Raspberry Pi Pico W as USB Wi-Fi Adapter

> Average 4.75 Mbits/sec throughput

Isn't that slow for WiFi?

I mean it's an interesting learning experience, but isn't that strictly worse than pretty much any WiFi dongle?

Interesting that Gemini said it was infeasible. It should be aware that using a Pico W as a transparent ethernet bridge has been done several times over in open source projects, for example on BlueSCSI (emulating a Daynaport SCSI-Ethernet adapter) and PicoMEM and my own PicoGUS project (emulating an NE2000 Ethernet adapter).

pico-usb-wifi is firmware for the Raspberry Pi Pico W that turns it into a driverless USB Wi-Fi adapter, enumerating as a USB CDC-NCM device.

Can you have the Pico operate as an access point? Would love to be able to use this to connect over wifi to a printer (printer in client mode), with the printer and macos talking directly over IP without needing to configure any other routing/forwarding on macos.

How many Mbps?

one million Claude Tokens (assuming you are on opus) = 5 USD = the very dongle you tried to replace. Add the cost of the rasberry pico, you'll have an easier time buying the wifi dongle. The project is cool thought to learn about networks, NAT, Proxys, ect...

Oooooh, now I'm thinking... you could design a simple circuitboard that holds multiple picos (surface mounted) and uses the USB data pads on the back to pull all the USB ports out to an onboard USB hub basically allowing you to add a multitude of wifi adapters to a project in one USB cable. Would be great for War Driving!

AI Slop.

Love the way the author labels each of his diagrams as “AI Slop”!

Thanks! Now I potentially have ~20 USB WiFi adapters I didn’t have yesterday.

Even better, no need to hassle with the WiFi settings on the target system.

In wrong hands, Pico W is actually a bit terrifying device, because it combines USB and wireless.

Google Gemini is that naysayer senior developer who confidently tells you it can’t be done.

Claude is that easy to get along with smart hard working guy who just gets on with it and builds it double quick.

ChatGPT is the eager senior developer who says it can be done but can’t actually work it out and fluffs it.

close enough, welcome back 56(0)k

> I spent two days of a long holiday weekend and about one million Claude Code tokens building this firmware.

You can do this by installing OpenWRT on the Pi and controlling it from the web interface.