Hacking an SD Slot for WiFi

Back in the 1990’s moving files via a floppy disk was known as “sneaker net.” While floppies are a thing of the past, SD Cards are the modern equivalent and they still lend themselves to sneaker net operations.

But why? WiFi is everywhere now. Wouldn’t it be great if you could hack those devices with SD slots to use WiFi? Apparently 3D printer [extrud3d] thought the same thing and found a way to reconfigure a Toshiba FlashAir card to put his 3D printer on the network.

The card is aimed at consumers, so by default it creates a hotspot and waits for a connection, a rudimentary web app allows you to move files back and forth over the network to the SD card which is then read by the host device. However, [extrud3d] shows how to modify a file on the SD card’s file system to allow the device to hook up to an existing wireless network and also provides a Python script to make the file transfer easier.

Although this hack is for a 3D printer, it ought to work with most devices that have a full sized SD slot (or can be adapted to take a full sized card). Since the hack is nothing more than changing a text file, it is a lot easier than some other SD hacks we’ve covered. Over on hackaday.io, [Chris Jones] has recently done some hacking on the FlashAir and has a list of its shell commands if you want to go beyond the text file hacks.

[Kieth Wallace] did a similar mod (see video, below) for the DaVinci printer which was a bit more involved since the original FlashAir card didn’t handle long file names. [Kieth] had to mod the printer’s firmware, although version 2 of the FlashAir handles long file names and wouldn’t require as much effort.

There’s a dedicated site for FlashAir developers and we have to wonder if these wouldn’t be a good way to Web-enable an embedded system with an SD Card slot (in case you are tired of hearing about the ESP8266).

Filed under: 3d Printer hacks, wireless hacks