War driving contest

A place to talk about wardriving
User avatar
pferland
Contributor
Contributor
Posts: 406
Joined: Mon Oct 22, 2007 8:38 am
Location: The Universe
Contact:

War driving contest

Post by pferland »

OK so, me and Andrew have been tossing around the idea of setting up a contest were the person at the end with the most Access Points in the database will win a Vistumbler T-Shirt of a size and color that they pick. :D

I am going to set up a separate WiFiDB for people to upload to for this.
At the end, all the imports from each respective user will be merged with the Production server.

Official rules and a lot of other information has not been decided upon yet. :roll:

As Andrew or I think of more we will post them. I just wanted to get the idea down on 'paper' and see what others thought.
Feel free to leave your comments.

-Phil
The best acceleration you can get on a Mac is 9.8ms^2
User avatar
ACalcutt
Vistumbler / TechIdiots Admin
Vistumbler / TechIdiots Admin
Posts: 1302
Joined: Sun Oct 21, 2007 6:50 pm
Location: Rutland, MA
Contact:

Re: War driving contest

Post by ACalcutt »

The reason we are doing this is to try and bring some competition into wardriving. Instead of just gathering access points you will be competing against other wardrivers. We think if we got enough participants that this could end up being fun (especially if you are also competing against your friends locally)

Here is my rough draft on rules (I will add to these as we get some other opinions)

- the first user who imports gets credit for an access point. If someone gets the same access point after it does not get counted towards the new users total.
- Importing previously scanned uploads is against the rules. If you are found to have imported a list you have imported to the official WiFiDB or are dated before the contest officially starts you will be disqualified from winning.
- I think we are going to require a logon for the contest WiFiDB, We are not going to accept anonymous uploads. This is mainly so we can keep track of the winner and prevent random uploads.
- The spirit of this is to get new access points for the main WiFiDB. At this time I don't think we are going to check if the access point is already in the main DB and only give credit if its a new one, but it is something we have considered.
- The competition would only last a short period of time (I'm thinking 30-60 day). After the winner is determined the competition DB will be reset and any uploads will be moved to the production server.
- We will do our best to ship to winners worldwide. We are hoping shipping a shirt will not be to cost prohibitive. I know we have a lot of users from Germany (they are actually our highest hitting country) and other places across the sea and I don't want to exclude them.
User avatar
ACalcutt
Vistumbler / TechIdiots Admin
Vistumbler / TechIdiots Admin
Posts: 1302
Joined: Sun Oct 21, 2007 6:50 pm
Location: Rutland, MA
Contact:

Re: War driving contest

Post by ACalcutt »

No comments on this? nobody is interested in a wardriving competition?
arizonajon
Contributor
Contributor
Posts: 289
Joined: Wed Feb 04, 2015 11:17 pm
Contact:

War driving contest

Post by arizonajon »

In downtown Scottsdale today, at one location, I got 72 APs simultaneously (as in 72/nnn). Loop time was moderate. Then later this afternoon, at a different location in downtown, I got 80 APs... It must be nearly overwhelming to try to use Wi-Fi in those areas. The first was around a hospital (always bad), the other in-between 5 story high condos and the mall.

In other news, I'm up to 32,829 APs uploaded!

Cheers - Jon
User avatar
ACalcutt
Vistumbler / TechIdiots Admin
Vistumbler / TechIdiots Admin
Posts: 1302
Joined: Sun Oct 21, 2007 6:50 pm
Location: Rutland, MA
Contact:

War driving contest

Post by ACalcutt »

You sure are getting up in numbers quick :-). I've been trying to do some updated scans here, but there are 3-4ft snow piles everywhere here making the roads kind of thin. I tried to do some back roads in Worcester, but with the snow they are all one lane with two directions of traffic. :-)
arizonajon
Contributor
Contributor
Posts: 289
Joined: Wed Feb 04, 2015 11:17 pm
Contact:

War driving contest

Post by arizonajon »

Snow would significantly slow progress :( I don't envy you guys living in that stuff. My sister-in-law lives in Westchester County NY (just north of the city) and this winter there really has been pretty tough.

