Absolutely awesome. I wonder how the picture would change, if you enabled beam forming, using multiple antennas, and how repeatable the experiment is? How is the measurement affected by e.g. people and objects moving around in the area?
This is actually most of what I do. The pattern shown is not truly static. Many things will cause changes: moving equipment, relocating items, having door and windows open or closed, etc. When doing a site survey for a client, I inform them that this is only a "snapshot" of time. I call it my "formal walk through". It gives me an idea of where I need to spend more of my time for the actual survey which is generally done over a 2 week period. That way I can capture many of the transient strength patterns. This is then used to determine the type of WiFi access point (AP) to use (directional, omni directional or combined antennas, 2x2 or 3x3 MIMO design, frequency bands, etc.) While WifI for home, and often for small offices, may seem simple, once you get into larger more complex spaces it quickly become a very complex item. Networking WiFi APs adds in several more layers of complexity. So the next time the WiFi at you local mall, airport, stadium, etc. goes down, realize that keeping those radio networks operating is a VERY complicated job. The engineers and technicians will do their best, but it can take some time to first find the problem, then we still have to fix it.
Michael Olsen This is something very much up my street but still something I know little about. Any resources you can point me towards? I've read up plenty but knowing when and how much to adjust power levels, exactly where to put APs and how to properly do site surveys is beyond me.
Some very good questions Rob Whitfield. I have a hard time recommending resources because too many of them deal with WiFi on a very trivial level. For example I have yet to find any that actually deal with 3D mapping. The best I have found are 2D mapping system that will allow you to "stack" floors within a building. As for adjusting power levels, that can become a full time job all by itself. I generally recommend developing a "mesh" styled network using APs that are able to talk to each other (directly or via master controller). These often have automatic power adjustment and channel mapping capabilities, making the network inherently more stable and robust. They also have prices that reflect this ability ($300 to $1,000 each). Finally, when doing a site survey, the big thing to remember is that all radio traffic (including WiFi) is transient. This means that what you measure at a specific place and time today, can, and most likely will, change throughout the day and all future time. The best we can do is establish a general trend of electromagnetic (EM) signals over a period of time, and us this as an estimate of what we would expect in the future. A typical site survey for me involves three distinct phases -Shoot & Measure, Initial EM walk through, and Extended Study. Many people combine the frist two into a single event and then say they are done. The result is a single moment in time snap-shot that has no means of predicting EM fluctuations over time. Hence, they frequently have to make return visits to "adjust" the AP placement/network. By separating and using all 3 phases, I am generally able to provide a much higher quality installation and often in a short time span. This saves the customer significant money on both installation and maintenance, and gains me tons of word-of-mouth advertising (read +50% increase in job requests). If you would like to discuss my process for surveys in detail, you can email me at my professional account, michael.olsen@dbwsys.mb.ca, and I will be glad to assist you further.
Back in my days of working at Blackberry, I built a machine to sweep the device through complex motions to average out these effects (Radio engineers always have to keep this sort of fading in mind)
In the pre-standard days of 802.11 we modeled and measured a lot of this stuff. Of course, we didn't have the compute power you have ( nor we were probably as clever ) to produce the kind of visual and measured granularity that you've shown. The standing waves shown in your experiment are as much about the affects of the Tx / Rx Antenna patterns as they are due far field reflections of the environment. As others have encouraged, press on sir, there is a growing need in the biz and consumer world to know know much more in practical terms in building / inhome spectrum management, even tho no normal consumer would know what the hell that means. :-)
If you could capture the signal data with the telemetry output from a smartphone motion sensor, then automate all of these steps, you could have a very valuable tool for network administrators on your hands. Especially if you could look at the whole spectrum, or filter by channel or SSID. Imagine an admin creating a 3D 'heatmap' that tells the admin where rogue networks are compromising signal, or where changes to the building plan dictate the need for network changes. Imagine adding a 4th dimension, time, and seeing how things like weather and how many people are present could affect trends. This is seriously wicked. There's so much potential with this kind of data.
