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Wi-Fi Toys
Wi-Fi Toys by Mike Outmesguine offers 15 projects for radio enthusiasts and those, who have never dealt with wireless networking beyond buying an 802.11 access point at local electronics store. Former US AirForce and National Guard engineer, the author is currently running a technology services company.
Assume for a minute that you have had limited experience with wireless technologies, but are young, ambitious, and eager to dive into the deep sea of wireless data. What kind of projects would be fun to play with? What kind of projects would be educational as well as useful? Probably improving the reception via various antenna hacks would be a cool thing to do, and improving access point to increase coverage would be another way to wow the neighbors with your wireless skills. Discovering other people's networks and wardriving is a must for any wireless security beginner. The author dedicates the first three parts of the book (table of contents here) to building antennas, wardriving and hacking access points. Yes, the book requires toying with hardware and occasionally being outside in the fresh air.
The first chapter, Building Your Own Wi-Fi Antenna Cable, is available online in PDF format and it talks about building your own antenna cable. The rest of the chapters in Part 1 take the reader through building a paperclip antenna, creating a tin can antenna, and modifying the existing access point with a high gain antenna.
Probably there are some people that read the last sentence and asked themselves, "So what is a high gain antenna?" Which brings us to the next point - the readability of the book. Outmesguine did a really nice job outlining the projects step by step and supplying all the major steps with the photos. The pictures are black-and-white, and so are the diagrams. Overall the pictures turned out nicely, but I wish the author had the color version on the Web site, since some of the images (like on page 79), displaying computer graphics on dark backgrounds, did not turn out very detailed. Everything essential to the project is there, but still, color photos and screenshots would have made the difference in some cases.
The author does a good job of explaining terminology before launching into the project. Where needed, Mike Outmesguine provides helpful diagrams, that any radio amateur is probably already aware of, but they still make a nice and readable book for the rest of us. Also, the goal of the chapters is not just build the toy and get done with it as soon as possible. For example, in chapter 4 when talking about modifying the existing access point, the author understands that the only reason you want to do that is to increase the WiFi coverage in your house. So a few pages are dedicated to propagation losses, interference and everything radio-related that the reader needs to take into account before strengthening the access point with a high-gain antenna.
Chapter 14 is probably the coolest in the book, as it talks about creating a car-to-car wireless link for the purpose of... videoconferencing involving two Webcams and Microsoft NetMeeting. Naturally, this is not for driver-to-driver communication, but in case you've got two cars on the road trip, the passengers now can use their WiFi-enabled laptops (and by now everyone should have one) to launch a video conference.
Overall the book reads great, even if you're not serious about doing some projects, it's still fun to follow photographs and see what Mike and the contributors have done in terms of wireless projects. Each chapter is presented as a single project, so with the exception of terminology knowledge there's no preceding knowledge that needs to be there, so one could theoretically start with a digital picture frame (Chapter 15) that hangs on the wall, downloading the pictures via the wireless link and playing occasional videos.
Overall, this is an interesting book to read, and if you've been looking for simple and intermediate projects involving radio technologies and WiFi, the Wi-Fi Toys is packed with useful information.
You can purchase Wi-Fi Toys from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews. To see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
knows a thing or two about whiffy toys.
Chapter 14 is probably the coolest in the book, as it talks about creating a car-to-car wireless link for the purpose of... videoconferencing involving two Webcams and Microsoft NetMeeting. Naturally, this is not for driver-to-driver communication, but in case you've got two cars on the road trip, the passengers now can use their WiFi-enabled laptops (and by now everyone should have one) to launch a video conference.
Yeah, that does sound pretty dang cool. Some friends and I are taking a two-to-three car caravan to Defcon this summer, and that would be a lot of fun to try.
- dshaw
A lot of avid PC users got first introduced
I'm not so sure you be should doing book reviews.
Will video games go the way of the dodo now that we can start playing them with real physical objects?
I want a WiFi tinfoil hat!
--
make install -not war
Is this really so complicated that someone had to write a book about it?
Drill baby drill - on Mars
A wi-fi microwave that would IM me that my food's done would be quite nice...
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
...when do we get wireless power?
The author dedicates the first three parts of the book (table of contents here) to building antennas, wardriving and hacking access points. Tick .... another item on the Christmas list to myself. Should pay for itself in no time... :)
The friendliest digital photography forums on the net!
Fine if your into that, but if you really want to tinker, user scrougeable WIFI parts seem few and far between...
But this book doesn't really look all that interesting. When I think about WiFi toys, I don't want common things that might be practical... I want toys. Something I can play with and has virtually no practical application.
For instance, I read awhile back about some guys using one of those cheap robosapiens and a bluetooth module to make a wireless robot controllable from the PC. There's a toy I wouldn't mind reading a step-by-step about.
