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Wireless Link Calculator On A Cell Phone

Casey Halverson writes "Ever been out in the field and wanted to make a quick wireless link calculation, but didn't have a computer or internet connection handy? Or maybe you're just too lazy to turn the thing on? Well now you can, from your xHTML capable cell phone. PocketSOM can calculate a wireless link, telling you your signal strength, whether or not it meets local FCC/IC/EU regulations, and even an expert analysis system that will tell you how you can improve your wireless link and what kind of performance you can expect. People like us (the SeattleWireless admins) are using it right now - here's a screenshot."

15 of 85 comments (clear)

  1. Ah, cellphone feature creep. by Valar · · Score: 2, Funny

    What's my link now? *walk a little* What's my link now? *walk a little* What's...

    1. Re:Ah, cellphone feature creep. by chrispy666 · · Score: 2, Funny

      What's my link now? *walk a little* What's my link now? *walk a little* What's...

      I think you forgot to add at the end :
      ..."kaboom"
      (sound of the guy falling into a huge hole)

      (damn I think I need to stop watching cartoons...)

      --
      Music is the language of the heart, the sound of the soul. -Joe Satriani
    2. Re:Ah, cellphone feature creep. by dollar70 · · Score: 1, Funny
      What's my link now? *walk a little* What's my link now? *walk a little* What's...

      Can you afford me now?.... Too bad! *walk a little* can you afford me now?.... Too bad! Etc...

      Not mine, sorry... Just couldn't resist.

  2. How long until this is pervasive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    So

    One more story (of many) on a device that can do anothers job, all through overlapping technology. How long until we just have one device that can do everything? a device the size of a cellphone thats a PDA, with a roll-out screen and keyboard the size of a normal laptop, running at 2GHz+ type speeds, full colour, decent resolution, weighs as much as an iPod, plays MP3s and burns/writes to the common media of the day, and will take a photo or movie of you while it does so.

    This whole 'convergence' thing seems to be just taking one or two traditional devices and merging them, I want to see EVERYTHING in one device.

  3. Why by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    This is pointless Any good engineer can do it with a slide rule!

    1. Re:Why by Surak · · Score: 2, Funny

      Hard core networking engineers don't NEED wireless LANs. Hardcore networking engineers use smoke signals!

  4. Hmmm... by caitsith01 · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Ever been out in the field and wanted to make a quick wireless link calculation, but didn't have a computer or internet connection handy?"

    Yes, I have that problem all the time! Why should an average Joe like me struggle with complex trigonometry when this handy little device let's me do wireless link calculations in the field like a pro? No more time consuming manual wireless link calculations for me. Are you still doing wireless link calculations with a fiddly old wireless link calculation slide rule? Throw it in the garbage! You don't need it anymore thanks to this handy gizmo. Don't be a laughing stock because you can't do quick wireless link calculations in the field... act now!

    By the way, what's a wireless link calculation? (Don't you love it when an article assumes you know exactly what it's talking about?)

    --
    Read Pynchon.
    1. Re:Hmmm... by iworm · · Score: 4, Funny

      Good god man, don't know what a wireless link calculation is? It a calculation of the, er, link's, um, wirelessabilityness coefficient thingy wotsit.

  5. Well, no... by jazir1979 · · Score: 2, Funny

    ..I can't say that I have ever wanted to do that.

    --
    What's your GCNSEQNO?
  6. incredible by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny


    who needs mp3 players and video messaging when there are applications like this to take advantage of cutting edge cellphone technology, iam sure all the professional engineers will junk their 20,000$ test equipment and convert by the end of the day

    thank goodness this exists

  7. Screenshot by waynemcdougall · · Score: 3, Funny
    Ahh yes, a screenshot with the infinite variety and subtle shades of colour, best captured as a JPG image for smoothing out that overly-crisp text.

    Make sure you keep the image quality high enough to capture every nuance of the subtle faux wood-grain background (and by background I mean 68.3% of the image), not forgetting the coffee cup stain.

    Be sure to include the whole of the phone including every dialing digit, because that gives context to the screenshot.

    Well done. You passed the 0.5 Mb threshold, but still shy of the 0.6 standard. Try a brightly coloured background (a stained tartan kilt plus sporan should do) next time. Remember you want to get to at least 1.5 Mb so it won't fit on a floppy.

    --
    Recycle PCs and build a wireless community network www.hillsborough.org.nz
    1. Re:Screenshot by aziraphale · · Score: 4, Funny

      stenography? You think Bin Laden is hiding orders for terror cells in the shorthand recordings of court proceedings?

      Or perhaps you mean steganography - the science of hiding dinosaurs in pictures. Or something.

  8. Hmm, let me think... by Powercntrl · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Ever been out in the field and wanted to make a quick wireless link calculation..."

    Umm, no. I have; however, been out in the field and wished my cell phone would get a goddamn signal.

    --

    ---
    DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
  9. Woohoo! by Oscar_Wilde · · Score: 1, Funny

    Now, where is the metric version?

  10. Wireless Link Calculator by i_really_dont_care · · Score: 5, Funny

    Welcome to Wireless Link Calculator.
    This is free software distributed under the GPL. See COPYING for details.

    Enter first number of wireless links
    > 5

    Enter second number of wireless links
    > 3

    Together that amounts to 8 wireless links.
    Have a nice day.