Here, if we want crippling snow and weather, it's just a two-hour drive north!
User avatar
pferland
Contributor
Contributor
Posts: 406
Joined: Mon Oct 22, 2007 8:38 am
Location: The Universe
Contact:

War driving contest

Post by pferland »

In a few decades you wont need to go anywhere to have snow. lol
The best acceleration you can get on a Mac is 9.8ms^2
arizonajon
Contributor
Contributor
Posts: 289
Joined: Wed Feb 04, 2015 11:17 pm
Contact:

War driving contest

Post by arizonajon »

This morning before going out I was up to about 42k APs. After I uploaded a number of files that I'd done earlier but forgotten to upload, my total count went down to about 40k, where it now stands. I'm hoping it will return!
User avatar
ACalcutt
Vistumbler / TechIdiots Admin
Vistumbler / TechIdiots Admin
Posts: 1302
Joined: Sun Oct 21, 2007 6:50 pm
Location: Rutland, MA
Contact:

War driving contest

Post by ACalcutt »

Hmm....not sure why your count would have changed. Nothing has changed since last night. :-/
arizonajon
Contributor
Contributor
Posts: 289
Joined: Wed Feb 04, 2015 11:17 pm
Contact:

War driving contest

Post by arizonajon »

This is odd - I am looking at one of the drives I did yesterday, specifically

ID# 2166 55188495_2015-03-06_08-53-10.VS1

None of these APs are in the WiFiDC Full DB Export.

Going to the DB, I look at any one of the APs in that import, it shows that it was imported by arizonajon|

Is that a pipe symbol or something else?

Cheers - Jon
arizonajon
Contributor
Contributor
Posts: 289
Joined: Wed Feb 04, 2015 11:17 pm
Contact:

War driving contest

Post by arizonajon »

In that particular drive (ID 2166 above), I'm looking at one of the APs collected, SSID 1d6058, MAC 20:25:64:1D:65:08

It shows 3 positions collected.

Signal History (2015-03-06: 15:28:51 - 15:29:04) Export: KMZ / Graph
Signal RSSI Lat Long Sats Date Time
62 -64 3334.0830 -11154.3847 8 2015-03-06 15:28:51
74 -58 3334.0452 -11154.3385 7 2015-03-06 15:29:00
56 -67 3334.0396 -11154.3294 8 2015-03-06 15:29:04

It would seem from the above positions that the most likely location of 1d6508 is at the second record location, with a lat/lon of 3334.0452 -11154.3385? However, when I look at it on GE it is pinned at the location of the first record, 3334.0830 -11154.3847. Is there a reason that the strongest signal position isn't used for the most probable location?

Same is true for SSID Hockey, MAC E4:F4:C6:12:CF:F4

There are 11 GPS positions recorded for this one, the 4th one is the position displayed, while the strongest signal, recorded as position 7, is 4 dB stronger.

Cheers - Jon
arizonajon
Contributor
Contributor
Posts: 289
Joined: Wed Feb 04, 2015 11:17 pm
Contact:

War driving contest

Post by arizonajon »

With the drive to/from Tucson yesterday, I'm now up to 74011 APs!
User avatar
pferland
Contributor
Contributor
Posts: 406
Joined: Mon Oct 22, 2007 8:38 am
Location: The Universe
Contact:

War driving contest

Post by pferland »

Hi Jon,
I was just looking over the code for export on the Github repo (Link), and I am not sure if Andrew has that code in Prod or a different code. But, when I looked at the code in the repo, the SQL statement does not have an ORDER BY word in it, so it is ordering by ID and the first GPS point is grabbed not the strongest one.

But I will look into it today when I have time.
The best acceleration you can get on a Mac is 9.8ms^2
User avatar
ACalcutt
Vistumbler / TechIdiots Admin
Vistumbler / TechIdiots Admin
Posts: 1302
Joined: Sun Oct 21, 2007 6:50 pm
Location: Rutland, MA
Contact:

War driving contest

Post by ACalcutt »

That's strange, I thought I was using the gps value in `wifi`.`wifi_pointers`, which is the position based on best signal/gps, in that ExportSingleAP function. the version on git should be the same as what I am using at live.wifidb.net.
User avatar
ACalcutt
Vistumbler / TechIdiots Admin
Vistumbler / TechIdiots Admin
Posts: 1302
Joined: Sun Oct 21, 2007 6:50 pm
Location: Rutland, MA
Contact:

War driving contest

Post by ACalcutt »

Jon,

I think its safe to say you are the winner of the wardriving contest :-). At the time you are at 84051 Access points, which you got to in exactly one month.

