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Homemade EVDO/WiFi Mobile Access Point
Tamundson writes "Over the last few weeks I've built myself a mobile access point for my car. It's based on a Soekris net2421 embedded Linux box and uses Verizon's 1xRTT/EVDO network as its uplink, resharing it over 802.11b. Wherever my car goes, my Internet link goes! :)
I finally put some webpages together on how I built it. The components are pretty cheap and anybody with basic Linux skills can build their own just as easily. I've also got it interfacing with Google Maps to do live vehicle tracking via gpsd. It also uploads pictures from an on-board webcam every five minutes or so."
Interesting, from two wheels to four wheels.
JIC, coral links for website and GoogleMap image
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
How can I use your access point if you keep driving around?
That we have invented a million different ways to distract ourselves while blasting down the highway, without developing self-driving cars?
Get the cost down, and this would be an interesting way to integrate per-vehicle information (speed and congestion [via vehicle proximities/GPS]) with map information to get realtime data on the best route to work. Or figure out where the most interesting accidents are happening.
I never vote for anyone. I always vote against.
-- W.C. Fields
Heh, no officer, my I didn't crash, I was slashdotted...
For speed testing I used Broadband Reports's site.
In 1xRTT-land I got 70up/30dn most of the time. About 1/4 of the time I'd get 110up/50dn. At the worst (only a few times, and usually when the evening commute hours put a lot of traffic near where I was parked) I'd get about 50/10. Compared to a 56k modem (about 26/20 on the same tool when I tried it), this isn't bad.
I've had 4 computers using it at the same time. While it will start to gronk on images with multiple access it's truly not that bad. And no, we're not using any kind of proxy, cache or compressor.
I've yet to get this system out under EVDO coverage yet, save for the single test that got me 600dn (found one local tower where it was activated. Didn't last. Hrmf). When EVDO hits my area (or I take a trip into an EVDO area) I'll put up better metrics.
Compared to GPRS (my old wireless link) it's much nicer.
If this car's a rockin'... don't look at my webcam pictures uploaded every five minutes!
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
Whine, whine, whine. In my day, we had to go up the hill to the bit well and carry the bits back to the PC with the bit bucket! And we liked it!! You kids today with your broadband, and your big pants, and your Ministry of Sound! ;P
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Thanks for all the comments and email so far; I'm glad folks seem to like the project.
:)
While you're there, be sure to check out our other hardware hack from last year, stored on the same server: CLIVE. It's an Iridium Flare Tracker we built out of a Gameboy Advance and a DPSS laser.
I've moved all the images from both projects to the same high-bandwidth server so they shouldn't stall out any more. Being slashdotted is rather fun to watch.
Yeah, sure, you can get a bluetooth-enabled phone and run your laptop through that, but the point isn't simply to produce mobile wireless access. It's more about running a permanent network out of your automobile.
We've had the technology and the ability to do this, but the really cool applications are just too risky, too liability-prone, or too legally questionable to catch the attention of the developers. So while your luxocar has a bluetooth network that catches viruses, and a lot of handy value-added features go by the wayside.
I mean, here's the things that are useful for an in-car network:
A) Porn. Porn drives technology, period. I strongly recommend that the next development in this field be a means to stream internet porn onto a heads-up (hands-free) display, possibly via voice command. Since we're all being open-sourcy about it, there should also be a facility to transmit and add to the global wealth of internet porn.
B) Anti-theft. This is talked about in the article, although I find it difficult to imagine a thief wanting anything as ugly as a Honda Element. Maybe if he riced it up a bit, and camouflaged the solar panel as a big-ass aftermarket wing or something; that and one of those "battery life extender" stickers that says "R-Type" on it
C) Navigation: again, there are already factory-installed and aftermarket solutions for this, but we really could use some improvements that only proper geeks can provide:
1. The author mentions networking radar detectors, as well as other traffic indicators (speed, proximity). That's a good start.
2. Much more interesting would be to network a whole slew of sensors. Radar detectors are good; but why not slap in a cheap scanner that runs through a whole range of frequencies and plots spikes and intensities? With a few sensors around, you could provide real-time plots of a large amount of radio traffic, and even localize quite a few. Heck, many police and fire frequencies are already out there on the internet.
Of course, y'all would need some centralized support for that, and if done wrong, it'd probably be the target of some congressman's ire, and attempts to shut it down.
Then again, if you ran something like a series of IRC channels (one for each region, run through port 80 and otherwise made to look like web traffic), authenticated users and blocklists, that just echoed reports from rmeote users, and maybe queries ("anyone got a picture of the tollbooth?"), you'd have your geek comms paradise, and the guy riding shotgun would have plenty of tasks to perform to isolate and avoid the mundane threats of traffic jams, separate ATIS noise from highway patrols, keep a steady stream of porn going to the driver's HU/HDD, and try to avoid throwing up.
D) Don't forget the need to bridge with existing open WiFi access points. Starbucks offers their networks as a service to the community, after all.
Then again, it's just a car. Speeding is generally something best done away from other cars. VoIP won't work too well with 3G latency. Any nerd project that gets mainstream acceptance loses most of its utility as people figure out ways to nickle and dime the life out of it.
DON'T CLICK ON THE LINK!!!! we're going to crash his car!