Affordable USB ethernet adapters

Just wondered if any forum-ites might have any suggestions on this…

At the moment, we tend to supply a rather nice USB→ethernet adapter if needed, but it costs around 15-17ukp inc. It has fancy packaging etc and is generally rather nice.

However, I’dlike to find one for around 10ukp (ideally less) as I plan to give them away. Obviously I’d still like them to be OK in terms of performance/RISC OS compatibility, but they don’t need fancy presentation etc.

Anyone have any suggestions/recommendations?

I think everything marked as “compatible with Nintendo Wii” should work fine. If you’re prepared to trust Alibaba sellers, you should be able to get one below 10 US$ per piece.

Do you mean to an Ethernet socket or to WiFi?

For the former I like this UGreen for around £9 if you can wait a couple of weeks. It is solid, nicely made and works out of the box. There are cheaper ones, but even when they have the same IDs, they do not always work, probably because of different chips.

For the latter I like this Vontets VAP11N, which can be set up using Otter or Quipzilla. I bought some not so long ago at not much more than £10, but they have gone up to around £15 now.

The Vonets VAR11N does as good a job, but is a tad more tricky to set up. It does sit very well under a mimi.m though. ;-) I got mine at less than £10, but they, too, have increased a lot.

There’s this which is bang on your £10 mark in black, but I’m assuming white would be better, in which case it’s a pound more!

The question you need to answer is what chipset does the nice adapter use? Armed with that, look around for cheaper ones.
They appear to start from about eight quid… https://www.amazon.co.uk/slp/usb-to-ethernet-adapter/fh9uv4w4akpk52r

Thanks for the tips, all. Steve – the Vontets… is the USB for power only, or can it go act as a usb→ethernet→wifi all-in-one? (too good to be true?).

The problem is that frequently the chipset isn’t listed, which is why I’ve used the more expensive ones in the past. Steffen’s tip about Wii is a good’un tho for that :)

is the USB for power only

Yes, but it is split lead with a round power socket, so you can use other sources. I do this with the mini.m so that the device is powered up before booting.

or can it go act as a usb→ethernet→wifi all-in-one? (too good to be true?).

No, but I have built the board from inside the Vonets into a Ugreen ethernet hub (not this one) to make a single unit. ;-) I have used it with an Atrix Lapdock.

I bought an RTL8152 based adapter off AliExpress a few days ago for a touch over $3. I just wanted something cheap to plug into the USB hub on a Pi Zero of mine. Will report findings when it eventually arrives.

I don’t know about RISC OS compatibility but I bought one of these for £10 from Pimoroni. At a glance it appears to use a Realtek chipset – I previously looked more closely at it for use with FreeBSD, so I think it uses one of the more common chipsets.

David, that looks like the one I use with my Pi Zero, except mine has a Micro USB cable instead. If it has the same internals it should work with RISC OS.

I don’t think RISC OS EtherUSB does support any Realtek chipsets. Asix, MOSchip and the on-board stuff of Beagle, Panda and RPi (various SMSC variants) seems to be all that is currently supported.

The details: https://www.riscosopen.org/viewer/view/bsd/RiscOS/Sources/Networking/Ethernet/EtherUSB/c/products?rev=1.8;content-type=text%2Fplain

Oh no. I did it again :(

*usbdevices tells me my USB / ethernet adapter is an ASIX Elec. Corp. AX88x72A, as you said Steffen.

I guess I just went for the Realtek because it’s so ubiquitous.

Tristan, I think they’re the same. Pimoroni also sell this variant which is probably just the same thing with a different cable, though you never know. The one I have has a label which says “YS-LAN26 RT8152B”.

According to notes I wrote when I bought it, it works in FreeBSD (on x86_64 at least) with the ure driver. So get your porting hat on!

So get your porting hat on!

If I had the slightest idea how the network driver modules worked I would have already had a go at the SPI ENC28J60 ethernet adapter. There are driver libs for Arduino, and a builtin driver in Raspbian. My first Pi was a Zero, and that adapter was the way I networked it. Not quick but it worked. I know it’s not the point of this thread.

Just a minor correction, the FreeBSD driver was for ARMv7 not x86_64. I guess it’s portable between architectures.

I suppose it would be nice to have an EtherUSB porting layer for drivers coming from the BSDs, though I know there’s a huge gap between concept and implementation. ;-)

I picked up the £10 Pimoroni adapter for my Pi Zero but no drivers are detected under Network → Internet Configuration → Interfaces. I guess it’s a no-go for now until there’s a driver for this chipset.

!USBInfo normally reports what chipset is in use as well as the PID and VID.

Sorry I’m a Risc OS newbie, is !USBInfo something shipped with the Raspberry Pi edition or do I need to download it?

Sorry I’m a Risc OS newbie, is !USBInfo something shipped with the Raspberry Pi edition or do I need to download it?

Just follow the link to the page for X-Ample Technology

One thing to note is that simple google queries like “usbinfo risc os” tend to produce a fairly quick link (mostly) on things discussed round here.

Some suppliers manage to hide themselves on line, but that may improve as the market gradually improves.

Yep I should have googled it, I guess I was thinking it might be something pre-installed.
Thanks for the link anyway, I’ll take a look later to see if it shows the adapter and report back.

Yep I should have googled it, I guess I was thinking it might be something pre-installed.

That was a tip rather than a smart remark BTW. It just happens that because there aren’t many links it’s either easy to find what you want or damn near impossible.

Thanks for the link anyway, I’ll take a look later to see if it shows the adapter and report back

Have a look at the other freebies on the site – my favourite is probably !Confix. Makes producing a GUI config on a program as easy as…

RTL8152 arrived. Does not work in RISC OS. as yet untested in Linux to confirm functionality.

The Pi Hut is currently listing a product as “Ethernet Hub and USB Hub w/ Micro USB OTG Connector” for 14 pounds. It does not work in RISC OS 5.28 on the Raspberry Pi Zero W (which is a disappointment for a product sold by The Pi Hut): *usbdevices lists it as Realtek. The description says “a AX88772A Ethernet transceiver. This chipset is really common and can be used by any Linux, Mac or Windows computer” and I really think they should have added “but not RISC OS” to that sentence if their catalogue is primarily meant for the Raspberry Pi and RISC OS represents a significant minority usage of that platform. Still, I wonder which will come first: Realtek support, or WiFi support for the Zero W.

AX88772A would almost certainly work, but it isn’t a realtek chip. You generally find realtek chips in the “cheapie” adapters on amazon and ebay. Sounds like PiHut did a bit of a bait-n-switch sadly. An AX88772 plus hub would definitely have been tasty :)

i got not new from ™ebay™ called ™moshi™ /for my ipad older mini/ and it aint working i think because ™apple™ ™ipad™ still needs another device to connect /any/ usb device although have experience which dispute that. it is another problem in my life. so i havent worried or tried with ™riscosopen™ because my current ™raspberry_pi™ has ethernet built on. still now it seems electricity might bother me more than wifi.