spench.net

This experiment involved acquiring CellID and signal strength information from the GSM cellular network, tracking one's position while acquiring this data, and finally presenting it nicely. It is summarised in the following pictures (full details are described in the sub-sections found top-left):

Hardware:

Mapping position and signal strength measurements:

The following pages detail my WiFi adventures:

• WiFi Antennas
• Atmel at76c503a Wireless USB Adapter

This started with my desire to build a Woktenna.
Of course you can't very well put a PCMCIA wireless card at the focal point of a cooking wok!

So the alternative is using a USB WiFi adapter that can hang on the end of a USB extension cable and
introduce minimal analog signal loss and USB is digital!

Despite the fact is says "Linux compatible" on the box, it wasn't immediately possible to do what I wanted to do,
which is: monitor mode!
With monitor mode, I'd be able to point the woktenna around and pick up the beacon frames of distant APs.

I found two drivers available for this device:
one over at BerliOS,
and the other at SourceForge.

I have made the following WiFi antennas:

Cantenna

Made two, same design for both.
Gain is good: ~12dB.

Dr John Smith told me about these types of receivers, so I thought I'd build the bare-bones-basic one.

Unfortunately it's not possible to use it anywhere near urbanised areas due to the 50Hz mains interference 'hum' that swaps out mother nature.