Installing Carl9170 Firmware on Raspberry Pi

Installing the Carl9170 firmware on a Raspberry Pi is easy. The following steps were done on the latest Raspbian "Wheezy" OS (2012-09-18-wheezy-raspbian.zip). Just ensure that you have an Internet connection and follow these steps:

1. In your terminal, type the following command:
   

   wget 'http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/carl9170/fw1.9.6?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=carl9170-1.fw' -O carl9170-1.fw

2. Then, move the firmware to the /lib/firmware directory as shown below:
   

   sudo mv carl9170-1.fw /lib/firmware

3. Connect your USB WiFi device to the board. The Carl9170 should automatically be loaded. You should be able to run iwconfig on your device.
   
   Note: The board that I'm using is the initial version of the Raspberry Pi and I realised that if I connect my Proxim Wireless 802.11a/b/g/n USB WiFi device to a non-powered USB hub (and that hub itself is connected to the RPi), the system keeps on disconnecting and re-associating the WiFi USB device with a new phy number continuously. However, if I connect it directly, no problem is encountered except for the fact that the output for iwlist scan doesn't seem to be comprehensive (there are a lot of access points in the room broadcasting their SSIDs but all this little fella could scan for was just two or three access points).

References:

http://wiki.debian.org/carl9170 - Where I originally got the instructions for the above

http://wiki.debian.org/Modules - Automatically loading module

http://wiki.debian.org/WiFi/HowToUse - Configure WiFi interface