HackNight Details

Published
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admin
on May 9, 2008
in /seattlewireless/hacknight
. 1 Comment

I don’t know if it’s the lack of blogging, the fridge full of beer, or the fact that it’s spring, but HackNight has been pretty populated for the past few months,  and we’ve even been getting a few out-of-towners.  This week, Shaddi Hasan from the RO.B.IN project popped in and got to see the kind of silliness that occurs when the beer gets low and the days get longer (That’s Ben Schiendelman, the Seattle Transit blogger behind Shaddi disguised as a table sitting on a couch checking it’s mail).   Last week, we got to hang out with Russell Senior from PTP, and a  bit further back, we got a presentation from Veljo of wifi.ee before we hit the Stumbling Monk for a little Belgian beerfest.    I’ve been getting this feeling that with the doom and gloom in the  getting me psyched for the International Summit for Community Wireless Networking at the end of the month in DC.    I only hope DC has an analogue to Taco Gringos because I’m pretty sure we can’t get away with some of the late night shenanigans of the last IS4CWN in the nation’s Capitol.

Last week we started playing with the Wiligear WBD-111.  It’s a nifty new board we just started carrying at Metrix.    Cheap, powerful, and supports the UBNT 900Mhz XR9.   The shipped-with-it linux from the Firmware Factory at Wilibox is pretty cool, and if you don’t want the complexity of a fully populated web interface, you can streamline your web interface with skins.   I haven’t dived into their layer 2 meshing stuff yet, but they do claim some 802.11s compat.     I guess we’ll have to check out interoperability with um… OLPC or something?

Regardless, it’s pretty cool stuff.  If you don’t have any hardware yet,  it seems like the cheapest and fastest way to get on the NodeSeaCCP 900Mhz tubes, which are finally up and running and pointed up the Pike/Pine corridor.     I’m really interested in finding out what NLOS really means around here, so I guess we’ll have to slap together a mobile rig and start channelling war peddlaz on 900.   If we can crest the hill, it opens up a world of possibilities.    I’ve heard good reports from rural areas, but wow, cities sure are a different beastie.

For the past month or so, Schuyler has been all about showing up with Clearwire stuff.    Last week, we ripped one of em apart with the goal of replacing its built-in panel.

Clearwire modems don’t have external antenna connectors (not much of a surprise),  but if you have a little bit of patience (and some desoldering braid), you can solder on your own fairly easily.   If you don’t have braid, it’ll take 5x as long, 3 or 4 soldering irons and torches, a dremel or two, and maybe a half rack of beer.   If you’re tossing on an out of band antenna and you want any gain, the rule is “Go big or go home”.   Schuyler attached the Lanster Lance to the Clearwire SMA and was good to go.

I heard a rumor that you could do some fairly pokey stuff on the Clearwire network even if your modem isn’t activated.    We’ve determined that you can’t do much beyond pinging other hosts with a de-authed one, but honestly,  that sure is a lot.

EyeFi on Linux

Published
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admin
on April 3, 2008
in /gear, /misc, /photos and /seattlewireless
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d200 and EEEPC
Now that I’ve got an eeepc, I’ve been able to cut down the weight I carry every day without losing much functionality.  One thing that I have been missing however, is the ability to configure my Eye-Fi card for random networks that I come across.     I’m running the stock Linux, Xandros, and Eye-Fi doesn’t officially support anything other than Windows and OSX.   Fortunately,  Dave Hansen has released Eye-Fi Config on his EyeFi Linux Hacking blog.   It’s a simple command line tool that doesn’t help you with online service configs or local copy, but allows you to search for, add and delete WiFi networks from your linux machine.   It’s exactly what I needed.  Thanks Dave!

Cheap Links

Published
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on March 29, 2008
in /metrix
. 0 Comments


We’ve been playing with PowerStations for a couple of months over at Metrix, and have found them to be pretty cool, but the new NanoStation2 (which we just got in stock) is just awesome.   A little bigger than a beer bottle, and under the cost of a good bender, the NS2 is a community wireless networkers best new friend.   Waterproof, pole mountable (with zip tie mounting!), 400mW atheros radio, 10dBi built in antenna,  External SMA, POE, Linux based OS, and a spiffy LED display.

