I’ve been wanting to make my Arduino network accessible for awhile, now, and the idea of hacking a wireless-G router and loading some custom firmware like DDWRT was appealing. I happened upon a deal on an Asus wl520gu on craigslist ($20), so now the fun begins…
The Hardware
The wl520gu was acceptable for this hack, because it has solder points for a serial connection on its mainboard. Step one, then, was making this serial connection available to connect to an Arduino. The serial connections are 4 points in the empty space of the PCB. I connected the bottom three (from the bottom: gnd, tx, rx). The top connection is 3.3V, and since I wanted to run the Arduino off of the router power supply, I need 5V, which I pulled off the barrel connector at the bottom of the board.
After making all of the connections, I routed the wires out an opening in the bottom of the case and put it all back together.
… and connected 5V / GND from the wl520 to Vcc / GND on the Arduino and TX / RX from the wl520 to RX / TX on the Arduino.
