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Wireless Networking Handhelds Hardware

Wireless Link Calculator On A Cell Phone 85

Posted by simoniker from the dial-up-success dept.
Casey Halverson writes "Ever been out in the field and wanted to make a quick wireless link calculation, but didn't have a computer or internet connection handy? Or maybe you're just too lazy to turn the thing on? Well now you can, from your xHTML capable cell phone. PocketSOM can calculate a wireless link, telling you your signal strength, whether or not it meets local FCC/IC/EU regulations, and even an expert analysis system that will tell you how you can improve your wireless link and what kind of performance you can expect. People like us (the SeattleWireless admins) are using it right now - here's a screenshot."
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Wireless Link Calculator On A Cell Phone More

Wireless Link Calculator On A Cell Phone

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  • What's my link now? *walk a little* What's my link now? *walk a little* What's...

  • How long until this is pervasive (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    So

    One more story (of many) on a device that can do anothers job, all through overlapping technology. How long until we just have one device that can do everything? a device the size of a cellphone thats a PDA, with a roll-out screen and keyboard the size of a normal laptop, running at 2GHz+ type speeds, full colour, decent resolution, weighs as much as an iPod, plays MP3s and burns/writes to the common media of the day, and will take a photo or movie of you while it does so.

    This whole 'convergence' thing

  • Why (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 17, 2003 @03:40AM (#6459281)
    This is pointless Any good engineer can do it with a slide rule!

  • Hmmm... (Score:5, Funny)

    by caitsith01 ( 606117 ) on Thursday July 17, 2003 @03:45AM (#6459293) Journal
    "Ever been out in the field and wanted to make a quick wireless link calculation, but didn't have a computer or internet connection handy?"

    Yes, I have that problem all the time! Why should an average Joe like me struggle with complex trigonometry when this handy little device let's me do wireless link calculations in the field like a pro? No more time consuming manual wireless link calculations for me. Are you still doing wireless link calculations with a fiddly old wireless link calculation slide rule? Throw it in the garbage! You don't need it anymore thanks to this handy gizmo. Don't be a laughing stock because you can't do quick wireless link calculations in the field... act now!

    By the way, what's a wireless link calculation? (Don't you love it when an article assumes you know exactly what it's talking about?)

  • Well, no... (Score:2, Funny)

    by jazir1979 ( 637570 )
    ..I can't say that I have ever wanted to do that.

  • More apps like this! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nordicfrost ( 118437 ) * on Thursday July 17, 2003 @03:48AM (#6459298)
    WAP / XHTML applications like this can be a lifesaver. Why don't we spend more time deveoping these and less time porting inane games to our phones? (Because games create money)

    • But what is the point of such an application if you cannot get the values to input? Or do they mean that any Capable Geek should know that?

      There is a wonderful little program, rather misleadingly named MiniGPS [psiloc.com], which can tell you the Area ID, Cell ID and signal strength, measured in dBm, for any Series60 gsm phone (like my Nokia 3650 :). What makes this program Truly Nifty is that it can switch my profile to "not-at-work" when i am at home, and "at-work" when i'm there. Good stuff. All i now need to do

      • If you have a Nokia phone, you don't need this app to find out that information. Just do an internet search and find out how to enable the "field test" menu on the phone. The info in it may be a little crpytic, but it's all in there.
    • I modified one of the headline grabbers written in PHP on the slashdot faq page (ok, I rewrote the thing by hand to make it use mysql), and redid the output so it'd look decent on a cellphone.

      Only problem is the comment itself isn't in the XML (hint hint!), so it's mostly useless. I even made it work with slashdot.jp, but I can't figure out how to make it convert from EUC to SJIS and JIS (some phones use JIS, some SJIS, none EUC).

      Think, a bit more and one could totally geek out by reading and posting to s
    • becausse WAP applications are a pain-in-the-butt to write?
      • becausse WAP applications are a pain-in-the-butt to write?

        Assembly language programs were royal pains to write, yet there were plenty of them. Whether or not an application gets written or not doesn't really have that much to do with the underlying technology. The question is whether the demand is there.

        Secondly, most new browser phones support at least most of HTML. Some even support JavaScript. A content developer doesn't really have to deal with WML and WAP anymore.

    • There would be more point in making these in j2me, so that you don't need connectivity to use it. Besides, most wap gateways can convert html to xhtml within some limits. The built in browsers tend to suck, like in _this_ 3650, luckily there's alternatives
    • They put games into phones because it's a distraction for every idiot 14 year old kid who buys a phone and pays some ridiculously high prepay rate for phone minutes.

  • ho hum... (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Useful but hardly revolutionary. At the Cellular company where I work we've written a Java MIDP app linked into our RF planning tool and BTS database, delivering mini coverage plots for submitted locations.

  • incredible (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    who needs mp3 players and video messaging when there are applications like this to take advantage of cutting edge cellphone technology, iam sure all the professional engineers will junk their 20,000$ test equipment and convert by the end of the day

    thank goodness this exists

  • Screenshot (Score:3, Funny)

    by waynemcdougall ( 631415 ) <slashdot@codeworks.gen.nz> on Thursday July 17, 2003 @04:04AM (#6459339) Homepage
    Ahh yes, a screenshot with the infinite variety and subtle shades of colour, best captured as a JPG image for smoothing out that overly-crisp text.

