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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.
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
Fine if your into that, but if you really want to tinker, user scrougeable WIFI parts seem few and far between...
One chapter of this book covers building a solar-powered access point. It's not really wireless power, but it does let you have power just about anywhere that you have access to sunlight.
You mean like this? I suspect that's probably more than you were after...
The Spoon
Updated 6/28/2011
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.
Sarcasm over broadcast electricity; sheesh, what are they teaching kids in school these days? Tesla invented technology to do exactly this around 100 years ago. No, you don't get electrocuted. The down side is that modern electronic widgets would get their unshielded brains scrambled. And maybe migratory birds would fly in random directions. And maybe a few other things. But no, you don't get electrocuted. Anyway, Tesla had a flourecent light bulb with nothing attached to it that he could just carry around his lab because he had a mini electricity broadcaster rigged up. He had plans to set up gigantic versions (and actually build one in Colorado) to serve households but it fell through for funding reasons.
Actually, somebody mentioned an R/C car. I think if you attached a camera to an R/C car and received the video on a monitor, it would make driving it even more fun. Imagine driving the little thing around on the ground and seeing what it sees.
If you've got a spare flourescent tube light or similar you can do this yourself too. Ideally, make sure it's dark, then take your light, and a friend with one, and go stand under one of the mega-pylons/electricty wires with 5 bajillion* volts running through it. As if by magic the light will light up; now you and your friend can have lightsaber battles without pesky wires!
Although if you *actually* hit each other hard you wont get a clean cut. You're more likely to actually smash the bulb and cut each other with the shards of glass.
But hey, no pain no gain, right?
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.