WiGLE.net

I have a gps and a hawking hwug1 with a 6dbi external antenna. Im thinking about moving to a orinoco classic gold card with a 7dbi mag mount antenna. Will i see a big improvement in the number of wireless aps I find?

easy man, take a breath before each post

My old rig was 'businessman' orinoco card and a 5dbi mag mount that I got somewhere for $20. I later bought a '7dbi' mag mount from a different vendor that ended up being the exact same antenna (the only diff was I'd ordered a different connector for it) I ended up making a cantenna out of the 7dbi's cord, and I still use the 5dbi today (as I said, they were identical antennas) But I have upgraded to an SMC2532 card.

Both cards and antennas worked great under netstumbler. When I started driving, using only the orinoco, and no external antenna, NS would find as many s 20 AP's between my house and work. Later, after I added the antenna, it went from that, to 30-50 depending on the day (weekends were higher, I guess people were shutting their wireless off)

When I switched to the SMC2532, I saw a little increase in NS, but that was mostly due to the fact that the SMC card is supported better under NS than the businessman orinoco. The 'higher' gain antenna made no diff at all.

My single biggest improvement was scrapping windows on my wardriving laptop, and installing debian linux. Kismet puts the card into RFMon mode, which allows it to see every single packet that hits he antenna. NS cant do that because of limitations in windows. NS must send a 'hey anyone out there?' packet, and wait for an answer. Because of this, you miss any AP's that are set to hidden, and you miss any that can hear you, but you drive out of recieve range of before it registers.

To give you a comparison, when I drive to work now, I pick up about 230-250 AP's. For the most part, if I can see a house, I can get an AP if it's turned on.

MY current rig is:

IBM Thinkpad i series running Debian Etch, Kismet, and the forked GPSD Dutch (hratch?) reccomended.
SMC-2532 wireless card
generic 5dbi mag mount antenna, stuck thru my sunroof
Delorme Earthmate USB GPS
generic Wal-Mart special inverter

Low tech, and on the cheap. The laptop was $500 new, thru work via my employeee discount (I've had it forever). The GPS when I bought it, IIR, was $200 from BestBuy.
The card was $99, the inverter $35 and the antenna was $20

The only cards that NS fully supports are those with the Hermes chipset. SMC is not supported.
http://stumbler.net/readme/readme_0_3_30.html
Most any card will work with NS, the difference being signal to noise ratios. Orinoco gives a true reading.

This is true, a classic orinoco would be the most accurate for NS.

Mine is a Businessman version, and therefor not supported. My SMC is a 200mw card, vs the 80mw(?) for the orinoco, thus under NS, given a choice of 2 unsupported cards. a better choice because of the power. Higher power under NS will get your query signal out to more AP's.

I cant find a power spec on the HWUG1, but, seeing as it's USB, I would imagine that he could run both at the same time, because the only orinoco's I'm aware of are PCcard, just set NS to use 'all available devices' I think the setting is called. Dont quote me on that though, I havent used NS in over a year, Kismet has found me many more AP's

SMC 2532 and Senao 2511 are both good cards. They work well with Kismet, too.

The only reason I would use the Orinoco card is if I was doing site surveys with NetStumbler, and needed accurate data (which will never happen). For collecting for Wigle, 200+ mW cards will suit you better. I also have some 300mW cards. Better to use them with a passive collector though.

You will definitely get more with Kismet.

dagaroth: what channel sequence do you use with kismet?

What is the difference between a 200mw card and an orinoco gold?

surprisingly, I just let it go at whatever default he set it up as, never had a need to change it. My laptop only has one cardslot, so I can only use the SMC by itself.

I did a quick google, and it looks like the businessman is 65mw under b/g mode and 85 in b mode. A classic card is only 30mw... that seems low, anyone have documented info, I got that from a forum.

If the above info is correct, the orinoco is 170mw less, but more accurate s/n

And like whitedice said, dont ever use a 300mw card and an external antenna with netstumbler, even the lowest gain antennas push the FCC limits, and most likely exceed them, and are likely to microwave your head.

Yes, I believe the old Orinico Silver/Gold cards were 30mw.