Awesome is not a big enough word to describe what you have achieved, but I am awe struck. I've long suspected that the propagation of a signal would be very organic looking *if* you could visualise it, but how you visualise it without expensive equipment, and anechoic chambers etc? I'd love to see how TX antenna design affects the structure of the plot. Bravo Charles, there is a Nobel prize waiting for you 😁
Wow pretty cool. One thing you can try to do is add a 4th dimension - time. I'm sure there are interesting temporal variations that we could see. You could attach two or more detectors on top of each other on the mill; that way the data from one will vary by some seconds from the one on the bottom. Just a suggestion, if you're not done with the project yet.
This is what I always wanted to see. I think in the future im going to show this to people that think WiFi is just a thing that's constant across the whole room when it does have significant variations
Here's what I'm thinking: Small two axis servo gimbals that holds this device's antenna and your PC's WiFi device/antenna. Write a program to find the sweet spot, lock onto it, and follow it if it grows weak. Imagine devices like wireless IP camera's, TV's and game consoles, etc actively finding the best possible signal in a narrow sphere. Basically smart antennas! In places like coffee shops with constantly moving barriers, this would be awesome to maintain best connection strength.
Finally someone made a prototype for visualization of WiFi signal!! GREAT JOB! I was just thinking about that few days ago and voila! It's finally here :-))
That would be awesome tool for testing and visualizing quality of home-made wifi antennas, and finding optimal location for your access point as well...
WOW to echo what "SpinStar1956" said below..... As a profoundly visual (but not very electronically gifted guy) this was FANTASTIC to see, thanks for posting!
Did anyone else thing fuck yeah when he added the z? I was wondering when he started using the mill. Really cool, should try filtering it in matlab, I'm sure some interesting tests could be run.
that's really crazy. well done man. now the interesting question would be: a. How does the "wifi 3d scan" looks when you repeat this one time more with the same setting and b. how would it look when you move your wlan router few meter to a new location. would great to have that comparison
Okt ayO I guess I should have covered, but as long as things in the environment didn't change, the results are very repeatable. As soon as you move anything, though... all bets are off.
Well done! Very clever way to acquire this RF data using a colored LED. A really neat way of visualizing the invisible. This is coming from someone who really dislikes EM theory.
Reminds me of a science show that this guy brought to our college. He held a microphone with a light. The light would get brighter or dimmer depending on the intensity of sound. He would emit a tone and walk around the room demonstrating standing waves or harmonic waves of sound.
I'm a ham radio operator , we call this propagation . That includes reflection of the transmitted signal - relative to solid physical objects in the area relative to reactivity of the signal being transmitted . And secondly , atmospherically - the transmitted signal relation to it reaction to less physical / energy , as an example with other frequencies HF bouncing off different layers in the higher atmosphere back to earth , allowing HF frequencies to reach beyond line of site , trying to make a big subject small ;) Hopefully this makes sense to some .
there's a similar device that you'd use if you want the rf field emitted by a device measured. You simply put the pcb/device to test on a table and then a cnc controlled holder moves a special near field probe over the device. this way one could see which component/conductor exactly emits the most and tune the circuit in case there were troubles with the device at emc tests
As an ex student of radio (1974) I often wondered if it was possible to obtain "real time" 3d display of signal strength. I THINK that's what I'm seeing (5 minutes watching). Brilliant.
This is fantastic. The weak areas and strong areas i was wondering thinking it was probably the sample rate of whatever is receiving the signal or measuring it's strength. I wonder if a truly analog device would look the same.
It "should" look the same. I don't have any good tech to do that, but, if I ever come across it at some point in the future, I will try to do this again.
Whats the next cool project you're working on? I know that feeling all too well, that let down sensation when a project is done. It's kind of depressing. But there's always the thrill of a new project!
That is a very cool result! A question though - Wouldn't the scanning mechanism affect the accuracy of the measurement? It seems that the field strength being affected so much by gradual position would also be affected by the mechanism moving the probe. One way to test this would be to use your measuring rig to see if a known radiation pattern in free space ends up looking like the measured result.