You've beaten my account, ACalcutt, which is at 81338 Access Points. You've beaten our catchall recovery user WifiDB at 80171 Access Points. I'm sure if you keep going at the rate you been you will have more than the other users combined :-)

Since you have beaten us all I think you are deserving of the prize of the contest...one of our vistumbler tshirts. If you interested send me a private message to let me know where to ship it!
arizonajon
Contributor
Contributor
Posts: 289
Joined: Wed Feb 04, 2015 11:17 pm
Contact:

War driving contest

Post by arizonajon »

It's a good thing there's a number of breweries some distance from the house.

Because of that excuse, I drove over to Peoria Artisan Brewery in Litchfield Park (about 32 miles each way). Collected a nice set of files. And had a great IPA and a bratwurst with grilled onions.
User avatar
ACalcutt
Vistumbler / TechIdiots Admin
Vistumbler / TechIdiots Admin
Posts: 1302
Joined: Sun Oct 21, 2007 6:50 pm
Location: Rutland, MA
Contact:

War driving contest

Post by ACalcutt »

I always like a ride with a good destination...and beer and brats sounds like a good one :smilegrin:

I was looking at tracking for your prize and it looks like it was already delivered yesterday. Let me know if you get everything ok.
arizonajon
Contributor
Contributor
Posts: 289
Joined: Wed Feb 04, 2015 11:17 pm
Contact:

War driving contest

Post by arizonajon »

Hi Andrew and Phil -

I received the prize! And it was two (2) shirts, which is even better than 1!!! I will be wearing them proudly when next visiting my local brewery :D

Also, here's a link to a timelapse video of my drive to/from Peoria Artisan Brewery yesterday. Starts once I pull out of the driveway, ends just before I pull back in to the driveway...

http://www.jonadams.com/videos/Wardrive_2015-03-21.mov

Cheers and thanks again - Jon
arizonajon
Contributor
Contributor
Posts: 289
Joined: Wed Feb 04, 2015 11:17 pm
Contact:

War driving contest

Post by arizonajon »

And the beer was excellent, well worth the 64 mile journey. Had a Peoria Artisan Brewery Savannah Marie IPA and a Heritage Red Ale. Both very nice.

Ok, it's off to scoop up a few more APs - have to take the family to visit someone for their birthday celebration, and it's in an unexplored neighborhood.

Cheers - Jon
User avatar
ACalcutt
Vistumbler / TechIdiots Admin
Vistumbler / TechIdiots Admin
Posts: 1302
Joined: Sun Oct 21, 2007 6:50 pm
Location: Rutland, MA
Contact:

War driving contest

Post by ACalcutt »

Glad everything got to you, hope you like them! There aren't many vistumbler and wifidb shirts out there. Most shirts sold have been bought by me or phil. I think the only other vistumbler shirt we sent out was to mysticvirgo...and that was a few years ago.

I like the video you posted. some day I think it would be cool to store the images along with the gps/ap points. having that stuff along side the wifi data would be cool, but i bet it would use more space than we have at the moment.
User avatar
pferland
Contributor
Contributor
Posts: 406
Joined: Mon Oct 22, 2007 8:38 am
Location: The Universe
Contact:

War driving contest

Post by pferland »

ACalcutt wrote:but i bet it would use more space than we have at the moment.
Quite a bit more space than the VPS has. But if we had it on our local storage we could use a sizable chunk of your 24TB array and my 12TB array.

I do wonder how much it would use...
Each image was about 700KB if I remember correctly. We were taking 8 pictures at once, every 2 seconds ( I think). So that is roughly 5.6MB every 2 seconds. If you drive for an hour, that turns out to be 19,687 MB total for all 8 cameras, and roughly 2.4GB per camera. And that is just the JPEG images taken off the cameras.
On my 12TB array I could fit roughly 639 hours of street view images, If I don't keep my VM's and other data on it.
The best acceleration you can get on a Mac is 9.8ms^2
User avatar
ACalcutt
Vistumbler / TechIdiots Admin
Vistumbler / TechIdiots Admin
Posts: 1302
Joined: Sun Oct 21, 2007 6:50 pm
Location: Rutland, MA
Contact:

War driving contest

Post by ACalcutt »

pferland wrote:
ACalcutt wrote:but i bet it would use more space than we have at the moment.
Quite a bit more space than the VPS has. But if we had it on our local storage we could use a sizable chunk of your 24TB array and my 12TB array.
I don't plan on moving stuff back to our own servers at home anytime soon. The internet connection to our apartment from charter is just too flaky. I also like having some redundancy built in like my current setup. Right now I have 3 servers in different states and as long as one is up the site is accessible. Also, with the deal I got on the VPS it cost less to run outside than it did to pay for the faster internet connection.

