WiGLE.net

So I've been playing around with WiFiFoFum on my iPhone for a while; it has been working well, but I decided to step it up and get some real gear. I'm starting small, with a single adapter, but if this works well I plan on picking up a few more, perhaps adding in an amp or some Kismet drones.
Right now my rig consists of a:
+ BU-353 GPS unit
+ Hawking HWUG1 Wireless Adapter
+ Alfa 9db omni mag-mount antenna

Unexpectedly part of the order got to my place early, so last night I had everything but the antenna and I decided to take it for a test run. I didn't have time to get Kismet up and running on my Ubuntu powered carputer, so I ended up just using InSSIDer under Win 7 on my primary laptop. The setup of that program was pretty simple, pick a WiFi adapter, give it the Com port of your GPS unit and hit "Start Logging". I drove around for about half an hour, even without an external antenna my laptop was picking up around 30% more APs than my iPhone (I had it running WiFiFoFum). Between the two I found a total of 6100 networks; I need to write a script that parses the log files to determine how many unique networks each found, but just looking at the new network numbers the iPhone found about 335 networks that the laptop didn't see. I'll post an update when my antenna shows up, I have a feeling that will drastically increase my numbers.

So I've been playing around with WiFiFoFum on my iPhone for a while; it has been working well, but I decided to step it up and get some real gear. I'm starting small, with a single adapter, but if this works well I plan on picking up a few more, perhaps adding in an amp or some Kismet drones.
Right now my rig consists of a:
+ BU-353 GPS unit
+ Hawking HWUG1 Wireless Adapter
+ Alfa 9db omni mag-mount antenna

Unexpectedly part of the order got to my place early, so last night I had everything but the antenna and I decided to take it for a test run. I didn't have time to get Kismet up and running on my Ubuntu powered carputer, so I ended up just using InSSIDer under Win 7 on my primary laptop. The setup of that program was pretty simple, pick a WiFi adapter, give it the Com port of your GPS unit and hit "Start Logging". I drove around for about half an hour, even without an external antenna my laptop was picking up around 30% more APs than my iPhone (I had it running WiFiFoFum). Between the two I found a total of 6100 networks; I need to write a script that parses the log files to determine how many unique networks each found, but just looking at the new network numbers the iPhone found about 335 networks that the laptop didn't see. I'll post an update when my antenna shows up, I have a feeling that will drastically increase my numbers.

You'll see a huge differnce Kismet and a antenna the roof. I wouldn't worry about a script log them all and let wige sort them out.

I didn't have time to get Kismet up and running on my Ubuntu powered carputer

We like pictures.

Sorry for the delay, I've been busy with work and haven't had a lot of time to devote to this. Here are some shots of what I've done so far.
My initial testing setup using my primary laptop and InSSIDer. Turns out the cable for my antenna is about 3 feet long, too short to effectively put on my roof, so until I get an extension cable it's going to hang in the window.

Decided to take it along for my commute into the city core, stashed away in my messenger bag you can barely tell what I'm doing!

Since last night I've probably spent a good 15 hours getting Kismet working on my carputer/laptop (mostly with gpsd as they changed the API with the current version making it incompatible with gpsdrive and kismet). Here it is running with both my internal card and external+antenna. Hopefully I can take this out for a test run, I'l hoping for even better results!

As for the script, it was more for my personal stats. I wanted to compare the two devices to see what they detected at what SNRs, I've been uploading both files to this site and letting them sort out which ones are new, the script is for my own stuff.

I also found an old WRT54G that's capable of running DD-WRT so I may be adding a kismet drone to this mix sooner than I was expecting!

Don't mean to state the obvious but a USB extension cable is not only more easily found than any random coax extensions you'll also lose less signal.

Plus if you accidentally crimp your USB cable in the window you'll cry less than if you crimp your lm-blahblah coax cable.

For a simple antenna mount I've used the following for nearly 10 years:

* broomstick
* foam pipe insulation from a hardware store

If you get an omni with some kind of clamp mount you bolt it to the broomstick and then use the foam pipe insulation to protect your car/window etc while you poke the broomstick out the window and zip tie it to something inside (door handle, etc).