Wait it was you who did this? I subscribed to you about a week ago because you have really interesting content and saw this today on Reddit. Couldn't view it though because I was on mobile and with a terrible connection.
very interesting video, i like the idea and the method of this study, but the way, guys who put dislike, i think, they don't know anything about computer or wifi protocol
@@CNLohr Though, jokes aside, taking a random "huh, intruiging" moment and then visualizing in a minecraft raytracing thingy that got ported to webgl... Isn't that what humanity is all about?
First thing is to have two antennas spaced apart by an amount that makes probability of no wifi minimal and to switch antenna use based on stronger signal .then test max speed with new method versus single antenna
Wow you got my sub for this, for sure. I may have missed it in the deluge of data you provided in the description, but I was curious what channel you were using, as well as what mode of (I'm assuming) 802.11. 11n, 11ac? Were you associated and did you have traffic running at the time, or are you capturing periodic control traffic like beacons and probes? Also, you mentioned 2.4 Ghz, it'd be cool to see 5 GHz channels as well. As an aside, that solution powering a large LED array would make for a killer Burning Man art project. ;)
It would be really interesting to see this implemented on a phone, using the screen to provide the colour feedback. Or perhaps a router with WRT. I'd be really surprised if the frequency, shape and size of the wireless "holes" don't improve hugely with MIMO, beam-forming, and mobile/router antenna design and distribution.
HurricaneMax his first letter is uppercase, indicate you are probably right! Didn't know you can't edit on mobile tho (Editing because I'm using browser) I guess you can always delete and repost :)
The interesting part is the movement of all the measurement equipment is impacting the RSSI as well. So the results are slightly skewed by the measurement process. That said, very well done.
Seeing the wlan waves someday in my room within a 3d headset would be cool. Seeing how moving some things in my room would affect this ... awesome. I know that it's not practicable right now but perhaps someday. :)
Wouldn't a better way to do this test be to directly log numerical data from the Rx receiver instead of visually interpreting the data from a camera and LED? You would avoid the long render time of the composite process and have the raw data available to get a finer resolution by averaging between sample points.
Really I think the difficulty comes in synchronizing the data from the receiver with the points seen by the camera. It is much simpler to let the camera do this for you.
heyy i am really sorry for bothering but i am making a project simillar to ur 3dmaping project for college and i made the mil but all i got left is making the esp8266 record wifi signal strength and send it to laptop (if u can tell me what firmware to use u would have totaly done me a greaaaat favor p.s i dont have linux)
This is awesome! I have an idea and came across this, which got my wheels turning some more. I'm thinking about mapping the inside of things using density. Instead of using a hardware device to detect signal strength at a single point, could you use another field passing through something (like invisible cnc routing) to detect density either by signal strength at a given point or by wavelength change from point to point? You'd essentially be able to map the inside of something using wifi. Like an internal 3D printer.
Pretty cool stuff. Small sidenote with your superlongexposure, looks like you're writing to stdout extremely frequently, this is generally quite slow, depending on the terminal and buffer settings. You might gain a significant speed benefit by removing those prints. Could still see progress intermittently by spawning a new thread and getting status reports less frequently.
JaTochNietDan superlongexposure actually doesn't take /that/ long... but, on Linux, printf is extremely fast unless you're dumping megabytes to the terminal. In fact afaik, it actually does the byte-moving in a different thread.
I think the mill test probably didn't produce real results because the moving metallic parts probably influenced the signal differently at each position, and so you're not getting the same results as you would get if you just had the receiver floating at each position with the mill resting at it's zero or whatever other static position; the readings at all other positions are probably different for each current position being read, than what they were when the mill was positioned to read them there. Maybe you could get the real results using something sorta like those coordinated cable spooling/unspooling camera rigs they have in some stadiums and stuff that will move the camera thru space; but using some non-conductive, non-absorbing, and non-reflecting kind of string to suspend your sensor?
I did try testing to make sure that was ok by holding the sensor still at one location, and moving the mill around, and the change it made was minimal. To minimize the mill's impact is why I put it on a long wooden dowel rod. Doing it the other way would be even better.
@CNLohr, how did you record the elevation z ? Did you use a barometer/altimeter ? Or do you infer the elevation based on x/y and the distance to the hotspot + previous led locations (x,y,z)? thanks !
