Mark57

I hear you. We're going through a reorg at my office so we'll see how long I can keep it up depending on the results. Preliminary info is not good. Most of the I/S jobs are being slashed 2 - 3 steps.

I want to do some additional testing with the amp. Something like going into a previously stumbled area and map the AP's captured with and without the amp to see what the real range is. That will give me a hint as to what streets I "might" be able to avoid. I'm sure it will help with office complexes, etc.

I did figure out pretty quickly that in dense areas you REALLY need to slow down or even pull over so Kismet doesn't miss any AP's. Many of them I already had, but many I'd missed somehow.

Deoje

What card are you using it with?

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Mark57

I'm using the Senao 2511CD+ EXT2 with Kismet. Monitor mode only of course.

ccie4526

Dammit, gonna have to start taking my kit more places when I travel, now you understand why I like preamps so much.


This cannot be emphasised enough. Transmitting RF into the back end of a preamp is a very good way to convert that preamp into an attenuator. You want to be able to receive signals, not filter them out.

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Israel Torres

Personally I am not a big believer of amps on a common wardriving rig. I like using a common rig so that anyone is able to verify my logged APs from the same distance. I could be very dangerous with an amp I imagine. I have been thinking my philosophy over but for now I am amp-less. I think after I get first ranking in WiGLE without an amp I will try and upgrade to stay up there, but for now 1st rank will suffice

Israel Torres

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Scruge

I've noticed that phenomena with some of the adapters I've goosed up with higher gain antennas. They pick up more but their acquisition speed slows. So now I'm running a mix of stock and high gain simultaneously. When I merge their files I usually wind up with 30% more APs than the files were individually.

I also run a third horizontally polarized, it usually adds an additional 5-10% to the total.

Mark57

As to others verifying my AP's and the accuracy of their locations . . . per WiGle, I've now contributed 89% of all the AP's in the counties I've stumbled. There are few other active stumblers in my area and they don't do much. The amp does not add "that" much range and frankly, I see it as being no different than someone pointing a narrowly focused cantenna to get AP's. Besides, the GPS loc is still estimated from the strongest signal location and I'm moving so the amp and omni have a good chance of getting a decent coordinate. Am I going to worry about this . . . not likely. I used to be just as anal about getting the best on the spot GPS loc possible for every AP, but really, what is the point? They're never going to be exact. We're getting them darn close in the over all scheme of things and to me the discovery has more weight than than pinning down the location to the millimeter. My goal is not to locate it good enough to visit these people but to discover the AP in it's general location. This setup does that for me. Mission accomplished.

I thought about running a second Omni with this card so it could sort out signals a little better but I decided the amp was a better way to go between the to alternatives assuming only one laptop. I'm trying to keep it simple but effective.

Are you running laptops/cards?

Mark57

Yes I do understand. My normal setup never heard many of these AP's after multiple passes with Kismet. I like!

Scruge

I've been playing around with various combinations of cards and usb adapters for the past month or so. I'm beginning to think that the USB dongles are the way to go for basic stumbling with NS, although I haven't tried an amp or kismet yet.
The Atheros based pc card and usb I've got definitely have the most sensitive radios. However they seem to lock onto strong signals until out of range which I think causes them to miss APs. I need to take some time to check what maybe causing the problem, possible CM or driver issues.

The Orinoco gold with a 7db omni works pretty well except for the 0005 error. I've noticed the error also produces a side effect with my notebook's cpu (P3-700). After doing a card reset my cpu never throttles down causing the fan to run continuously and the notebook to get really hot.

Oddly enough with all the testing and money I've spent the $10 Zydas based usb performs the best of all. Although it's radio isn't as sensitive, its very fast. It always nets more APs than any of the others on the same drive in high density areas.
Last month I was driving with 2 notebooks. One was configured with gold card and 7db antenna and the other was running with 2 usb adapters, Zydas and Atheros based. The 2 USB beat the single gold card by 40% after their files were merged.

On future drives I'll probably just run with 1 notebook and the 2 USB adapters. It makes for a simpler setup and is less stressful on my notebook. To make things even easier I've permanently mounted a micro sized usb hub with its own power in my car that handles the gps, wifi and a wireless mouse adapter. To connect my notebook all I do is plug in the hub's cable and notebook power and I'm ready to go. The dongles are attached to my luggage rack with Velcro cable straps, and are barely visible.

I'd be interested in hearing how the amp works out, so keep us posted.

Scruge

Isn't the amp you got bi-directional?

I think ccie was stating his was only a receive amp not indented to work in transmit mode and to be careful of using it with a transmitter.

I'm curious if the $270 unit from fab-corp has a receive preamp. It doesn't list any figures.

Crap, noticed they all use n connectors and don't have any listed with sma. Which means adapters or refitting cables with new connectors. Neither I like having to do.

Mark57

Yes, mine IS bidirectional. My warning was put there because transmitting with that amount of power anywhere on a vehicle is way too close to the occupants to be safe. Therefore my warning about only using in monitor mode.

The 0005 errors on my gold card made it pretty useless. Ejecting it every 2 - 3 minutes was becoming unacceptable.

I'm going to do further testing today and will post results. I'm trying to locate a good place to do the test.

PS, I also have a freebie Cisco/Microsoft mini USB hub that I leave on my laptop all the time.

ccie4526

True statement.

The MMIC/FET used in the standard amplifiers is bidirectional, and the gain figures are generally the same in both directions. A +15dBm TX amplifier will generally also have ~+12-15dBm receive gain as well.

Most all amplifiers and preamplifiers have standard 'N' female connectors, whereas most of the basic transmitters, in order to gain FCC Part15 type-acceptance, are required by rule to have a nonstandard connector. This is what gave rise to the Reverse Polarity TNC (RP-TNC) and Reverse Polarity SMA (RP-SMA) connectors, amongst others. As all of the equipment I use in Part97 operations have standardised connectors, the first thing I do is apply the necessary adapters/jumpers/whatever to convert from the non-standard connector to a standard connector. And yeah, in the case of an MMCX or Orinoco card connector, I put the adapter cable on, then secure that cable to the card with epoxy or other glue/tape/etc to prevent the flexing of the cable to move the connector, thus giving extended life. I don't necessarily like it either, but the future benefits far outweigh the temporary inconvenience.

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ccie4526

Yo Dutch,

Dad forwarded this email to me this morning:

Thank you for the tip, I'll post results once it gets back here to the states!!!

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http://www.wigle.net
http://www.kismetwireless.net

Scruge

I've got tons of bnc, tnc and mini uhf connectors from the old cell phone days. I probably need find a cheap source and to standardize on N as well.

I was just doing some research on amps and came across Shireen's products.
http://www.shireeninc.com/2-41Wattoem.html

They have an oem board that maybe fun to try and mount into the base of a home brew mag mount antenna. I'm still trying to figure how much they cost.

They also have a product called Hotzone which might be fun to try.
http://www.shireeninc.com/amplifiedhotzoneext.html

Mark57

I created a new thread in the hardware section for the Amp test results.

We just returned home from a 1 hour drive. We just took section lines up into the rural part of the county and came back with 424 new AP's. I drove all of this last week with Kismet and no amp. I'm pretty pleased at this point. Easiest AP's I ever drove.