Accurate AP Locations

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ACalcutt
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Re: Accurate AP Locations

Post by ACalcutt »

I did this origionally, but because netsh is slow to drop access points (sometimes it keeps it active for up to a minute after seeing it) I ended up only keeping the first gps position.

netsh would have a big amount of access points (say 10) and it would drop them all at one location. so in the mapping it ended up putting all the icons on top of each other a minute away from were they were found
RoyScharf
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Re: Accurate AP Locations

Post by RoyScharf »

Hey there, I love the program, but I have noticed a couple fatal flaws that cripple it's usability.

The first one was mentioned by the first person in this post where it only logs the AP position based on the first sighting of it. I'm using v8.1 and it seems like it is updating the AP position every time the signal is stronger than the last location, but when you save the file it doesn't seem to save that. So the location is way off. I use the Wave Magnum wireless USB adapter, which is currently the most powerful adapter on the market, and I've seen APs off by as much as half a mile or more. Keep in mind that I have the "connect to network" window updating every second by vistumbler, that's a great feature.

The second thing is that I keep a main file that I drive with all the time when I go somewhere, to eventually map out an area for a business, but vistumbler keeps making a whole new line for every time it sees an AP, rather than just updating the old entry if it needs to. So after a while the same AP is listed many times making a file that has 2000 APs build up to ober 10000 lines of text and it takes over 10-15 minutes just to load of a serious gaming machine. Back when I had XP I used netstumbler, and it just looked at the old entry of an AP rather than writing a whole new one.

making it so it just lists an AP once and updates that entry if it needs to would hugely improve the efficiency, especially on big lists. This would also make it easier to get a more accurate location of an AP by just updating the location whenever the current signal is greater than the "Highest Signal with GPS" which is already stored in the saved file.

These fixed would more than double Vistumblers usefulness and I could then recommend it to many of my partners for their work. They'd probably be happy to donate to if they can get it working better like this.

Great work so far though and I hope you keep at it. Thanks


Roy
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Re: Accurate AP Locations

Post by ACalcutt »

Try 9.0 beta

It works a little bit differently on the things you mentioned

GPS position is now based on 2 things. first is the GPS number of satellites. (if the new position has more satellites than the old position it uses the new position). If the number of satellites are the same it uses the higher signal. I did this because I did not want the program to get stuck at a position with a low number of satellites just because the signal is higher. If the number of satellites is the same and the signal is the same, it will not update the position (this helps deal with the problem above where netsh reports the AP being active longer than it is)

Duplicates in the AP list are not supposed to exist. If they do its an error. I did notice it happened sometimes, but could never figure out why. Version 9.0 should fix this problem since it seems i fixed it moving from internal array to using a DB

Loading is a little faster in Version 9.0, but there isn't much i can do to speed it up right now (at least that i have figured out yet)

I am about to release version 9.0, so what is up now is almost final

-Andrew
RoyScharf
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Re: Accurate AP Locations

Post by RoyScharf »

Kick ass, thanks for the post. I'll monitor it's results in 9.0 and see what it does. I'm hoping the list doesn't inflate like it always has been. I use it for mapping out the wireless of an entire part of my county, so file size is important. The wireless adapter I use is the most powerful one on the market, so it can detect wireless from a mile away or more, so that was a big issue on position updating with signal.

I'll let you know if I find anything new
RoyScharf
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Re: Accurate AP Locations

Post by RoyScharf »

I've noticed an issue relating to file size. I've been using one single file to save all the access points i scan, which is working fine, but there's an issue I've known for a while now. I noticed that if I save the file as a CSV, just so I can read it, there's many copies of the same access point. It seems like even if I had only a few access points listed, the file would keep growing indefinitely because it keeps all those previous listings. Is there any way to fix this to slim down these files?
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Re: Accurate AP Locations

Post by ACalcutt »

Well there is a reason for that. Detailed CSV keeps all gps and signal history also (not just AP information). So each line of the same AP name contains different GPS/Time/Signal information which allows you to easily match up AP and GPS data.

it sounds what you are looking for is more like the summery csv which only keeps the best gps location and one of each access point


Keeping large amounts of data will eventually cause issues with vistumbler (over 2000 APs it will start to get slower). We also wanted to keep records of our scans but after a while vistumbler just can't handle it. This is the reason phil created the wifidb ( http://www.randomintervals.com/wifidb/ ) .



EDIT: Detailed CSV was added by request to help with GIS stuff ( http://forum.techidiots.net/forum/viewt ... +CSV#p1922 ). Unlike my existing VS1 format which keeps AP and GPS data seperate, Detailed CSV keeps them together to make it easier to match AP/Signal/Gps infomration.
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