At very least I see a business here. Wi-Fi mapping. Sure, process could be streamlined but like other person mentioned it is a gold mine. At most, it is a cool party visualizer. You just need to get a few ESP8266s in a grid and move around with a portable hotspot. Profit!
Really awesome! Have you considered using different antennas to see the different results? I know that's a lot more work, but after seeing this video it seems like a cool thing to do, also I'm very much into 1.3/2.4/5.8GHz antennas right now as I'm getting more and more into R/C :) Anyhow, great video nonetheless :)
![[Live] : ONE FIGHT NIGHT 28 วันนี้!! "พระจันทร์ฉาย vs เอลลิส"](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/LfImEQqfARc/mqdefault.jpg)
Awesome! I'm surprised by the amount of local variation as well. I guess antenna diversity is really a good feature to have for this band.
Absolutely awesome. I wonder how the picture would change, if you enabled beam forming, using multiple antennas, and how repeatable the experiment is? How is the measurement affected by e.g. people and objects moving around in the area?
This is actually most of what I do. The pattern shown is not truly static. Many things will cause changes: moving equipment, relocating items, having door and windows open or closed, etc. When doing a site survey for a client, I inform them that this is only a "snapshot" of time. I call it my "formal walk through". It gives me an idea of where I need to spend more of my time for the actual survey which is generally done over a 2 week period. That way I can capture many of the transient strength patterns. This is then used to determine the type of WiFi access point (AP) to use (directional, omni directional or combined antennas, 2x2 or 3x3 MIMO design, frequency bands, etc.) While WifI for home, and often for small offices, may seem simple, once you get into larger more complex spaces it quickly become a very complex item. Networking WiFi APs adds in several more layers of complexity.
So the next time the WiFi at you local mall, airport, stadium, etc. goes down, realize that keeping those radio networks operating is a VERY complicated job. The engineers and technicians will do their best, but it can take some time to first find the problem, then we still have to fix it.
Michael Olsen This is something very much up my street but still something I know little about. Any resources you can point me towards?
I've read up plenty but knowing when and how much to adjust power levels, exactly where to put APs and how to properly do site surveys is beyond me.
Some very good questions Rob Whitfield. I have a hard time recommending resources because too many of them deal with WiFi on a very trivial level. For example I have yet to find any that actually deal with 3D mapping. The best I have found are 2D mapping system that will allow you to "stack" floors within a building.
As for adjusting power levels, that can become a full time job all by itself. I generally recommend developing a "mesh" styled network using APs that are able to talk to each other (directly or via master controller). These often have automatic power adjustment and channel mapping capabilities, making the network inherently more stable and robust. They also have prices that reflect this ability ($300 to $1,000 each).
Finally, when doing a site survey, the big thing to remember is that all radio traffic (including WiFi) is transient. This means that what you measure at a specific place and time today, can, and most likely will, change throughout the day and all future time. The best we can do is establish a general trend of electromagnetic (EM) signals over a period of time, and us this as an estimate of what we would expect in the future.
A typical site survey for me involves three distinct phases -Shoot & Measure, Initial EM walk through, and Extended Study. Many people combine the frist two into a single event and then say they are done. The result is a single moment in time snap-shot that has no means of predicting EM fluctuations over time. Hence, they frequently have to make return visits to "adjust" the AP placement/network. By separating and using all 3 phases, I am generally able to provide a much higher quality installation and often in a short time span. This saves the customer significant money on both installation and maintenance, and gains me tons of word-of-mouth advertising (read +50% increase in job requests).
If you would like to discuss my process for surveys in detail, you can email me at my professional account, michael.olsen@dbwsys.mb.ca, and I will be glad to assist you further.
Back in my days of working at Blackberry, I built a machine to sweep the device through complex motions to average out these effects (Radio engineers always have to keep this sort of fading in mind)
In the pre-standard days of 802.11 we modeled and measured a lot of this stuff. Of course, we didn't have the compute power you have ( nor we were probably as clever ) to produce the kind of visual and measured granularity that you've shown. The standing waves shown in your experiment are as much about the affects of the Tx / Rx Antenna patterns as they are due far field reflections of the environment.
