In this
thread up in the Scripts section, I promised to post a pic of the output from the Google Earth conversion script I posted there.
I've decided to make it into a small how-to use Google Earth for WiFi Site Surveys. The thread will have some large pictures posted, and before people start to complain : RHIP, as well as I got the permission from our very own Voice Of Reason, Thorn.
First of all, you need Google Earth. Pick it up from
http://earth.google.com/ , then install it.
Then download and install the PHP5 engine from
http://www.php.net/ (For Windows, take hhe full package, not the installer. The installer only have the php-cgi executable, not the php standalone executable).
Finally copy the php script I posted in the above thread and paste it into a notepad document, and save it as kismet-to-kml.php
For the php script to work, you also need to have the ap_manuf and the client_manuf files from kismet in the same folder as the php script. These two files comes with the kismet package, and are normally located with the kismet configuration files (depending on your distro : /etc/kismet, or /usr/share/kismet).
Now you have the tools for generating the output of the site survey. So lets go do one. In this case I've used kismet to check out the local school, who just got WiFi last year.
I fired up Google Earth, and zoomed in on the area of the site I wanted to check, emailed the picture to myself, and opened it in my favourite graphicseditor. I then made an educated guess on what route I needed to go down, in order to see if the school's WiFi radiated down there.
The green area is the school grounds and buildings. The red line is the route I decided to take, based on where there might be LOS to the school buildings and grounds. I then printed out the edited picture, and went to the starting point of my route.