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Tue, 22 Mar 2005
First Hacknight in A Long Time
As almost nobody knows, my wife is going into consulting. This is always an interesting subject at HackNights, and Maggie and I have been dragging our feet on this thing for almost as long as we have known each other....which isn't all that long...but still. Also talked about SnowNet, which has almost the same status as Washington's "Snow Pack" (or lack there of). (Yes, it melted). My SnowNet team has a new leader (Peter Yorke) who will, at the very least, be in charge of salvaging gear. After this, we are going to have to seriously consider our goals for the future. What are we trying to accomplish? Do we really even have the resources (time) to do this? SnowNet, even at its conception, was a network to nowhere. Yea, sure, long haul wireless links into eastern washington....resistant to the sensitivity of today's infrastructure...bla bla bla...but this was intended to go into communities with no active community network projects. Build it, and they won't come, and the gear rusts on the tower. On a happier note, I am pleased to report that we have an active user base (as in, repeat users) on the Sounder through TacomaTrainNode. Is that awesome or what?! Fri, 21 May 2004
Streaming Commute to Hack Night
Which brings me to my point....I've always wanted to stream audio/video wirelessly from anywhere, but what the hell does one do with it? Maybe I need my own reality TV show? Fri, 02 Apr 2004
Location-Aware Games Part 2 - Mogi
Tue, 23 Mar 2004Hacknight was interesting tonight because I enter the room and was asked to sign this NDA. It sounded kinda fun so I read it over, didn't find anything completely unreasonable, and signed it. Now I have completely given up my freedom of writing in my blog and talking about the experience in detail... The "game" was basically a GPS (Lets call it location aware) supplimental reality game. In the demo, we chased (and captured) virtual ghosts across a park using PDAs. We were ghost busters! :) The entire concept is going to lead to some really great things I think, what we experienced is only the start. The magic card / RPG geeks are going to go crazy over this crap when it is finished. Also, Peter and Michael brought a Soekris for Tacoma node. Sounds like we are going to startup the snownet project again, and we should have TacomaNode finished in about two weeks. It will feature a soekris with an orinoco card (and some 'hacks' to correct our timing and retransmit issues), as well as a colo'ed machine with about 30 gigs, and some bandwidth to use (!). I expect we'll be on the roof next weekend if all goes well. Baldi needs a lot of work if we can't connect up to it, I have heard that things aren't fairing well :DSun, 21 Mar 2004
Streaming Audio and Video Data Over Today's Cellular Networks
I've streamed high qualiy audio over my handset before, even while driving on the freeway, and had great success. At the time, it was a 80-90kbps Windows Media stream, and it did not break up during my 30 minute commute. Very impressive. It was buffered, and the bursty nature of 1xRTT may have kept the stream up during times of contention and lack of throughput. I really didn't look at the statistics or even cared at the time. Who knows for sure. On The Upload... But a bulk of that traffic was in the forward (downlink)..kinda cool...big deal. You couldn't possibly upload at those rates with a dinky cell phone with 3 bars, right? Originating streaming content is a whole different story too, because if you lag behind with low throughput, all of your viewers/listeners will suffer. Well, I wanted to find out for sure. 1xRTT To The Limit....Everyone Fhqwgads I started a RealMedia stream, turned on video (quickcam) and audio (laptop mic). I started out a little low, using the "28k Modem" codec. Got video, got audio....no lost frames...hmmm..this was getting a little spooky. I was streaming video from my cell phone! Bumped it up to 56k...looked better, no lost frames. Went to Single IDSN (64kbps circuit), still quite good. Went to Dual ISDN (128kbps) circuit and we still looked golden. At this point, I was in awe. This means, for the last two years, one could have originated some pretty high qualiy video and audio streams from almost anywhere, during 1xRTT data services. Lets Try Some Audio Since my victim computer left with someone, I started playing with just audio. Could someone originate a near-CD quality audio stream from an 1xRTT network? Yes. Pretty much, and with no interruption. The RealAudio codec wouldnt go above 60kbps, so I couldnt