As others have encouraged, press on sir, there is a growing need in the biz and consumer world to know know much more in practical terms in building / inhome spectrum management, even tho no normal consumer would know what the hell that means. :-)
This is one of the most fantastic things I've seen in a huge while.
***** thank you :)
If you could capture the signal data with the telemetry output from a smartphone motion sensor, then automate all of these steps, you could have a very valuable tool for network administrators on your hands. Especially if you could look at the whole spectrum, or filter by channel or SSID.
Imagine an admin creating a 3D 'heatmap' that tells the admin where rogue networks are compromising signal, or where changes to the building plan dictate the need for network changes.
Imagine adding a 4th dimension, time, and seeing how things like weather and how many people are present could affect trends.
This is seriously wicked. There's so much potential with this kind of data.
Awesome is not a big enough word to describe what you have achieved, but I am awe struck.
I've long suspected that the propagation of a signal would be very organic looking *if* you could visualise it, but how you visualise it without expensive equipment, and anechoic chambers etc?
I'd love to see how TX antenna design affects the structure of the plot.
Bravo Charles, there is a Nobel prize waiting for you 😁
Seriously, this is one of the coolest things ive seen and i love how you can see the wavelength pattern.
Wow pretty cool. One thing you can try to do is add a 4th dimension - time. I'm sure there are interesting temporal variations that we could see. You could attach two or more detectors on top of each other on the mill; that way the data from one will vary by some seconds from the one on the bottom. Just a suggestion, if you're not done with the project yet.
This is what I always wanted to see. I think in the future im going to show this to people that think WiFi is just a thing that's constant across the whole room when it does have significant variations
Here's what I'm thinking: Small two axis servo gimbals that holds this device's antenna and your PC's WiFi device/antenna. Write a program to find the sweet spot, lock onto it, and follow it if it grows weak. Imagine devices like wireless IP camera's, TV's and game consoles, etc actively finding the best possible signal in a narrow sphere. Basically smart antennas! In places like coffee shops with constantly moving barriers, this would be awesome to maintain best connection strength.
I think your on your own way to visually mapping out dark matter the way your going. Love the videos, they're always very inspiring.
If anyone's got a good data set, I would be okay with trying to import it.
Very cool! Good job! You can see all those ripples, reflections and refractions. Pretty much like the waves created by a pebble thrown in a pond .
That's simply amazing. Thank you for going as far as you did with this. Really neat to see it in 3d.
This is very similiar to sound pressure isosurfaces and a super cool demonstration of the wavy nature of light! So cool! Thanks for this work!
Finally someone made a prototype for visualization of WiFi signal!! GREAT JOB!
I was just thinking about that few days ago and voila! It's finally here :-))
Now we need live rendering and film the fluctuation. This is amazing.
Actually blown away by this vid. That was extremely interesting and well executed.
Thank you!
That would be awesome tool for testing and visualizing quality of home-made wifi antennas, and finding optimal location for your access point as well...
This should be a standard feature on all wi-fi enabled devices! Simply brilliant!
WOW to echo what "SpinStar1956" said below..... As a profoundly visual (but not very electronically gifted guy) this was FANTASTIC to see, thanks for posting!
Awesome video !! Love your "And I wonder where my free time goes" on 3:05
This is so cool man. I love the way your brain works. Awesome job.
Excellent data visualization. Thank you for sharing this with us.
Wow, dude. This is just amazing... Thanks a lot for sharing this with us. It really blew my mind.
this video is fantastic... if shoudl have millions of views!!
share it to get it there? :-p
well hey, its half way
This is amazing! I wish i had this when i was taking ee field theory classes!
It would be really interesting to see the difference in mapping at 5GHz vs this 2.4.
Did anyone else thing fuck yeah when he added the z? I was wondering when he started using the mill. Really cool, should try filtering it in matlab, I'm sure some interesting tests could be run.
that's really crazy. well done man.
now the interesting question would be:
a. How does the "wifi 3d scan" looks when you repeat this one time more with the same setting
and
b. how would it look when you move your wlan router few meter to a new location.
would great to have that comparison
Okt ayO I guess I should have covered, but as long as things in the environment didn't change, the results are very repeatable. As soon as you move anything, though... all bets are off.
