Raspberry Pi Zero WiFi adapter

Having got my shiny new Pi Zero up and running I figured it would be nice to get it talking to the WiFi without the (relatively speaking) huge USB and WiFi dongle adaptor hanging out of one side.

This is the "finished" product:

I left the HDMI adaptor in for scale, although I now simply communicate with it over the network using SSH.  The heat shrink on the actual WiFi board isn't as neat as I would have liked, but this was my first go at building one.  In future I'll use a micro USB adaptor with an elbow on it and shorten the cable so it can sit parallel with the edge of the Pi.  I might also consider soldering the WiFi adaptor straight to the Pi - the board I have here fits neatly over the Pi logo without impeding the GPIO headers (if they were installed of course).

The build wasn't any more complex that you'd think, although it was very fiddly.  I bought one of these from eBay for £2.50:

I very carefully levered the plastic bit off and the circuit board slid out of the metal housing with no resistance.



Unfortunately this is the only picture I took that came out OK.  Approximately half of the board it under the tape (I had it stuck down so I could solder it).

I then hacked up an old cable I had lying around, spent a little while figuring out what cable when to which connector and soldered it all together.

 

Finally I used some heat shrink to make it relatively robust and electrically insulated.  I've not tested it outside my office, but it's working as well as it was when it was in it's original state and plugged into the Micro to standard A size USB adaptor.