    Make sure you keep the image quality high enough to capture every nuance of the subtle faux wood-grain background (and by background I mean 68.3% of the image), not forgetting the coffee cup stain.

    Be sure to include the whole of the phone including every dialing digit, because that gives context to the screenshot.

    Well done. You passed the 0.5 Mb threshold, but still shy of the 0.6 standard. Try a brightly coloured background (a stained tartan kilt plus sporan should do) next time. Remember you want to get to at least 1.5 Mb so it won't fit on a floppy.

  • Uhm (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    it doesnt even validate [w3.org]

    you do know about doctypes, character encodings and how xhtml and html parsers work right ?

    without a doctype using or even calling it xhtml is worthless and the parser will use plain old html quirks mode (aka html 3), good effort but no cigar, you could of also scripted this in WMLS then the client would not need to post forms and would be able to update the display in realtime, the user could even use it offline then and store the WML locally.

    and you call yourself a nerd ?
    • Thats ok, neither does slashdot. You can try to just link to /. from that site but for some reason it is 403 forbidden, so I just copied their html and ran the test on the file hosted on my own server. Turns out that it was not valid HTML 3.2 and had 155 errors. Try it for yourself...
  • The battery on your existing cellphone is significantly *larger* then entire cellphones today!

    xHTML? Wha? Back when I got my phone, digital was still a pretty hot new thing, and analog / digital dual mode was sweet. Games? E-Mail? Never heard of them!

    I feel like that guy on That 80's Show (short lived, I never watched it) who's seen talking on a "mobile" phone in a club. That thing he was using was the size of a loaf of bread.

  • Hmm, let me think... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Powercntrl ( 458442 ) on Thursday July 17, 2003 @04:19AM (#6459379) Homepage
    "Ever been out in the field and wanted to make a quick wireless link calculation..."

    Umm, no. I have; however, been out in the field and wished my cell phone would get a goddamn signal.
    • "Ever been out in the field and wanted to make a quick wireless link calculation..."
      Umm, no. I have; however, been out in the field and wished my cell phone would get a goddamn signal.
      Which is why I thought this would make a much better PalmOS app than a DHTXML-whatever applet.
      But maybe it's just me

      --

  • Errr.... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Keyser_Lives ( 543481 )
    "Ever been out in the field and wanted to make a quick wireless link calculation"

    Nope. Next question.

  • Now what would be really neat... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by femto ( 459605 ) on Thursday July 17, 2003 @04:30AM (#6459419) Homepage
    is if they could figure out how to get the phone to actually measure field strength! (and compare the measurements with calculations).

    It can be done using only software modifications! It's how some network operators measure their networks. I've seen a picture of around half a dozen mobile phones (each a different make) attached to a piece of wood, with cables plugged into the standard connector on the bottom, running back to a black box (think it was actually a laptop). The system then logs field strength for each phone as a function of position (GPS is also attached).

  • J2ME? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by arcain ( 601379 ) on Thursday July 17, 2003 @04:34AM (#6459425) Homepage
    Wouldn't this be better suited as a Java MIDlet? What if you have no signal? What if the server is down? No additional bandwidth charges (for those with carriers that do). And probably quicker response times. And no worries of the site being slashdotted.

    Document the calculations and I'll make a MIDlet in a couple of hours. I can find basic equations, but they take into account additional variables (cable loss, receiver related variables) which you don't use.
    • Forget Java, you could do this in JavaScript in a plain normal HTML file. Who wrote this in PHP? Are they mad? Can any phones handle PHP natively? Nope. Ever thought of coding for your target platform? If you have HTML, you have JavaScript. It's a perfectly fine language for simple applications like this.

      I've got an HTML set of webpages on my phone already, where you can do ASCII lookups, Trig functions, unit conversions, prime number checks blah blah blah. This is hardly revolutionary, I've had this for

      • Who wrote this in PHP? Are they mad? Can any phones handle PHP natively? Nope.


        That's assuming the page is being hosted on the telephone. PHP is compiled server side -- the phone only sees a simple HTML/xHTML file with the proper values in it.

        Next question
        • PHP is compiled server side -- the phone only sees a simple HTML/xHTML file with the proper values in it.

          Exactly. That's my point. It's the wrong tool for the job.

          • What on earth are you trying to say?

            You seem to be either missing the point completely or not communicating your thoughts very well.

            That is to say, PHP is a fine tool for the job; it is server-side, like most scripting technologies, and takes inputs from the phone and then returns the answers.

            If, like a previous user, you want to be able to run this without browsing a web page (which is completely different from the intent of this applet) then you'll want JAVA hosted on your phone. JavaScript probably w
            • I'm trying to say (like the other poster) that server-side is not the way to do this. Sure, I take your point on it being less dependant on the browsers capability, but it's HTML so JavaScript support is a part of the standard. If the phone can render HTML, it should be able to handle JavaScript. Otherwise, hardly any websites would render correctly.