CNLohr thank you. Again, really nice Idea and specially, nice work !!
Well done! Very clever way to acquire this RF data using a colored LED. A really neat way of visualizing the invisible. This is coming from someone who really dislikes EM theory.
I'm glad it was able to bridge that gap of interest for you.
This is amazing. Would love to see the effect of a polarization filter being rotated between the source and the ESP
Thats crazy neat. So next time i have connectivity issues I will just position my receiver some cm away. Quite a lot of work flowed into this analysis
Wow this is amazing dude! Great job!
Reminds me of a science show that this guy brought to our college. He held a microphone with a light. The light would get brighter or dimmer depending on the intensity of sound. He would emit a tone and walk around the room demonstrating standing waves or harmonic waves of sound.
That shows a good example of why you can have both frozen areas and scorching hot areas in food that gets put in the microwave.
I don't know why I never thought about that til now.
Also it explains why rotating the plate makes it more even - because you are changing the structure of the standing waves.
I'm a ham radio operator , we call this propagation .
That includes reflection of the transmitted signal - relative to solid physical objects in the area relative to reactivity of the signal being transmitted .
And secondly , atmospherically - the transmitted signal relation to it reaction to less physical / energy , as an example with other frequencies HF bouncing off different layers in the higher atmosphere back to earth , allowing HF frequencies to reach beyond line of site , trying to make a big subject small ;)
Hopefully this makes sense to some .
there's a similar device that you'd use if you want the rf field emitted by a device measured. You simply put the pcb/device to test on a table and then a cnc controlled holder moves a special near field probe over the device. this way one could see which component/conductor exactly emits the most and tune the circuit in case there were troubles with the device at emc tests
Very cool! Great project and explanation.
this is actually really neat, interesting video!
Exceptional work. WELL DONE.
Limitless Astonishment.
I guess is the right word to try to approach my feeling this video cause in me.
This is hilarious science. If only I had wifi-signal-strength-vision when I'm trying to browse the web at my Grandma's.
Good god that laptop is filthy,
thumbs up for this video as i haven't seen something as surprising as this in a while:D
This is totally awesome !
As an ex student of radio (1974) I often wondered if it was possible to obtain "real time" 3d display of signal strength. I THINK that's what I'm seeing (5 minutes watching). Brilliant.
It is not real time. It took a very long time to read all of the wifi in the area. But it does give you a real map.
@@CNLohr How did you get measurement for z (altitude) ? With an altimeter or a barometer ?
The rxsignal measurement does not give the altitude metric
I love your sense of humor.
This is fantastic. The weak areas and strong areas i was wondering thinking it was probably the sample rate of whatever is receiving the signal or measuring it's strength. I wonder if a truly analog device would look the same.
It "should" look the same. I don't have any good tech to do that, but, if I ever come across it at some point in the future, I will try to do this again.
I have a couple of these bad boys laying around. I guess it's time to play around with them.
Whats the next cool project you're working on?
I know that feeling all too well, that let down sensation when a project is done. It's kind of depressing. But there's always the thrill of a new project!
Very cool! I think this data will help to improve wifi!
That is a very cool result!
A question though - Wouldn't the scanning mechanism affect the accuracy of the measurement? It seems that the field strength being affected so much by gradual position would also be affected by the mechanism moving the probe.
One way to test this would be to use your measuring rig to see if a known radiation pattern in free space ends up looking like the measured result.
Very cool! I'm wondering how much interference, if any, was generated by your use of the mill?
Next level motion control
that be really cool man. nice work
Thanks!
Travelling through our bodies all day, every day for the rest of our days.
Gotta be good for us.
Whoa... That was pretty awesome.
Wait it was you who did this? I subscribed to you about a week ago because you have really interesting content and saw this today on Reddit. Couldn't view it though because I was on mobile and with a terrible connection.
Lol at the yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay part. This amazes me as I have a vague idea of what I'm seeing, but it is very interesting
a really cool video i liked it a lot. I'm really glad i found your channel:)
New videos come out frequently.
