Mapping wifi access points in Portland

aaron — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 21:09:46 +0000

I’ve been logging GPS data for about a year and a half. I use an app on my Windows Mobile phone to log the GPS data, and my phone has a wifi antenna that stays in the “off” position most of the time. I met with @donpdonp the other day and he introduced me to the geomena.org project. I realized it should be possible to log access points along with my existing GPS logging. It was easy to install Airomap on my phone, so now I can log wifi points too!

So far I’ve only made about a dozen trips with the wifi antenna on, but I’ve already logged 2200 unique mac addresses, and 427 open access points. And this is only on my normal route to and from work, I haven’t made any special wardriving trips yet. Here is a heatmap visualization of the access points I’ve logged so far.

This uses a custom tileserver I wrote to provide an additional data layer to the map. Hotter spots on the map correspond to more open access points in that area.

This is a version which shows each access point as a marker on the map so you can click on them.

Wifi Access Points in Portland. Red: encrypted, Blue: open

Most of the access points appear to be in the middle of the street, because most have been seen only one time by my logger, which was in the middle of the street. As the access points are seen repeatedly from other positions, the points will adjust to a more accurate position. You can already see this happening for a few points which appear in the middle of blocks or on streets through which I did not drive.

Again, these maps are still in their infancy, since I’ve only logged a few days worth of points on very narrow routes. But it’s amazing that I’ve already driven by 2200 access points just in the normal course of the day. I’m looking forward to continuing logging data and eventually importing it into the geomena database. It’s easy to see how quickly we could map out the entire city with just a couple people running loggers!

Phone as a Wifi access point!

aaron — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 21:34:57 +0000

This is pretty much the coolest thing in the world! I am posting from my laptop which is connected to my cell phone’s wifi connection, using Sprint’s EVDO connection to the internet. The software that enables me to do this is called wmwifirouter. Earlier this month they released their first final version of the software, and started charging for it. It’s not outrageously priced, but you can still find the earlier free versions on the internet if you search for versions 0.90 or 0.89.

Sprint’s EVDO connection is actually pretty speedy. Of course it’s not like having a cable connection, but it’s definitely faster than dialup. I downloaded a 2mb file at a solid 85kb/s. Also see below for a traceroute to this server.

C:\Documents and Settings\Aaron Parecki>tracert blog.neverusethisfont.com
 
Tracing route to blog.neverusethisfont.com [67.18.176.91]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
 
  1     6 ms     2 ms     3 ms  192.168.0.1
  2   141 ms   124 ms   124 ms  68.28.57.69
  3     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  4   131 ms   132 ms   134 ms  68.28.59.55
  5     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  6   121 ms   120 ms   121 ms  68.28.63.5
  7     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  8   135 ms   129 ms   128 ms  68.28.59.18
  9   136 ms   123 ms   128 ms  sl-gw20-phx-0-0-0.sprintlink.net [144.224.27.5]
 10   143 ms   130 ms   243 ms  sl-bb21-phx-11-0-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.23.199]
 11   141 ms   142 ms   138 ms  sl-bb25-ana-6-0-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.8.74]
 12   169 ms   131 ms   138 ms  ggr3-p330.la2ca.ip.att.net [192.205.33.189]
 13   156 ms   154 ms   156 ms  12.127.3.210
 14   154 ms   151 ms   151 ms  tbr1.dlstx.ip.att.net [12.122.10.49]
 15   153 ms   151 ms   154 ms  12.122.100.49
 16   150 ms   151 ms   152 ms  12.87.41.150
 17   324 ms   207 ms   203 ms  te7-2.dsr01.dllstx3.theplanet.com [70.87.253.10]
 18   160 ms   155 ms   151 ms  7e.fd.5746.static.theplanet.com [70.87.253.126]
 19   163 ms   154 ms   154 ms  vl1.car02.dllstx2.theplanet.com [12.96.160.12]
 20   154 ms   153 ms   150 ms  theia.parecki.com [67.18.176.91]
 
Trace complete.
C:\Documents and Settings\Aaron Parecki>

Never Use This Font » Wifi

Mapping wifi access points in Portland

Phone as a Wifi access point!