Half a million Wifi access points discovered! I’ve also integrated the Raspberry Pi Foundation 7 inch touch display into the phone compartment on my Tesla center console. This allows me to see the status of the scan as well as change operating modes. There are almost no light leaks with the lid closed, but at night the screen is washed out in photos. A usb port was added for convenience. I will want to clean up the USB port and add some physical buttons.
This project was cannibalized over a year ago. With Raspberry Pi as difficult to get ahold of as they’ve been, i thought this project might never come back to life. I launched a number of pi liberating ideas with some success. I now have enough for both fun personal projects and to get my work done. I felt i should explain the name wardriving. It is a variation on wardialing. Wardialing was trying phone numbers, looking for interesting things on the phone. Wardriving is similarly driving around looking for interesting things in the air.
My wardriver is not pictured above, but these Pi are ready for whatever comes next. I’ve recovered an assortment of different Pi from original B+ (pi-hole) to a 2GB Pi 4 (broken helium miner). One of the best parts of this setup is the early Pi 3 (not B+). This was a lucky find as it consumes less energy and produces much less heat. With only 6 radios running (including GPS) the lower performance hasn’t been an issue, but the reduced power has been incredible. Early testing has me getting an additional 20-40% battery life vs the original pi 4 configuration. my cable management has also improved with this iteration. The setup fits in a small box in my trunk instead of a tangled mass of wires in a large bin (prototyping is fun). The reason power is so important because, believe it or not, the amperage you can pull out of a Tesla for accessories is limited. Without an alternator dumping piles of unclean energy i am forced to resort to BYOB (bring your own battery). I got a monster battery to power the Pi 4 and even more radios and accessories of the original prototype.
It is fun using the ADSB live tracker in Los Angeles as there are always planes above. Next step will be DJI drone tracking and some sort of dashboard indicator/control. I started a WiGLE account, it’s off to a pretty good start. i found a few APs, but i’m still figuring out how to share BT. maybe i’ll join the #HardHatBrigade group.
Excited to have some real power in this tiny package. should i use it for image processing? i’m tempted to make this my new camera pi.
Things are getting brighter. waiting for more parts.
So I did not “complete” my hat until very late Friday when i finally got it to announce its link status on its new set of 14 segment displays. It performed admirably all weekend. Thanks to Paul for safely transporting it to and from Vegas. I must also thank Stephen for his late night help on Wednesday. (tacos are not enough) Without his amazing soldering, i’d still be trying to figure out what i had done wrong. Here are some pictures from that night and the con to follow. . .
I have too many tantalizing projects to get started. Too bad i will not be taking advantage of the fancy new dual display capability. it has been some time since i had even one traditional display on my Pi. now i wait for the software. . .
Originally my router/PBX this Dell P4 was installed with some of the earliest Digium PCI analogue cards. This card supported both FXS and FXO modules, and i used them both in various configurations. One of the FXS modules is what allowed my housemate’s old rotary phone to connect to the house phone system. I loved testing the system by ringing his phone. The ringing of its actual bell, was a delight. That dell survived the infamous flood (by already being decommissioned). I think I paid over $200 for this card alone. Now i run Asterisk off my Raspberry Pi with a total hardware cost considerably less than that.
After Google killed XMPP support for Google Voice, I no longer had a house phone. I was using my Google Voice number as a home phone and for the gate info our building. This lead to the whole system being ignored and neglected. By the time the SD card gave up the ghost, even the backups were in poor shape. I rebuilt the whole system fresh from the latest RasPBX dist and it’s working better then ever. Bought a real DID so i could continue to use Google Voice on our handsets at home. It’s great to have my Asterisk back.
I met a pile of incredible people. Bought some amazing toys (for science), some i’ve even got working. Saw some talks and demos. Talked to some of my heroes and listened to even more. I saw Ladar Levison talk about epoxying your ports and adding thermite to your hard drives. I played with the ECU of a fake car! now i just have finish building the DarkNet Badge! enjoy my pictures. The hat data is still being analyzed. I’ll try to build something out of it eventually.
Dove’s have returned to our balcony to nest. This time i immediately moved my camera Pi over and began shooting time lapse, motion, and live stream. enjoy.