PS - my array may be 24TB, but I only gave 5TB to virtual machines ;-). Most of the rest is used by my 16TB file store :-). Sounds like it woudn't take long to fill up if we added images.
User avatar
ACalcutt
Vistumbler / TechIdiots Admin
Vistumbler / TechIdiots Admin
Posts: 1302
Joined: Sun Oct 21, 2007 6:50 pm
Location: Rutland, MA
Contact:

War driving contest

Post by ACalcutt »

pferland wrote: Each image was about 700KB if I remember correctly. We were taking 8 pictures at once, every 2 seconds ( I think). So that is roughly 5.6MB every 2 seconds. If you drive for an hour, that turns out to be 19,687 MB total for all 8 cameras, and roughly 2.4GB per camera. And that is just the JPEG images taken off the cameras.
I just looked the images we took in 5 carcam test scans. the images from those 5 runs took 82.24GB. Two of these runs had 5 cameras and 3 had 6 cameras. We were only taking pics every 5 seconds, so it looks like it was about 1.10GB per camera per hour. However our plan was to make a single panoramic and use that combined image, so I guessing the final file would have used less space.

I'm guessing Jon's single camera setup would use nearly as much space....but i'm sure it adds up quick. How much space are you using for your images Jon?
arizonajon
Contributor
Contributor
Posts: 289
Joined: Wed Feb 04, 2015 11:17 pm
Contact:

War driving contest

Post by arizonajon »

The Mobius ActionCam is set up as a 1280x720 24-bit imager, with the compression at 50%, so image storage sizes range from about 40 (nighttime) to about 110 kB. The camera needs a bit more focusing, so the image sizes might get a bit larger if/when I take it apart and refocus it. If i turn down compression, the sizes bloom pretty fast.
Images are snapped every 15 seconds using an app called Yawcam. I store them locally on the truck PC and when the truck returns to the house it downloads them to the home server, which has a single 1TB drive. In the 60 days (more or less) I've been running the cam I've accumulated 20 GB of files.
User avatar
pferland
Contributor
Contributor
Posts: 406
Joined: Mon Oct 22, 2007 8:38 am
Location: The Universe
Contact:

War driving contest

Post by pferland »

Pretty impressive. I have been wanting to put a PC in my car for a while, but now a Nexus 7 is sounding better to me.
The best acceleration you can get on a Mac is 9.8ms^2
arizonajon
Contributor
Contributor
Posts: 289
Joined: Wed Feb 04, 2015 11:17 pm
Contact:

War driving contest

Post by arizonajon »

We made a road trip to and from San Diego last week returning home last night.

Vistumbler worked pretty flawlessly the whole time. It was hard to drive more than two miles in the city without collecting another 1k APs. While catching the flu put a bit of a damper on my travels, I was able to visit Coronado, Hess, Half Door, Thorn St, South Park and Karl Strauss breweries. I was able to grab nice Green Flash and Ballast Point beers while at local restaurants. My total driving was not that much, since the breweries I targeted are mostly concentrated in or near the city center. All the while Vistumbler was chugging along, in the minimal GUI 1k AP size mode. The only thing that I find better about the earlier 500 AP size is that the file save is that much faster with the smaller file. Of course, if there's a lot of GPS positions, that is the overwhelming part of the time involved to save the file.

Cheers - Jon
User avatar
pferland
Contributor
Contributor
Posts: 406
Joined: Mon Oct 22, 2007 8:38 am
Location: The Universe
Contact:

War driving contest

Post by pferland »

That sucks about the flu, but hopefully it didnt last very long.
Looks like you did quite the driving while out there, lots and lots of APs.
The best acceleration you can get on a Mac is 9.8ms^2
arizonajon
Contributor
Contributor
Posts: 289
Joined: Wed Feb 04, 2015 11:17 pm
Contact:

War driving contest

Post by arizonajon »

About 40 minutes ago my 2nd month anniversary of participating in Vistumbler and the Wireless DataBase occurred. In that two months, I collected 209,821 unique and new APs, and met my goal of having contributed 40% of the existing current database. In fact, last night's hurried collecting put me at 40.52% of the total database! :shock: :o :D

Unfortunately, on Google Earth I cannot view the full db, even when zoomed in to a city block, but at least I can view the most recent AP and the previous day's collection. I can also run a variety of exports, by SSID, MAC prefix, etc., but it's quite hard to get an idea of exactly where I've been and where I have yet to go. I've done some dumps by MAC ID, including Tropos Networks, as those APs are used here in the valley at many intersections for traffic signal management; linksys, netgear, coxwifi, cablewifi, as there are many APs that have that word/phrase in their SSID,, but beyond that, it's hard to see my overall coverage.

