single tcp package to a preconfigured IP address.

The TI forum doesn't give much comfort here either ...
https://e2e.ti.com/support/wireless_connectivity/simplelink_wifi_cc31xx_cc32xx/f/968/p/600136/2207924

So has anybody here experience with this module and could provide me a pointer how I should proceed?

To be honest - I totally underestimated this. In previous projects I just used some ESP8266 with AT-commands. Everything was VERY simple! Maybe I just got carried away with the marketing texts. But seriously; they market the stuff as general purpose IoT WiFi solution. So who the hell needs this amount of complexity? I presumed that openness and simplicity were the core values behind the whole IoT thing ...

#1 Reply
Posted by frozenfrogz on 26 Jan, 2018 11:17
I have some TI LaunchPads and CC3100 BoosterPacks siting on my shelf but did not come around to do something with these yet.
For the CC3100MOD there is a dev kit and some other software package you might want to look into: http://www.ti.com/product/CC3100MOD/toolssoftware

Scroll down to the bottom of the page.

I am using the ESP8266 12F modules a lot, since these have a quite powerful MCU and lots of memory built in for dirt cheap. I wanted to broaden my horizon and get further away from my Arduino tinkering and bought some ARMs and MSPs but could (would) not find the time to get started.

#2 Reply
Posted by homebrew on 26 Jan, 2018 12:15
Quote from: blueskull on 26 Jan, 2018 11:10
If you use STM32, consider this compiler with library: https://imagecraft.com/
Its BSD-style WiFi API is based on TI SimpleLink API over SPI.

Yes indeed I'm using an STM32 as the host cpu!

Hmmm, thanks for the suggestion but it looks like this is also a commercial solution. What I'm looking for is some open source alternative. I personally wouldn't hesitate buying something but it was the aim of the whole project to be open source / open hardware.
This SPI thing ist the next annoyance. In the TI data sheets the UART option for control and data is widely presented, yet almost all of the driver implementations use SPI ... I know it is faster and so on but as described I want to transmit single tcp packages from time to time. So speed is no concern whatsoever ...

#3 Reply
Posted by hcglitte on 04 May, 2018 20:03
I use it in one of my projects. You have to download the ti library and you can port it to "any" mcu.
You do not need to use an OS, there is documentation in the source code on how to skip using an OS.
Actually in my implementation I have an OS, but I use the CC3100MOD in one thread - so as far as the
library is concerned it's still as no OS is used.

I used the booster pcb kit as reference and then ported it over to my system.
It's not plug and play, but works good. Finally I also managed to upgrade it by SPI, so no need for the UART for this purpose.

Did you get it to work?