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."

Comments

Ah, cellphone feature creep.

[Valar]

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

Re:Ah, cellphone feature creep.

[chrispy666]

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...)

Why

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Why

[Surak]

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

Hmmm...

[caitsith01]

"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?)

Re:Hmmm...

[iworm]

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.

Well, no...

[jazir1979]

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

Screenshot

[waynemcdougall]

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.

Re:Screenshot

[aziraphale]

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.

Hmm, let me think...

[Powercntrl]

"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.

Wireless Link Calculator

[i_really_dont_care]

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.