Any ideas on how to break up the full db into manageable chunks, hopefully by geographic location, maybe radius around a point?

In any event, thanks for the neat tools and the ability to participate!

Cheers - Jon
User avatar
ACalcutt
Vistumbler / TechIdiots Admin
Vistumbler / TechIdiots Admin
Posts: 1302
Joined: Sun Oct 21, 2007 6:50 pm
Location: Rutland, MA
Contact:

War driving contest

Post by ACalcutt »

Have you had a chance to look at the new kml generation api I was working on?

This one will create a network link that just contains your imports, separated by import and sorted by date. it allows you to check just the imports you want.
https://live.wifidb.net/wifidb/api/expo ... arizonajon

This is similar to the daemon generate network link that allows you to see the newest, daily, and full database. the full database in this version seperates by user, then import/date.
https://live.wifidb.net/wifidb/api/expo ... ed_netlink


I put some of the region stuff phil was working on into the api geneated kmzs. its not quite finished yet, but does seem to help a little
arizonajon
Contributor
Contributor
Posts: 289
Joined: Wed Feb 04, 2015 11:17 pm
Contact:

War driving contest

Post by arizonajon »

ACalcutt wrote:Have you had a chance to look at the new kml generation api I was working on?
...
https://live.wifidb.net/wifidb/api/expo ... arizonajon

This is similar to the daemon generate network link that allows you to see the newest, daily, and full database. the full database in this version seperates by user, then import/date.
https://live.wifidb.net/wifidb/api/expo ... ed_netlink
...
Thanks for these, Andrew.
The GE link now seems to be pretty stable. What is different about this from the one that was used before? Using the ArizonaJon link (either one, the upper separated one or the lower combined one, with only arizonajon selected) seems to be keeping GE much happier. The memory usage is sitting at just under 3200 MB, when before GE would rocket up to 3700 MB and then crash.
Cheers - Jon
User avatar
ACalcutt
Vistumbler / TechIdiots Admin
Vistumbler / TechIdiots Admin
Posts: 1302
Joined: Sun Oct 21, 2007 6:50 pm
Location: Rutland, MA
Contact:

War driving contest

Post by ACalcutt »

The old kml export just created a single kmz file which had all your access points in a single list. This kml file gets built up in memory, saved to disk, and the page gives you the download link.

In the api a kmz/kml is created in memory and there is no file generated on the disk. The main api function creates a kml/kml export of a single list based on its wifidb id number. This new list has a Region Box, which allows google earth to hide the list when it isn't in view.

The user export function I made basically creates network links to each import list a user has. So basically, when you load the new network link for your account, you get a bunch of network links to your individual imports. each individual import in generated on the fly (with its own regionbox). Instead of one big file, this is more like a bunch of smaller files linked together.
User avatar
ACalcutt
Vistumbler / TechIdiots Admin
Vistumbler / TechIdiots Admin
Posts: 1302
Joined: Sun Oct 21, 2007 6:50 pm
Location: Rutland, MA
Contact:

War driving contest

Post by ACalcutt »

Jon,

I'm glad to see you are still making huge additions into the wifidb! I'm wondering what are next goal should be... maybe the 1,000,000 AP mark?

I am also wondering how much this new database can take. The last version of the wifidb (0.2 I think) only made in to around 250,000 APs before mysql ran so badly it was impossible to use. In v0.3 of the wifidb phil made many fixes to the table structure and pretty much fixed any mysql issues we had. We are now at 578800 APs and everything is still performing well it seems.
User avatar
pferland
Contributor
Contributor
Posts: 406
Joined: Mon Oct 22, 2007 8:38 am
Location: The Universe
Contact:

War driving contest

Post by pferland »

Well in the pre 0.30 versions the access points had two tables of their own. One for signal history and one for GPS history. This was incredibly stupid because it takes more memory for mysql/mariadb to cache a new table versus adding a new row to an existing cached table. Post 0.30 there is only one table for access point unique data one table for signal history and one table for GPS history. I am pretty confident that if we can keep up with the memory requirements for the tables we should be fine. The only table of concern right now are the goenames tables. Which Andrew is not using right now if I remember correctly.
The best acceleration you can get on a Mac is 9.8ms^2
arizonajon
Contributor
Contributor
Posts: 289
Joined: Wed Feb 04, 2015 11:17 pm
Contact:

War driving contest

Post by arizonajon »

Heh heh - still holding at 60+% of the overall database, in spite of everyone's noble efforts to push back! I wear my Vistumbler shirt proudly.

