A New WiFi Board Appears: Introducing the WildFire

Arduino Technology
A New WiFi Board Appears: Introducing the WildFire

WildFire-v2

Meet WildFire, an Arduino-compatible board for serious network and Internet-connected applications by our friends at Wicked Device, now available in the Maker Shed. Typically, connecting your Arduino to the internet requires at least one shield. Once assembled, the base network software often leaves little room for actual application code and many of the available Arduino I/O pins are used up. Thanks to WildFire’s onboard TI CC3000 Wi-Fi module, the increased memory size of the ATmega1284p processor and a MicroSD Card slot, you can create applications with larger data requirements and greater I/O needs. In addition, the free TI SmartConfig mobile app allows you or your users to configure WildFire networking wirelessly, without having to edit and upload new system code. How convenient!

Some example applications with this board include internet-connected sensor networks, data logging, and embedded web servers. Head over to the Shed product page for more information and the Wicked Device WildFire page for tutorials, quickstart instructions and more. We’re happy to be a part of this new push to make it easier to connect your projects to the internet, and are excited to see what you create with boards like the WildFire.

Here are the juicy board specs:

  • Wi-Fi with TI CC3000 chip with on-board ceramic antenna
  • 128K Flash (4x UNO)
  • 16K of SRAM (8x UNO)
  • 4K EEPROM (4x UNO)
  • MAC chip for proper network addressing (helps with multiple boards on a single network)
  • 2 Hardware UARTS
  • Micro SD card slot for applications such as data logging
  • 4 Additional Digital I/O pins and 2 Additional Analog Inputs over Arduino Uno
  • Accepts Arduino shields
  • Programmable via Arduino IDE
  • Network configuration via TI SmartConfig application (iOS/Android/PC)
  • The WildFire comes pre-installed with a RESTduino based web server sketch that allows you to read and write to the WildFire I/O pins from any browser on the same network as the WildFire.

Any ideas of what sort of internet-connected project you’d like to create with a board as capable as this? Please share it with us in the comment section below.

14 thoughts on “A New WiFi Board Appears: Introducing the WildFire

  1. Brett says:

    This looks amazing, really! If we could get it down to $59 it would be a lot easier to digest. Arduino YÚN is $89 and is really too expensive as well. I have just about all of the wifi products out there right now, and so far the Spark Core is the one I have money on to prevail as the defacto IoT board.

  2. beer4duke says:

    The interesting stuff for Wifi is the bandwidth that is higher than uart and the wirelessness of the thing.
    But pricing is an issue there: for far less you can get a raspberry pi, a wifi dongle and even an arduino board hooked to it if you want to use arduino ide, but you can get rid of it and use he pi’s pins. Or better a beagleboard black + wifi dongle.
    Those 2 solutions have far more to offer for slightly more that haff the price of wildfire…
    Really I do not see much why arduino has to ingest so much external stuff: the uno is perfect, leonardo is slightly more interesting for the USB part, but for more power/bandwidth, just forget about it.

  3. silaccialessandro says:

    Looks great ! But does we have to configure it with a Ad-Hoc network ?

    1. Brett says:

      The CC3000 Wifi module does not work in Ad-Hoc mode, but will connect to your home Wifi router or access point. You can use a SmartConfig app on your phone to input the Wifi password, or you may put the details directly into your sketch. More details here: http://wildfire.wickeddevice.com/#setup and also a ton of info at http://adafruit.com where the libraries came from that the WildFire uses. Just search for “wifi” and “cc3000”.

  4. Margaret says:

    This looks like just what I need for my base station of my hydroponics sensor nodes. BUT…I have been exploring the cc3000 + RFM12B board from JeeLabs (available at http://moderndevice.com/product/jeelabs-rfm12b-board-kit/). CHALLENGE: Troubling conflict on SPI. This is discussed in this forum thread: http://jeelabs.net/boards/6/topics/3078
    (scroll down to where it gets “interesting”. I am concerned I’d have the same problem. What do you think?

  5. bitknitting says:

    This looks like just what I need form my hydroponics base station. BUT I have been exploring cc3000 + RFM12B (available from http://moderndevice.com/product/jeelabs-rfm12b-board-kit/).

    The issue is SPI bus conflict – specifically cc3000’s handling of MISO. Snippets from this thread: http://jeelabs.net/boards/6/topics/3078

    “The RFM12B is nicely behaved, floating that pin when not selected. The CC3000 has a different approach – floating at reset time, then a permanent pull up to its Vcc after internal initialisation. ”

    “The cc3000 breakout board has shall we say a “glitch”. If I can read that fuzzy schematic properly, the SPI bus can’t be shared unmodified.
    Fixable? Yes, but this has to be done at the raw hardware level. The cleanest is probably to mod the PCB – exacto knife and delicate soldering time!”

    So now what? I can’t use other breakout boards with this because the cc3000 does not share the SPI bus? Or is this challenge not in the WildFire?

    1. bitknitting says:

      Wow – am I impressed. I sent a ? on a conflict I am having using the cc3000 + RFM12B on the same SPI Bus (I doc this here: http://bitknitting.wordpress.com/2013/12/02/debugging-the-spi-bus-when-components-wont-share/

      I emailed Wicked Device’s support and Vic immediately responded with a great answer.

      I think it should work because we buffer the CC3000 behind a 74HCT125. So as long as its chip select is not asserted the MISO line is effectively tristated regardless of the “natural” behavior of the CC3000.

      (note: the behavior of the cc3000 is to leave MISO high instead of floating. This goes to 5V which that RFM12B (config’d for 3.3V) can’t bring down….

      I wish I had understood what he was talking about at the time. That’s the reason I ended up writing how I end up gaining understanding.

      Thanks Vic!

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