Fresh out of the box, AirOS is pretty good.  I wish it had SSH and iperf,  OLSR, and a kitchen sink, but these things will come in time and by other people.  You can set the NS2 as an AP or a Client, do WDS, encryption, MAC Clone, bridge, route, and a slew of other things in the simple but AJAX’d web configurator.  AirOS is linux under the hood, so you can enable telnet in case you need to set some routes or do something outside of the capabilities of the standard stuff.    It shouldn’t take long for an OpenWRT build, so just keep your eyes on the NS2 Support Page.

These should make for an Interesting HackNight next week, and if you’re local and interested in picking one up,  just let me know.

Published
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admin
on March 11, 2008
in Bitstream
. 0 Comments

I’ve started keeping track of the randomness that is my commute on 8 BLOCK WALK

Asus Eee PC

Published
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admin
on December 23, 2007
in /gear and /seattlewireless
. 3 Comments

mason likes the eeepc

I’ve had my hands on an Eee PC 4G Surf for the past 24 hours or so (when I’ve been able to get it away from my son) and I have to say, I’m impressed. The eeeuser.com wiki has step-by-step instructions for pretty much anything you’d want to do, including Xandros tweaks, alternate OS installations and hardware hacks. So far, I’ve concentrated on getting the most screen real estate out of Xandros, and getting all my familiar tools installed. I’ve actually found typing pretty easy on it’s small keyboard, and the 7″ screen is really nice. Moving back and forth to my 15.4″ laptop is really weird now, and it feels like my Gateway is even bigger than I thought it was before (seriously. the thing is huge). My back already approves of the Asus.

I also got the Backtrack 3 Beta USB image booting off of a 1GB SD Card. I left my USB DVD drive at work, and following the instructions got me nowhere. Here’s what I did.

On my XP box:

Downloaded the HP Drive Key Boot Utility and formatted / made my 1G bootable.  For detailed instructions see this page.
Downloaded the BackTrack USB Image (946MB) and copied the rar file to the flash.

Removed the SD card and put it into the Eee PC

On the Eee PC:

Opened a terminal, and copied the rar file to a temporary directory on the SSD
Used unrar (included in xandros!) to unpack the rar onto the SD

The instructions failed me at this point by telling me to run bootinst.sh. lilo barfed, and finding out what was causing the problem seemed like it was going to take longer than I wanted. luckily I noticed the dos directory with loadlin.

Create an autoexec.bat with the following lines:

cd c:\boot\dos

BT3.bat

That’s it. reboot the box, hit esc when you get the bios screen, and choose the SD. Blam, you’re ready to inject packets and be a wireless pain in the butt. One cool thing about BackTrack (beyond it just being a good tool) is that Muts (one of the developers on BT) has an Eee PC, so you know any super irritating problems will get worked out by release.

d200 with eye-fi

Published
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admin
on November 11, 2007
in /photo and /photos
. 5 Comments
d200 with eye-fi
I’ve been using an Eye-Fi for about a year now. I’ve been on the Beta and on the Gamma, and although I’m not allowed to talk about some things I’ve learned, I can talk a little about how I use it.

For the majority of the year, I used the Eye-Fi in my Nikon D50, but in the last month, I’ve upgraded to a D200.

The Eye-Fi does not *officially* work in CF cameras, but all you need to do is get a SD-CF adapter. You need to tear the metal cover off of the adapter, or it will block the antenna. Needle-nose pliers or a butter knife should work fine. It’s just a little glue.

The Eye-Fi can work in a couple of different ways. The card automatically sends JPGs to your local machine, or a variety of online services. in my case, Flickr. It does not transfer RAW, nor does it auto-delete images off of the card.

I’m OK with not having auto-delete. Network and server reliability aside, it’s nice to have your originals under your control. Auto delete might be a nice option for stuff I didn’t care about, but I rarely find myself not caring about the pictures I’m taking.