push it near the throughput limits I expected on the upload, but it worked great in both mono and stereo. Given the other remote options (phone line and analog cellular phone @ 3KHz bandpass sounds like AM radio), this would be perfect for studio remotes. Thats is in ideal conditions -- and just what you need is network congestion or cellular subscriber contention at the time you need your data throughput the most! GPRS is cool too! I dropped down the audio codec to "28k modem" and streaming live audio to a friend's GPRS modem. No breakups, it worked perfectly. We were all very impressed. Now, his GPRS modem likely would not originate 28k audio streams (he only gets a slot of about 1kB/sec for upload on GPRS, while the download is considerably fatter), but this was pretty damn cool I thought. Damn, I thought it was cool when i could pull a 8kbps stream via CDPD. Conclusion 1xRTT is pretty cool....but I cant wait until CDMA2000 EV-DV :p, a little over a meg and half of upload! Tue, 20 Jan 2004
Hack Night
I thought it was a pretty slick package -- a nice tripod mount with a waterproof enclosure bolted to the side. Inside was some sort of routerboard, cant remember the name. It had a couple ethernet interfaces, PCI slot, pcmcia slots, etc. They popped in two Senao cards...one was the old 100mW version, the other is a newer 200mW. To be mounted to this mast will be a 24dBi parabolic (aimed at Matt's node on Capital Hill), and a 15dBi omni. This omni should provide about -75dBm signal to any pcmcia card (-4dBm) within 2 miles. Talk about lighting up the entire north part of downtown! Near the end of Hack Night was some really weird talk of future "projects". The drift of it was more along the lines of building an application rather than just building a network to ping back and forth with. The application's needs would then drive the requirements and motivation to install specific wireless links and hardware in specific locations. Sounds like a better approch to me. When the personal computer was first invented, it was a solution without a problem. Same goes for the internet (and it still is the case depending on your outlook) Maybe we can learn from his and actually come up with some problems to drive network development. Wed, 14 Jan 2004
Hack Night
I've been toying around with shooting some sort of segment for SeattleWireless TV, kind of a Myth Busters / Bill Nye deal on wireless HowTos and common myths about wifi. Some of the guys down there offered to help me shoot it and use some of the video gear. I was thinking a couple of myths that are endlessly debated on mailing lists:
Passive repeaters A lot of people are dumbfounded that something that doesn't plug into the wall, has no radio or amplifier could possibly work. This demo would consist of a passive repeater shot. First, do the math. Second, the shot without the passive repeater (showing marginal or no signal). Last, the shot with the passive repeater in place. Show the signal near full strength. ...and for the end, we'll take I, Cringley's shot and prove it with my nifty formula i have for passive repeaters. There's a rumor going around that Cringley's repeater was a bunch of BS, it never was installed...that needs to be stopped. ISM devices vs. WiFi Its always been a running debate whether or not these devices a) interfere at all b) degrade service c) completely make the wifi signal unusable until it turns off. We would do throughput and signal tests without any devices. Then, we'd bring an onslaught of random 2.4GHz devices -- bluetooth, a video sender, a nasty FHSS portable phone, microwave oven, etc. WAP11/WRT54G There are a lot of power hacks out there for the linksys gear. One proved to be rather dirty. Prove the WAP11 once and for all, show the new WRT54G hack to see what it actually does. Would need to borrow the spectrum analyzer from mike or work. 802.11 MAC timing Do a really long shot (maybe use baldi or some other temp arrangement) and see if we can hit some nasty timing issues. Use a 802.11 MAC analyzer (i got the software at work) to evaluate what happens. Pringles Can Take all these ghetto antennas and use test gear to determine how much real gain we get, along with possible pattern issues, SWR figures, and maybe some math to prove that these antennas suck ass.... 2.4GHz emission study I think this would be the most interesting. Matt says he can feel when one of my big ol' nasty antennas are bleching out tons of power. I have some great ideas for this one... For past blog entries, check out the archive on the side or click here. |
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