Thought this might be of interest to other people and projects who are
exploring ways to get their devices onto wifi networks.
The tl;dr is a study was conducted on 4 techniques (USB cable, audio cable,
wifi, and flashing).
http://www.southampton.ac.uk/news/2015/09/iot-device-sensor-study.page
there is a video showing the 4 techniques that they used
This is the original study:
http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/379702/
Thanks to Dave H for sharing this!