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PostPosted: Mon Feb 12, 2007 10:50 am
by beakmyn
whitedice wrote:If I was starting from scratch, and rich. Yeah, that may be a better idea, though powering such a device in a car would probably not make it worthwhile. Definitely need a pure sine inverter, which are pretty expensive.

And then there is portability. I have used 2 rentals, and another family member's car (all of which did not have a built-in 800W inverter), and ran 3 laptops, 3 amps, and 4 antennas in each. Mainly because I could manage battery power.


Um, last time I checked PCs run on 12V DC, 3.3V DC and 5V DC and cars run on 12V DC, what's the problem? Hell, back when MP3 first came out I had a fully PC in my car and it was 8x11x3

PostPosted: Mon Feb 12, 2007 5:56 pm
by whitedice
beakmyn wrote:Um, last time I checked PCs run on 12V DC, 3.3V DC and 5V DC and cars run on 12V DC, what's the problem? Hell, back when MP3 first came out I had a fully PC in my car and it was 8x11x3

The way that my PC's PSU sounds when the inverter is on, it just doesn't sound healthy. Based on that, I definitely would not want to do anything that would jeopardize basically the entire setup. When it comes to power, I definitely don't know enough. I have read that a pure sine inverter is better than a regular inverter, so it seems like a safer way to go.

And like I said before, I came about all my equipment via upgrades, not starting from scratch. I didn't know how much I was going to enjoy this hobby until I had sort of acquired various gear.

**I just read how little power consumption a mini-itx actually draws. If I was going to replace anything or get something new, it looks like a mini-itx pc would be a good idea. Though lets be honest, my equipment isn't doing all that bad.... **looks at this month's stats ;) **

PostPosted: Mon Feb 12, 2007 6:18 pm
by Barry
[quote="whitedice"]The way that my PC's PSU sounds when the inverter is on, it just doesn't sound healthy. Based on that, I definitely would not want to do anything that would jeopardize basically the entire setup. When it comes to power, I definitely don't know enough. I have read that a pure sine inverter is better than a regular inverter, so it seems like a safer way to go.

And like I said before, I came about all my equipment via upgrades, not starting from scratch. I didn't know how much I was going to enjoy this hobby until I had sort of acquired various gear.

**I just read how little power consumption a mini-itx actually draws. If I was going to replace anything or get something new, it looks like a mini-itx pc would be a good idea. Though lets be honest, my equipment isn't doing all that bad.... **looks at this month's stats ]


You're right, your equipment is doing an excellent job! Just think though. If you set up something kinda like the janus project box, look at how easy it would be to transfer it between rigs. I just happen to have a case like the one they used. Might be time to start aquireing parts....

PostPosted: Mon Feb 12, 2007 6:38 pm
by DaKahuna
Barry wrote:You're right, your equipment is doing an excellent job! Just think though. If you set up something kinda like the janus project box, look at how easy it would be to transfer it between rigs. I just happen to have a case like the one they used. Might be time to start aquireing parts....


Why not just use a Mac-mini running KisMAC?

PostPosted: Mon Feb 12, 2007 6:40 pm
by Barry
DaKahuna wrote:Why not just use a Mac-mini running KisMAC?



Show me how to get 8 mini pci wifi cards in a mini and you're on!


I've also not been impressed with the intel laptops. I had to set up a pos belkin access point at home to use my wireless. For some reason when I connect to a linksys either with open wrt of stock firmware, I keep getting disconnected.

PostPosted: Mon Feb 12, 2007 10:14 pm
by Airstreamer
[quote="whitedice"]The way that my PC's PSU sounds when the inverter is on, it just doesn't sound healthy. Based on that, I definitely would not want to do anything that would jeopardize basically the entire setup. [color="Red"]When it comes to power, I definitely don't know enough. I have read that a pure sine inverter is better than a regular inverter, so it seems like a safer way to go. [/color]

And like I said before, I came about all my equipment via upgrades, not starting from scratch. I didn't know how much I was going to enjoy this hobby until I had sort of acquired various gear.

**I just read how little power consumption a mini-itx actually draws. If I was going to replace anything or get something new, it looks like a mini-itx pc would be a good idea. Though lets be honest, my equipment isn't doing all that bad.... **looks at this month's stats ]

Open your mind, Grasshopper. Expand your horizons. Google is your friend.
/spoonfeed on
http://www.dimensionsunlimited.com/Application_Notes/121613.pdf
/spoonfeed off :D

PostPosted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 5:28 am
by Mark57
[quote="whitedice"]. . . Though lets be honest, my equipment isn't doing all that bad.... **looks at this month's stats ]

Yeah, you about to leave foot prints on my back any day now and at your rate it's going to be waffle stoppers instead of sneakers.;)

I applaud your setup and its results and I completely understand how it came to be in its present condition by using on hand equipment.

If I understood your setup, it's all in the back of the vehicle, correct? How are you monitoring/controlling Kismet so you can stop and start it when the file sizes start to get big? In consideration of WiGle.net, I make sure my active GPS file never gets over ~50mb. Depending on the network density, that may be 1,000 networks or 3,000 networks so I find I have to monitor it visually every 15-20 minutes. Do you have something up front or are you stopping and checking?

