Back in October, Elesar Ltd launched a new hardware product, aimed firmly at the Raspberry Pi, which addressed a significant shortcoming in RISC OS in a pretty neat way. That product was a WiFi HAT (Hardware Attached on Top) device that provided seamless wireless network facilities to RISC OS users.
However, there was one slight problem – because of the official specifications of a HAT device, which Elesar’s card follows, it meant the loss of another fairly useful add-on people were using: A real time clock (RTC).
As of yesterday, this problem is no more.
Elesar’s card still conforms to the official specification, but there are now two versions available- the original, at £52.80 including VAT (the popularity of which meant it has been out of stock since mid-December, but it is once again in Elesar’s warehouse stock cupboard(?)), or one with an on-board RTC at £64.80.
There was some unused space on the original card, so the low-power clock chip and associated circuitry now occupies that space, and it comes with a lithium coin cell to keep it powered, and all the necessary gubbins to get it up and running – including a printed manual.
For users of the original card, there has also been a software update – a new version of the EtherWILC WiFi driver available to download free of charge by simply visiting the ‘resources’ tab on the product page.
A visible benefit of the new software is that when connected to a wireless network it now displays a live signal strength bar chart in its icon. And for users who also have other RISC OS computers on their network, an increase in the maximum permitted packet size in the module means it can transport ShareFS packets. This in turn means you can now share drives on your WiFi-enabled Pi for other RISC OS machines to access.