              On these devices, you pay by the byte. I have a GPRS phone myself that has full web browser capability, including JavaScript. No Java though, but you can writ

              • Of the millions of phones shipped, only a small percentage of them support full HTML and Javascript (PocketPC-based ones, Palm-based, and Symbian-based).

                From http://siliconvalley.internet.com/news/article.php /1598081 [internet.com]:
                An estimated 50 million Java handsets are currently on the market and shipments of Java handsets exceeded PDA shipments in 2002, said Gold, adding that one out of ever ten cell phones in the world will be Java phones by the end of the year.

                "The answer is increasingly just Java," Gold
                • Sure, however millions of these phones are braindead and can't access the internet in any way, or install new applications, so we can discount them straight away. ;-) When you go down to the region where phones can access tge net and handle proper HTML, then JavaScript support is on the majority of them. As the author of this app has used HTML, this restriction has already been made.

                  If you want to maximise compatability with the phones in use today, WAP would be the way to go. However, as someone with a

                  • Millions of phones can access the web: most of them can do WAP/WML or its forebears, some of them WMLScript, some of them HTML 4 or some subset, but only tiny minority that can run any Javascript. Vastly more phones can run Java (J2ME) MIDlets than can execute Javascript. And, no, most websites don't perform terribly well on a phone.

                    Furthermore, there's nothing in the HTML standards that requires Javascript. I'm not sure where you got that idea.

                    It's great that your phone can do Javascript. You can't r
        • but you still need connectivity for that to work. with html/js, you could host it on the phone and not eat up bandwidth uselessly.

          ~~
      • If you have HTML, you have JavaScript.

        What mobile phone supports Javascript? Even most PDA webbrowsers don't.

        • What mobile phone supports Javascript? Even most PDA webbrowsers don't.

          Any that have Opera or PocketIE do, we aren't in Nokia land here. ;-) Which is a surprising amount of the new smartphones coming on to the market. Highly recommended by the way. They don't claim "JavaScript support" on the box or in the literature, but if your HTML browser conforms to the standards, you should have JavaScript. It's an intregal part of the WWW.

          • Nothing in the HTML standards mandates Javascript support. The two are orthoganal, and there are many HTML browsers that do not support Javascript especially in the PDA and mobile phone world.
  • used to calculate the gains and losses on a link...
    ya know.. sometimes you just need to know... BOOKMARK THEM!

    http://www.satsig.net/linkbugt.htm [satsig.net]
    http://classwww.gsfc.nasa.gov/class/pages/FLBCalc. htm [nasa.gov]
    http://nmsp.gsfc.nasa.gov/tdrss/calc.html [nasa.gov]

  • Woohoo! (Score:1, Funny)

    by Oscar_Wilde ( 170568 )
    Now, where is the metric version?
  • it measured the actaul field strength of your wireless link. If you are doing field meseaurements you would have your laptop or wireless equipped PDA with you anyway. I really cannot see the fscking point or carrying around another bit of gear that does less than all the other bits of gear I carry around.

  • Wireless Link Calculator (Score:5, Funny)

    by i_really_dont_care ( 687272 ) on Thursday July 17, 2003 @06:35AM (#6459715)
    Welcome to Wireless Link Calculator.
    This is free software distributed under the GPL. See COPYING for details.

    Enter first number of wireless links
    > 5

    Enter second number of wireless links
    > 3

    Together that amounts to 8 wireless links.
    Have a nice day.
  • Mmmmmmm...lovely motif widgets.
  • I need to do my wireless calculation but I'm out in this field and have no signal for my cell phone!
  • No DTD, and the server is identifying it as text/html.

    If you're not going to go all the way and identify it as application/xhtml+xml then you may as well write HTML 4.01 Strict. If you don't, the UA will take your XHTML (XML-style) document, run it through its HTML (SGML-style) parser and throw a bunch of errors on things like .

    Why cross your fingers and hope that the UA can deal with those errors gracefully?

    Don't get me wrong, XHTML 1.1 kicks ass (and I can't wait for 2.0), but "tell it like it is" with
  • If you notice in the image, the program is set to 2.4GHz (the frequency at which 802.11b wireless operates), but it looks like the frequency is changeable. What I find interesting is that it picks up the frequency on 2400MHz, when in fact, channel 1 of the 802.11b starts at 2412MHz ( here [80211-planet.com] for more info) and channels above that step up in frequency. Scenario: my neighbor John has a linksys wireless router set to its default channel 6, and I set my wireless device(s) to channel 11. Since this cellphone det
  • Some other guy has written some other tiny little app with limited appeal. How is this news? He uses XHTML?

    Say, I have a program that calculates the specific density and body fat percentage of my cats...and you can access it via the WORLD WIDE WEB! Oh, yeah, and everything is first output into XML 1.1, then transformed by an XSLT stylesheet into XSL:FO, which is then rendered into PDF with embedded Javascript, which I then transform into WBMP for output to my cell phone through WAP Push. Every five min

    • But, d00d, how else are Intel and AMD going to rationalize selling 10GHz processors???

      I remember the days when counting processor cycles was the thing...

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