DIY Friday: WiFi Network Detector
Ever been working on a train, and a “New Network Found” popup hits you everytime you pass through a station or suburb? Of course, you’ll never actually connect as the train whips past the station; it just annoys you 10-15 times until you have enough motivation to disable your network adaptor.
Now, imagine if you could carry that annoyance around with you all the time, only replacing it with a disturbing heart-beat sound. Great, huh? Let’s make a DIY hot-spot detecter:
This project is for a small electronic unit that allows the user to sense the presence and relative signal strength of wireless hotspots. It can be worn as a pendant or carried in a pocket. It is “always on” and communicates the presence and signal strength of an in-range hotspot by way of sequences of pulses – like a heartbeat you can feel. The stronger and faster the “heartbeat”, the stronger the wireless signal detected.
It does not actually authenticate or otherwise interact with a hotspot in any way. It is a 100% passive device, meaning it transmits nothing – it can detect hotspots, but cannot be detected itself.
This project consists of a microcontroller, some custom interface electronics, a small vibe motor, and an off-the-shelf Wi-Fi detector – the one I used is by D-Link and is keychain-sized.
Instructions on building your own are available here. And, in what appears to be a bad remake of the video game Doom, they provided us with a demonstration video.
If you want to be lame you could just purchase a key-chain version for about $20 dollars, but you will lose out on the heart beat. For a little more money, Canary Wireless sells a version that detects not just the signal strength, but the type of authentication – letting you know if you will be able to easily “borrow” a signal. Still no annoying heart beat, though.
Of course, all of this is quite useless if you have an iPhone or wirelessly enabled smart phone.