PostPosted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 5:43 am
by Mark57
Barry wrote:You're right, your equipment is doing an excellent job! Just think though. If you set up something kinda like the janus project box, look at how easy it would be to transfer it between rigs. I just happen to have a case like the one they used. Might be time to start aquireing parts....


I've been making a parts list and creating a design over the last few days for just such a box. It's very doable. What I can't decide on is how to arrange the antennas and their connections to the cards. I want all the antennas to be amped with a mix of directional and omni types but my quandary is how to do that and still take advantage of the separate channel scanning of the 8 cards. I could do 8 omni's on the roof and look like an FCC unit driving down the road. :D

I suppose I could use two or four way power splitters and run one amped antenna for every two or four cards. :confused: Insertion loss runs 0.4 - 0.6 dB for the two types of splitters. Any thoughts on this are welcome.

PostPosted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 6:43 am
by Dutch
Mark57 wrote:If I understood your setup, it's all in the back of the vehicle, correct? How are you monitoring/controlling Kismet so you can stop and start it when the file sizes start to get big? In consideration of WiGle.net, I make sure my active GPS file never gets over ~50mb.

I think the limit is around 150Mb for a file. Yesterday I uploaded a tar.gz of a kismet.csv, xml & gps, which was 75 MB gzipped. csv = 1.7 Mb, gps = 143 Mb, and xml = 6.9 mb uncompressed.
Wigle balked and stated it was to big.
When I then uploaded each file by itself gzipped, it went through without a glitz (csv=274 Kb, gps=68 Mb, xml=462 Kb gzipped).

Dutch

PostPosted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 7:23 am
by Mark57
Dutch wrote:I think the limit is around 150Mb for a file. Yesterday I uploaded a tar.gz of a kismet.csv, xml & gps, which was 75 MB gzipped. csv = 1.7 Mb, gps = 143 Mb, and xml = 6.9 mb uncompressed.
Wigle balked and stated it was to big.
When I then uploaded each file by itself gzipped, it went through without a glitz (csv=274 Kb, gps=68 Mb, xml=462 Kb gzipped).

Dutch


I've seen the limit/capability as low as 50 mb uncompressed at times. I agree that currently it seems to be higher but a couple of weeks ago I uploaded a tar.gz of 12 files with one kismet.GPS file being 60 Mb uncompressed. WiGle said it was too big but not specifically was too big. The sum of the group uncompressed was ~300 Mb but no others were over 50 Mb. I removed the big GPS file from the tar.gz and the upload went OK so I split the one GPS file in two parts, tar.gz'd it, and it uploaded OK. Yesterday I had one GPS that was 65 Mb uncompressed and it uploaded OK. (Note to other readers, I always compress my kismet.csv, xml, and gps files into one tar.gz file before uploading)

Based on that I've just tried to keep the Kismet.GPS's under or about 50 Mb so I don't have to deal with it if WiGle is short on space.

PostPosted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 8:10 am
by whitedice
[quote="Mark57"]Yeah, you about to leave foot prints on my back any day now and at your rate it's going to be waffle stoppers instead of sneakers.]
I briefly mentioned it in my first post... I kind of have a fourth computer (600M laptop) sitting up front, with a network cable running to the wifi-turned-off router in the back. I use this Windows Laptop to run Winamp to listen to music, and GPS navigation (Google Earth w/ a program called Earthbridge & Street Atlas 2006), GPSGate, and 3 instances of VNC to make sure everything is running properly in the back. I used to run 1 instance of NetStumbler on this rig as well, but after a while everything would get severely bogged down. I mostly try and listen for the alerts softly coming from the rear of the car (easier when not on the highway). If I don't hear anything for a bit, I will stop and check to make sure everything is running correctly. I usually let kismet run to around 3k or 4k, though I used to let it go as high as it would go without crashing (rarely hitting 10k).

Then at the end of my stumble, I send all the files for the day from my laptop running kismet which saves the logs to a FAT32 partition drive to my laptop up front, because I usually bring that inside.

Once comfortably out of the car and inside, I use Winzip, which compresses the hell out of the files. I usually combine all the csv & xml files into one zip, and all the gps files into a second zip to be uploaded. Always uploading csv & xml first.

Feb 10th was a really good day. I zipped 18 csv & xml files (29.5MB) into 2.72MB, and 9 gps files (358MB) into 20MB. I get an error for "files too large" anytime I upload a zip with *.gps file over 100MB in it. I usually end up manually splitting the file in order to get it to upload. The only reason I have 9 gps and not more on that day is the largest one I stopped was at 98MB by luck.

PostPosted: Tue Feb 13, 2007 8:27 am
by Mark57
Thanks, I figured VNC would be in there somewhere. :D I still run NetStumbler on my nav laptop but I don't let it get over 1,000 networks before I start a new file. Even with 1 gig of RAM and a fast processor on the XP box it helps to keep the NS files small. With your setup, NS probably doesn't find anything that Kismet doesn't. Mine still does which tells me my Kismet setup is not optimal.