Light Painting Wi-Fi

dostojevski78 writes "Some Norwegian art students built this gizmo to visualize wi-fi signal strength in the city streets. The result is simply beautiful. Who said technology can't be aesthetically pleasing?"

Comments

I know who.

[Siberwulf]

Who said technology can't be aesthetically pleasing?

Pretty sure it was Roger Ebert.

Re:I know who.

[Lundse]

No, he just said video games aren't art, and he's right...

Portal.

I like the concept, just not the application

[GodfatherofSoul]

Knowing the difference in signal strength along 100 feet of sidewalk is pretty useless. Just throwing out an idea, I think it would be neat to use a NASA-ish artificially colored satellite view of a city. At different points; record say three different metrics; secured network strength, open network strength, and say number of networks. Assign each an RGB component and color your maps that way. You'd be able to quickly look at a map and determine based on color and intensity the approximate characteristics of WIFI all over a map.

Re:I like the concept, just not the application

[adamdoyle]

but to me it amounts to nothing but "Heh, cool concept." and I dont care beyond that.

I don't mean to be snarky but I'm sure they would say the same thing about half the stuff you do and consider "useful." Not everything has to be a tool. (I'll refrain from using that sentence to set up a snide remark) Some things can just be for enjoyment... e.g. art. I thought it was one of the coolest photographs I've seen in awhile. It's particularly interesting to people who have both an interest in photography and technology.

Re:I like the concept, just not the application

[adamdoyle]

I would actually argue that while it may not be useful per se, it is definitely interesting to see how geography affects WIFI signal. I would really like to see a 3d version of this where instead of being, say, 30 rows by 1 column, being 30 rows by 30 columns so that you could have a 3d grid of voxels(?) where height is proportional to signal strength. It would still be artistic yet would paint a better picture of the affects of geography/terrain/building materials on WIFI strength.

(I do kindof wonder how long the signal strength meter takes to update and if it's enough for this to actually correlate accurately to the current position)

Re:I like the concept, just not the application

[GooberToo]

I thought the images were pretty cool looking. But for me, they never really seemed to capture an image which really showed its potential. They needed to position the camera such that it was an 3D isometric view and take pictures around interesting geography and buildings such that you can get a sense of how the geography and distance are playing a significant role in the observed signal strength.

To some degree you could see this. For example, when they walked past windows you could see the strength rise. When they walked past walls and stretches without windows the signal quickly fell off. Would have been really nice to see that projected out into 3D rather than just 2D in a 3D scene.

And of course, it would be neat if they had a different color of lights which indicated SNR relative to the strength they are presenting.

I'm famous!

[DeeZee]

Or at least my Wi-Fi network is. They used my building about two minutes in :)

Re:Reminds me of a commercial.

[CyprusBlue113]

or Vegas.