I finally took the truck in for its first detailing - i figured it was necessary after owning it for 6 years. Also, the cat had peed in it. Found the Mobius ActionCam was damaged from the summer heat, the LiPO battery had swollen in the heat and the case warped, causing the whole thing to fall out of the camera mount. Ordered a new case, replaced the LiPO battery with a supercap, and soon I'll be back up and running again with screaming video as well as APs.

Cheers - Jon N7UV
User avatar
ACalcutt
Vistumbler / TechIdiots Admin
Vistumbler / TechIdiots Admin
Posts: 1302
Joined: Sun Oct 21, 2007 6:50 pm
Location: Rutland, MA
Contact:

War driving contest

Post by ACalcutt »

I don't think we're going to catch up to you jon... you've just added access points so quickly. How long do you think before you have all the access points you can reach? It gets harder to get new stuff as time goes on :-).

That stinks about the camera melting. I imagine it gets pretty hot under the windshield in the summer sun down there. Is the new case you are getting going to handle more heat?
arizonajon
Contributor
Contributor
Posts: 289
Joined: Wed Feb 04, 2015 11:17 pm
Contact:

War driving contest

Post by arizonajon »

The camera has these small external heat sink plates which I might be able to add to, but it is a rough environment and I suspect that the problem will remain. The camera case is flat black which doesn't help much. However, the supercap is much smaller than the battery, and there should be no further swelling and distortion of the case now that I've switched it. I also tried running the AC in partial defrost mode, where AC air is blown up the windshield and across the camera, but it reduces the amount coming out the cabin-facing vents enough that it gets uncomfortable. It may be that I've got to replace the case every so often. Now that it's fall, I suppose I won't know until early summer whether that's the case.

In terms of access point collection, my observation to date is that my setup can get about 110 to 150 APs per mile of driving at the posted speed in suburban areas.So, 500k APs represents a lot of driving miles :D ! Since Phoenix is more or less an x-y gridded street plan, every square mile of residential area could produce perhaps 1k to 2k APs. There's a lot of square miles of residential areas around. Hospitals and the medical facilities immediately adjacent have the potential for 1k to 3k APs. There's a lot of hospitals here.

In my small neighborhood, which may be a bit more tech-rich than the usual, I estimate about 6 APs per household, based upon 119 residences. Nowadays, it seems every other iPhone or Android has its hotspot mode on. Also, more and more new cars are running full-time hotspots, which makes for interesting itinerant observation and MAC addresses that jump all over the map.

Downtown high rises are really interesting. Just parking at a spot and leaving Vistumbler running can produce thousands of APs over a period of several hours.

I'm traveling a bit as well, Minneapolis and San Francisco Bay area mostly, and just with the antenna in the laptop inside the car I get a lot of APs. If I came up with an easy external receiver solution, that would improve the efficiency more than double, I think.
arizonajon
Contributor
Contributor
Posts: 289
Joined: Wed Feb 04, 2015 11:17 pm
Contact:

War driving contest

Post by arizonajon »

Did a little push this weekend and crossed the 600k AP barrier. Fortunately, there was time for a flight of beers here or there.
User avatar
ACalcutt
Vistumbler / TechIdiots Admin
Vistumbler / TechIdiots Admin
Posts: 1302
Joined: Sun Oct 21, 2007 6:50 pm
Location: Rutland, MA
Contact:

War driving contest

Post by ACalcutt »

The database is almost at that 1,000,000 AP goal we set a few months ago. We're all going to need a beer to celebrate that one!

I may have asked before but what are you drinking down in arazona? Are you drinking the local brews?
arizonajon
Contributor
Contributor
Posts: 289
Joined: Wed Feb 04, 2015 11:17 pm
Contact:

War driving contest

Post by arizonajon »

Hi Andrew -

Sorry I didn't notice this message until just now. I'd been out of the country for a few weeks and getting back I had a lot of work that I had to catch up on.