Maybe a wifi enabled RC car. Or wifi-ing an old palm pilot that downloads slashdot news whenever it detects a wifi signal. This practical crap makes me sick.
Wi-Fi Velcro Sheep.
Damn, where's that VC's phone number..
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
Open frequency selectable 2.4 GHz card with capability of larger spectrum sizes..
You know, for the ham operators? Where's THEIR cards at?
Simple controller for remote control of A/C circuits - turn on/off, sense on/off, something like Smarthome or X10.
A robot with wifi link running embedded Linux
R/C car using wifi so you can drive it visually - geek NASCAR!
Wifi enabled dog collar; you train the dog with basic commands and then "drive" it just like the R/C car (and no, PETA need not be alarmed)
sigs, as if you care.
I'd think this is a lot easier done with sticking a hf amplifier between the transmitter and the antenna.
For those of you interested in spying on your lesbian neighbours... I mean, of course, keeping an eye on your kids at night, check out ebuyer.com and search for "Secure Teddy" ;) Yes, a wireless video camera inside a teddy bear! Genius!
C'mon, forty plus posts and no one's mentioned the glaring grammatical mistake yet???
The ExtremeTech series of Wiley books aims at the readers who are curious about technology and are willing to dedicate some time to personal to projects that educate and develop skills.
First thing I noticed... =/
First things first--why is this just now being reviewed? This book is several months old now. Now that that's out of the way, I'd like to say that the book is good in that it collects the information into one place for you, but to be honest nothing in the book was truly origianl. Every project it has in it looks like it was ripped right off the internet. But, like I said, it is nice in that it puts all of the information in one tidy little desk reference. In all actuality it was a decent showcase of some of the more geeky things you can do with wireless. If you want a good book that ExtremeTech did that wans't all just gee-wiz stuff, check out their LAN Party book. Unlike WiFi Toys, it actually has some meat to it that you can use in setting up a real event. It also introduces some ideas that most LAN party organizers don't touch on.
No mention of WiFiMaps.com for drawing Wardriving data onto a map? I would figure that even mentioning Netstumbler, Kismet, and talking about maps and stuff would give at least a mention -- sheesh! Guess I'll have to wait for O'Reilly's Mapping Hacks book to come out.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
The V8 supercars in Australia use a system that includes Wifi and Linux based computers to record car information for use by race officals. See an old story on the setup here.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"improving access point to increase coverage would be another way to wow the neighbors with your wireless skills"
Ummm...sure, if you neighbors are all 'Joe Sixpack' kinfolk. While spread spectrum devices are designed to frequency hop to find open channels, your modded device may well bleed across a wider swath of spectrum than just the channel(s) it is attempting to use. By running an uncertified configuration you are merely following in the same "Power good - FCC BAD!!" mentality of the 1970's US CB radio community. This really isn't an issue yet as the density of wireless networks is still low in most areas. Once 802.16 hits the streets and service providers start losing clients because the neighborhood wi-fi hacker is bleeding all over the spectrum, the the fecal matter will contact the fan. Personally, I'm betting that the l33t hax0rs with the 1 Mi radius bluetooth access points are going to be first to be cornholed^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H contacted by the fcc when wireless ISPs cry foul.
C'mon the strongest 802.11 amplifiers I've seen were in the range of 2Watts, whereas typical microwave oven has 800Watts at least, I say this would fry most Wi-Fi equipment and your brain too..
"Assume for a minute that you have had limited experience with wireless technologies, but are young, ambitious, and eager to dive into the deep sea of wireless data." Why 'young'?
Here's what I want:
1. "terminal server" wi-fi transmitter. Sends out compressed screen update (like RDP, VNC).
2. "terminal client" wi-fi receiver -> DVI adapter. Receives screen update, converts to video signal, transmits over DVI to a connected monitor.
Then you could have flat panels with receivers hung all over the house with sessions open on the central server. (In particular I'd like one near my drum kit, so I can access MP3s, look at tabs, etc).
http://www.savapoint.com/savapoint/productinfo.php ?prodid=3500&cid=10 , the other one seems to be discontinued, notice the price, it's twice as expensive!
Oh my absolute favorite is the "Chapter 15: Making a Dynamic Wireless Digital Picture Frame"
Ha, ha, ha....
Sounds a lot like "Chapter 15: Creating a Digital Picture Frame." from the Linux Toys book, doesn't it?
Hmmmm, given that the Picture frame was a scavanged and hacked LAPTOP (!?!?!?) what new info could they have added to the WiFi version? Oh, I get it, "insert a PCMCIA wireless adapter card."
What a great book. What's next, "G'whiz WiFi Toys, version 2" in which you just replace the B cards with G cards...
This sounds more like Extreme Dreck.