At first, not having RAW support bothered me, but after using the card for a while and understanding how it all fits in with my workflow, I’m OK with it. I shoot RAW+JPG, and I tend to shoot a lot of pictures. I shoot with manual lenses, so my trash:keeper ratio is pretty high. When I’m shooting I will look through them on-camera and take out the obvious blurry pictures, but when I’ve filled up, I pop my card in a computer to get the originals off. During the shoot, and when powered by the computer, the card transfers pictures in the background.

This changes my workflow in a couple of different ways.

Generally, JPGs are on Flickr by the time my RAW transfer is finished. This pushes the resizing, tagging and adding titles/comments to an interface I like (and as a bonus, a CPU and disk that aren’t mine). I haven’t mastered lightroom, and I have a feeling that I never really will. I will probably end up cutting it out of my workflow entirely once I figure out a better way to grab my RAWs and put them on my RAID. Right now it’s a convoluted process and it’s far from efficient. Because my pictures are already online I can do a quick check and delete of the stuff online, before lightroom finishes importing. This leads to more stuff being posted. I’ve found if a picture is posted online, doesn’t suck too bad and doesn’t need any tweaks, it stays. If it does needs further modification, I can either change it in lightroom and use ‘replace’, or for really quick mods, use Picnik. Prior to the Eye-Fi, I had to transfer all my pictures (go get some coffee or something), go through them all (sometimes spending far too much time trying to make a bad picture good), add to a collection, export that collection, upload those files, then go through and deal with all the Flickr tagging/titling/commenting. If I got distracted at any point during this process, it almost always led to pictures not getting uploaded by the time I did my next flurry of picture taking, and things would either end up in non-chronological order, or more likely, just not online.

Office Nomads: Now Open

Published
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admin
on November 9, 2007
in /capitolhill
. 2 Comments

November 1st was the opening night at Office Nomads. I dropped by and took a couple of fun shots of Jacob, Susan and the water cooler. We’ve been talking to Jacob about co-working spaces for a while now, and I just think the concept is very cool. It is on the top floor of the Heath Printing building, just up the block from Metrix, and there’s space for 40 desks, a couple of conference rooms, and a full coffee pot. If you’re one of the coffee shop campers and are tired of a cramped table and no printer, this is an awesome alternative with a day rate of only $20. The Capitol Hill Times just put up an interview with Jacob, but the best way to get the skinny is to just drop in.

office nomads
office nomads

Eye-Fi, starting to hit blogs and online stores.

Published
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admin
on October 29, 2007
in Uncategorized
. 2 Comments

Crash noticed the eye-fi site started getting some content tonight and quickly ordered a card from dotPhoto. About 30-40 minutes later, the cards started popping up on Amazon. News is trickling into Google, including an article in the MIT Technology Review. I predict they’re going to sell a zillion of these. Seriously, a zillion.

Toorcon 9, Random updates.

Published
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admin
on October 8, 2007
in Uncategorized
. 2 Comments

We (Ken and I) will be holding a wireless workshop at Toorcon 9. Wireless 101 with a takeaway Soekris box. We did it last year and it was good times had by all. This year the class is on Thursday, so attendees will have all weekend to play with their toys in a conference environment. My guess is it will be much more interesting.

Metrix moved into a new office this Summer, It’s right above the new Stumptown on Pine st. If you’re in the neighborhood, feel free to drop by and we’ll get some coffee or something. I’m sure I don’t drink enough coffee. *jitter*

I’ve been making more and more pictures lately, and NAS (Nikon Aquisition Syndrome) has fully kicked in. I’m rolling with a D200 now, and have a full strobist setup complete with PocketWizards. If you want a stylish portrait for your blog or social networking yadayada, let me know and we’ll see if we can work in some time.

Jeff let me know the feedburner/flickr feed was irritating his aggregator, so I’ve cut it back to only feed out the pictures marked with the ’seattlewireless’ tag. This should cut down on the amount of RSS spam from me since I always forget to tag things.

Seattle Street Signs

Published
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admin
on August 7, 2007
in /misc
. 1 Comment

DSC_2332.JPG

Seattle has been selling off it’s old signs, and it made the rounds on Slog and the Seattle Times, but if you want this one on Boylston, it looks like you just have to give it a hard tug.   Every time I look out the window at Metrix, I think it’s going to be gone, but so far, it’s still there.