It's really nice that the db is at 986k right now - I expect that we can hit 1M well before the end of year. I have a bunch of neighborhoods to drive %^)

As far as breweries and beer, the greater Phoenix area has around 30 breweries as of now, and there are more coming on line. Most are micros, but there's the big one, Four Peaks, which is the grandaddy of craft brewing here in the state, then a lot of smaller ones. I use the Untappd app, so I aim for drinking mainly beers I've never had before, and fortunately, with the number of breweries in the area, there's usually a few new beers every week.

Beyond breweries, we have a couple very nice craft brew tap houses, and the selection can be pretty awesome. Fresh beer, different (mostly southwestern or California) breweries, handles change regularly as beers come and go, pretty nice. We get a lot of Stone from San Diego, and Avery from Denver. Every once in a while some New Mexican and Utah beers.

Cheers - Jon N7UV
User avatar
ACalcutt
Vistumbler / TechIdiots Admin
Vistumbler / TechIdiots Admin
Posts: 1302
Joined: Sun Oct 21, 2007 6:50 pm
Location: Rutland, MA
Contact:

War driving contest

Post by ACalcutt »

Jon,

We are working on a prize to celebrate the 1 millionth access point, once we hit that mark. I'll send you a message to make sure I have the correct address to send it to.

I'm going to keep the prize a secret now, but they are being created as we speak!


BTW, that app looks pretty cool. I'm going to have to give it a try sometime.

-Andrew
User avatar
ACalcutt
Vistumbler / TechIdiots Admin
Vistumbler / TechIdiots Admin
Posts: 1302
Joined: Sun Oct 21, 2007 6:50 pm
Location: Rutland, MA
Contact:

War driving contest

Post by ACalcutt »

We've reached the 1,000,000 Mark! We are currently at 1,009,315 Access Points in the database... 650,925 by Jon!

The prize I mentioned was shipped to me last week, so i'm hoping the turns out good.
User avatar
ACalcutt
Vistumbler / TechIdiots Admin
Vistumbler / TechIdiots Admin
Posts: 1302
Joined: Sun Oct 21, 2007 6:50 pm
Location: Rutland, MA
Contact:

War driving contest

Post by ACalcutt »

We got in our prize! We got some etched Vistumbler and WiFiDB glasses to celebrate 1,000,000+!

We've got a few for ourselves and have already started celebrating!
1000000-glasses-1.jpg
1000000-glasses-1.jpg (624.94 KiB) Viewed 365395 times
1000000-glasses-2.jpg
1000000-glasses-2.jpg (651.81 KiB) Viewed 365395 times
1000000-glasses-3.jpg
1000000-glasses-3.jpg (648.41 KiB) Viewed 365395 times
User avatar
pferland
Contributor
Contributor
Posts: 406
Joined: Mon Oct 22, 2007 8:38 am
Location: The Universe
Contact:

War driving contest

Post by pferland »

Mmmmmm
Beer and Rum and Coke. They go very good with writing code and celebrating 1,000,000 Access Points.

Jon, you gave us the larges bulk, so its all thanks to you really!

But thanks to everyone that has imported, the database has gotten to 1M AP's a lot sooner than I ever imagined it would.
The best acceleration you can get on a Mac is 9.8ms^2
arizonajon
Contributor
Contributor
Posts: 289
Joined: Wed Feb 04, 2015 11:17 pm
Contact:

War driving contest

Post by arizonajon »

Happy New Year, Phil -

I was just responding to a PM from Andrew about the database hitting the million mark and he'd mentioned a prize. Then I came over here and saw these pictures of the cool beer pint glasses, and realized that was the prize! This is super awesome. Thank you so much!

Phil, you and Andrew have been really cranking on the improvement of the tools and the database over the time I've been involved, and all that work makes it pretty easy for people like me to collect access points. I've told others about Vistumbler, and used it on trains, buses, metros, you name it.

I've got to get a slightly better setup for the laptop when I'm traveling, so that I can suction-cup a GPS/WiFi to the window or something like that. You should have seen me on the Chicago Blue Line a few months ago riding in the train with the laptop up on my shoulder so the internal antennas could see out the window better...

Cheers - Jon
arizonajon
Contributor
Contributor
Posts: 289
Joined: Wed Feb 04, 2015 11:17 pm
Contact:

War driving contest

Post by arizonajon »

Crossed the 700k mark this afternoon late. Took a drive around the west valley, thought I'd make 700k then, but found I was still about 500 short, so sent to an inadequately explored neighborhood near home and tipped it to 701k and change.
User avatar
ACalcutt
Vistumbler / TechIdiots Admin
Vistumbler / TechIdiots Admin
Posts: 1302
Joined: Sun Oct 21, 2007 6:50 pm
Location: Rutland, MA
Contact:

War driving contest

Post by ACalcutt »

You're going to get to 1,000,000 yourself before we get this prize in the mail :-). Hopefully we will get that sent out soon...

