Adafruit WINC1500 WiFi Shield

hi,
I am interested in the Adafruit WINC1500 WiFi Shield with uFL Connector can you help with the following;

  1. Is it an alternative to other Arduino wifi shields?
  2. Can it work with an Arduino MEGA 2560 like the SD and wifi at the same time?

thanks for you time

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Hey,

Welcome to the forums!!

Yeah, most other WiFi shields use another microprocessor to handle the intermediary tasks.
The WINC1500 shield gives access to the chip to the microcontroller (MEGA2560 in this case) via SPI so will use a lot of memory keeping the library loaded.

The MEGA has the same flash but reduced RAM compared to the suggested M0 Metro
So should be able to hold the libraries well. You might have to be careful when calling for information as the MEGA has 4x less RAM and will easily fill up.

Liam.

thanks for the response,
would that be better than stacking an sd and wifi shield?

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Hi RDJ,

SD cards almost always interface with an Arduino via SPI, and this WiFi shield does the same, so stacking boards separately wouldn’t have any effect other than changing the form factor.

-James

that’s awesome to know

are there libraries that go with it and are simple to use?

Hi RDJ,

I found a library by Adafruit that features examples on how to use WiFi boards based on the ATWINC1500 (like the one you linked)

Good luck with your project!
-James

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awesome thanks for the support :+1:

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One last thing does it come with stackable headers?

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and is an Ariel needed?

Hi RDJ,

The board comes with standard-length male headers, as shown on the product page:

You can purchase stackable headers separately from Core if you wish

As far as antennas go, there are a few options, you just need to make sure that they have a uFL connector, and are tuned for 2.4GHz use:

Good luck with your projects! Remember to come back and show us the end results! :smiley:
-James

awesome, are the ariels simple to assemble?
and what range do they give?

I will sure show you the end results :+1: