[Shakesy]

As the title says, I want to search for WIFI routers and when they are found for them to be shown on Maps (doesn't have to be Maps can be the apps own map application), so I can physically move closer to the router and get a better signal.

I'm certain one exists for iPhone and I'm not just dreaming it up because a friend has it although I can't remember the name.

Anyone know of such an app?

[cdf3]

Super Pages Mobile application version 2.0.8 has a feature like that. Not sure how current it's listings are. It shows a restaurant that has free WiFi in my area. Only thing, the restaurant has gone out of business, yet it's still listed as a place with free WiFi.

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[Shakesy]

Thanks mate but I'm not looking for an app that simply has a list of hotspots and will show me where they are, I need it to be able find all routers within a certain distance - even personal and secured routers. I don't want anything that has it's own list, I want to be able to scan them myself and then for the app to tell me where it is.

Like being able to estimate quite precisely which routers belong to which address in your own street.

[FF22]

Thanks mate but I'm not looking for an app that simply has a list of hotspots and will show me where they are, I need it to be able find all routers within a certain distance - even personal and secured routers. I don't want anything that has it's own list, I want to be able to scan them myself and then for the app to tell me where it is.

Like being able to estimate quite precisely which routers belong to which address in your own street.

Speak with google, apparently, they captured such info INNOCENTLY (yeah, we did not know we were capturing this info!!!) as they were taking StreetView photos.

There are such apps for laptops that I've seen but I'm not sure BB apps has any.

[Shakesy]

Hahaha, I don't want any photos, just a pointer on Blackberry Maps telling me whereabout the router is located.

[rlmesq]

It is impossible to show where an item is located with only one reference point. Ever hear of triangulation?

Even assuming an app could accurately measure distance to the router - a difficult feat due to different signal strength output from different routers - that's still a one dimensional measurement. It couldn't tell which direction the signal was coming from.

No matter how certain you are, I don't see how even the Jesus phone would do it.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

[Shakesy]

It is impossible to show where an item is located with only one reference point. Ever hear of triangulation?

Even assuming an app could accurately measure distance to the router - a difficult feat due to different signal strength output from different routers - that's still a one dimensional measurement. It couldn't tell which direction the signal was coming from.

No matter how certain you are, I don't see how even the Jesus phone would do it.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

It's not impossible, as I said a friend has an app for iPhone that does it quite accurately, and a different friend does it with a Globalsat BU-353 USB GPS Receiver SIRF III

I have heard of triangulation but not looked into it much.

Sounds cool LSphone and it's appreciated, any idea on the timescale?

[Pete6]

With a non-directional antenna such as the BlackBerry and the iPhone have, it would be quite difficult to find the azimuth (direction) of a WiFi source from such a phone.

You would simply see a signal strength reading and tha AP name and its enryption type. Multiple sources from the same observation point would give you several signal strengths, name, etc.

Moving by a small amount (10 - 20 meters) would then give you two reference points to the same source(s) and thus triangulate.

With an omni-directional antenna, this is about the best you can hope for - even on an iPhone - hehe. This is physics and does not care about Mr. Jobs.

Using a directional antenna like this WiFi Antenna | 2.4 GHz 14 Element Waterproof Yagi or even a simple bipole will help enormously because you can orientate the antenna and see the signal strength change as you rotate it. This will give you a direction from where you are standing.

What Google did (by accident, surely ) was to drive down a road and pick up each AP as they went past it, blip, blip.......blip. In a street full of houses + GPS you would get some idea of which houses on one side of the road had WiFi. Drive down the other side of the road and you would get the WiFi nodes there too AND, you would get a weaker signal from the previously measured nodes so now you have a better idea of which houses have which Wifi names and on which side of the road.

This is a time consuming process.

It would help if we knew just what the OP ws trying to accomplish and over what sort of an area (street, estate, town).

[trucky]

With APs popping up and down every minute of every day, and the fact that most have an effective broadcast range of maybe 200 feet, any map would be sadly outdated before the ink was dry. An active sniffer would be better but you could literally be a few feet from an open AP and not "see" it. You can get survey devices that cost thousands of dollars and highly effective directional antennas for plotting out hot zones but it is an extremely time consuming process for even a small area. Best bet is to turn on your WiFi and if you find a decent signal, be happy.

[Pete6]

With APs popping up and down every minute of every day, and the fact that most have an effective broadcast range of maybe 200 feet, any map would be sadly outdated before the ink was dry. An active sniffer would be better but you could literally be a few feet from an open AP and not "see" it. You can get survey devices that cost thousands of dollars and highly effective directional antennas for plotting out hot zones but it is an extremely time consuming process for even a small area. Best bet is to turn on your WiFi and if you find a decent signal, be happy.

Sounds about right to me.

[Shakesy]

What app is that on the iPhone? I'll get it and see what it does.

I don't want to spend more than a day or two on this, I'm sure not working on it over the holiday weekend, so either it will be out in a couple of days or be postponed.

If you're looking to pinpoint addresses, I don't think I'm going to go that far because I don't see it as being something most people want and therefore not worth the time. What I want to do is present basically a coverage map and let you show individual routers' and cell towers' coverage or else the combined view. You could probably deduce addresses but the app's not going to say, "Router X - 1943 Berry Lane".

That's all most of us need, right? We're getting cruddy reception and want to know what direction we need to move in to get a better signal before the call drops. If you're walking, it might show a moving coverage map so you know when you're approaching a hole in coverage and maybe choose an alternate route. Maybe it could even give you a warning vibe if it senses you moving toward a dead zone, and give you two vibes if you need to turn left to stay in coverage, one if you need to turn right, three if you need to back up... how nautical... maybe it should come with red and green running lights, too.

We'll see. I'll do what I can in a day or two, and let it go at that for about a buck.

My friends on holiday so I can't tell you the name of the app, maybe in a week or so if you'd still like to know.

My idea was for it to make an estimation on a map, doesn't have to show an exact address, even if you need to collect signal from 2 or 3 locations. But if this is too hard a simple sound would do the trick, it could just beep, and when you move closer to the signal it starts to beep faster and when you move further away from the signal it starts to beep slower. The directions you're talking about sound good though.

[Shadowlore]

What he's looking for is nothing more than a simple Wardriving app. If you want a prime example of a wardriving app.. look at Netstumbler.

There's a few others that are more viable, but Netstumbler had a few user scripts that would export the data, live, to Microsoft Mappoint.

So.. a wireless sniffer... a wireless stumbler.. a wardrive app..

Those are 3 terms to use to get results.. and there's plenty of results on the net.. just nothing useful for a BB.

... and yes.. I am an active wardriver, and have been for years now. Unlike what is claimed here, most maps are NOT 'outdated' within a few hours. In fact, 90-95% of all access points, once found, remain there... There ARE more points added routinely, however... but it's not as often as you might think.

[Shakesy]

What he's looking for is nothing more than a simple Wardriving app. If you want a prime example of a wardriving app.. look at Netstumbler.

There's a few others that are more viable, but Netstumbler had a few user scripts that would export the data, live, to Microsoft Mappoint.

So.. a wireless sniffer... a wireless stumbler.. a wardrive app..

Those are 3 terms to use to get results.. and there's plenty of results on the net.. just nothing useful for a BB.

... and yes.. I am an active wardriver, and have been for years now. Unlike what is claimed here, most maps are NOT 'outdated' within a few hours. In fact, 90-95% of all access points, once found, remain there... There ARE more points added routinely, however... but it's not as often as you might think.

Just looked this up, seems to be exactly what I'm looking for! LSphone, have a look at the wardriving apps for the other phones and you'll know what I mean, I'd be happy to pay a bit more than a buck for the application if you would dedicate some time to making it to my specifications.

[jlb21]

Not a wardriving app, but works great for finding free/pay hotposts around the world. Works on PC or on Android/iPhone.

I tried navigating to the page on my BB to JiWire Global Wi-Fi Finder

a little clunky.......


I just checked via PC and it came up with all of the known locations in my town....library, coffee shops, etc.........

[Shakesy]

thanks mate but I specifically want this for personal routers, that won't show up on any program with it's own list.

[Shakesy]

any progress LSphone?

[phone9]

I don't see a way for the app to command the phone to re-scan for AP's. The HotSpot API has a function to probe the network that says it won't work until a future version. If that worked, there would at least be a way to update the signal strengths of the known AP's. Without the ability to command immediate re-scans, the app can't correlate data to positions or collect enough data.

[SignalSeeker]

Might not help (because it's an android app) but Open Signal Maps does exactly what you're asking for among other things.

We originally built it to show the positions of nearby cell towers, and show you where you're getting signal from (to help you get a better signal). We then added wifi routers.

If there's enough interest we could potentially write this for BlackBerry (it's something I've been thinking about).

We're also mapping the world's TRUE network coverage. Anyway look out for Open Signal Maps.

[snowfree52]

this is interesting

[rrrebo]

WifiMaps :: wireless-warrior.org
Hmm, wifimaps seems to be down.

WiGLE - Wireless Geographic Logging Engine - Plotting WiFi on Maps