I have been working more with the signal maps. They seem to be doing the breaks correctly now, so most of the long lines across the screen are gone. I also made it so the signal history is separated by list when exporting all the access point history, so you can hide or show lists signal history in the kmz.

I also worked on the access point page in the the wifidb. I merged associated files and the signal history into one, so now you know what file is related to what signal history.
User avatar
pferland
Contributor
Contributor
Posts: 406
Joined: Mon Oct 22, 2007 8:38 am
Location: The Universe
Contact:

War driving contest

Post by pferland »

Jon, Im the one to blame for the price taking so long to ship out. Really sorry about that. I should be able to get it out this weekend sometime.

The signal maps andrew has been working on are starting to look good. Much better than what I started them out as lol.

I am also working on making a C# version of the WiFiDB Uploader and also a WiFiDB C# client. https://github.com/pferland/WifFiDBClient
And ofcourse, I just now realized I have a glaring typo in the project name....

The Uploader is where I am focusing my work for right now. My plan is to make it a clone of the AutoIt WiFiDB Uploader with a few genetic mutations.

The WiFiDB Client, my plan is a little more grandiose. Welll thats pushing it, but I would like it to be a clone of Vistumber in C#, so it will do wireless scanning and the other stuff Vistumber does, plus a client for WiFiDB to be able to export data directly to the client and also view the status of the database daemons and other things.

-Phil
The best acceleration you can get on a Mac is 9.8ms^2
User avatar
pferland
Contributor
Contributor
Posts: 406
Joined: Mon Oct 22, 2007 8:38 am
Location: The Universe
Contact:

War driving contest

Post by pferland »

So I have gotten to a decent part of the C# WiFiDB Up-loader to show a few screenshot of it.
While uploading
While uploading
Untitled0.png (54.98 KiB) Viewed 364969 times
In this screenshot, I selected a folder for upload. The Client went through the folder and uploaded any VS1, VSZ, CSV, and DB3 files and uploaded them to WiFiDB.Updating them as the Daemon imports them.
In this screenshot, I selected a folder for upload. The Client went through the folder and uploaded any VS1, VSZ, CSV, and DB3 files and uploaded them to WiFiDB.Updating them as the Daemon imports them.
Untitled.png (91.79 KiB) Viewed 364969 times
Every 10 seconds it then runs through the files and checks their status.
Every 10 seconds it then runs through the files and checks their status.
Untitled2.png (78.84 KiB) Viewed 364969 times
Updating them as the Daemon imports them.
Updating them as the Daemon imports them.
Untitled3.png (69.95 KiB) Viewed 364969 times

That is about it so far. Still slowly working on it.


I started a new thread for the WiFiDB Client over here; viewtopic.php?f=49&t=2041
The best acceleration you can get on a Mac is 9.8ms^2
arizonajon
Contributor
Contributor
Posts: 289
Joined: Wed Feb 04, 2015 11:17 pm
Contact:

War driving contest

Post by arizonajon »

Yesterday I made it to having contributed over 2/3 of the WiFidB APs!

Everyone else who has participated - I'd really look forward to some of you getting a bit more involved in contributing - I see many uploads that done appear to have GPS coordinates attached, it's not that hard to do. Inexpensive (like $30 US) USB GPS receivers are available on eBay and Amazon. And you're not locked in to just using the GPS for stumbling - I run the free (as-in-free-beer) version of Franson GPSGate to allow me to use the GPS simultaneously for other activities, like Google Earth, or other GIS and mapping programs. There's great also "free" NMEA Monitor for Windows, authored by the incredibly prolific 4River in Japan. 4River has a bunch of nice programs that take advantage of the GPS to do all sorts of GPS constellation monitoring. I've corresponded with 4River and the author is very enthusiastic to accept comments and consider modifications to enhance the programs.
User avatar
pferland
Contributor
Contributor
Posts: 406
Joined: Mon Oct 22, 2007 8:38 am
Location: The Universe
Contact:

War driving contest

Post by pferland »

Damn man, 2/3rds of the database is a lot. Then again you do a lot more travel than most other people that upload APs. :lol:

I will have to check out the GPS logging software he made. The record and playback feature looks pretty cool.
The best acceleration you can get on a Mac is 9.8ms^2
Post Reply