Very helpful video. Thank you.
very interesting video, i like the idea and the method of this study, but the way, guys who put dislike, i think, they don't know anything about computer or wifi protocol
Now that's some proper engineering
I don't even know if you'd call it engineering.
@@CNLohr I think engineering is like AGI, "you know it when you see it" :P
@@CNLohr Though, jokes aside, taking a random "huh, intruiging" moment and then visualizing in a minecraft raytracing thingy that got ported to webgl... Isn't that what humanity is all about?
@@poiitidis It's a big part of it for me.
That picture off the mill looks like a scanned map of the temperature of the universe
First thing is to have two antennas spaced apart by an amount that makes probability of no wifi minimal and to switch antenna use based on stronger signal .then test max speed with new method versus single antenna
Perfect example of ingenuity cubed
Wow you got my sub for this, for sure. I may have missed it in the deluge of data you provided in the description, but I was curious what channel you were using, as well as what mode of (I'm assuming) 802.11. 11n, 11ac? Were you associated and did you have traffic running at the time, or are you capturing periodic control traffic like beacons and probes? Also, you mentioned 2.4 Ghz, it'd be cool to see 5 GHz channels as well.
As an aside, that solution powering a large LED array would make for a killer Burning Man art project. ;)
Sadly, I did not record the channel number when performing this test :(
that EMO button on the gantry looks very well placed.... hahah
By the way, thank you, I use your code for voxel visualization of wire 3D chip scan at work.
Amazing beautiful!
It would be really interesting to see this implemented on a phone, using the screen to provide the colour feedback. Or perhaps a router with WRT. I'd be really surprised if the frequency, shape and size of the wireless "holes" don't improve hugely with MIMO, beam-forming, and mobile/router antenna design and distribution.
Adrian Beale Yes! All of these things will make the effects of these standing waves almost (or totally) go away.
This would be great if it can somehow be used for looking at the inside of organs in the body. Great work. "keep on "trucking"
This man is a genius. Than you
Thank you
MrNightpwner you can edit your own comments by clicking in the little arrow to the right
HurricaneMax his first letter is uppercase, indicate you are probably right! Didn't know you can't edit on mobile tho
(Editing because I'm using browser) I guess you can always delete and repost :)
The interesting part is the movement of all the measurement equipment is impacting the RSSI as well. So the results are slightly skewed by the measurement process. That said, very well done.
Dan Simpson I tried to minimize it by putting it on that long pole above the machinery.
great video, thanks. really inspiring and great idea!
Thanks! This was a great project to do!
Seeing the wlan waves someday in my room within a 3d headset would be cool. Seeing how moving some things in my room would affect this ... awesome. I know that it's not practicable right now but perhaps someday. :)
Excellent, thanks for sharing this!!!
Bruh I love this
Mapping out the Upside Down?
THIS IS SO GOOD! Thank you.
I guess such distinct patterns would not be visible in the open space (i can see that you tested mostly in a room) ? Nicely done :)
This is amazing. Enough said.
Wouldn't a better way to do this test be to directly log numerical data from the Rx receiver instead of visually interpreting the data from a camera and LED? You would avoid the long render time of the composite process and have the raw data available to get a finer resolution by averaging between sample points.
That sounds like effort. I generally just pick the easiest ways I can to find things.
IKR? I'm sure someone's already thrown a Python script up on GitHub that already does this.
Really I think the difficulty comes in synchronizing the data from the receiver with the points seen by the camera. It is much simpler to let the camera do this for you.
CNLohr
Spoken like a true hacker :)
heyy i am really sorry for bothering but i am making a project simillar to ur 3dmaping project for college and i made the mil but all i got left is making the esp8266 record wifi signal strength and send it to laptop (if u can tell me what firmware to use u would have totaly done me a greaaaat favor p.s i dont have linux)
Very interesting. Have you considered 3D printing an antenna or antenna mold using the voxel structure?
Amazing job, thanks for sharing!
Beautiful.
I agree
Amazing work!!!!
wicked sick O_O Great work!
5:26 Right is 300/2412MHz=0,1243m=124,3mm ... LightSpeed(km/s)/Hz=WaveLength(meter's)
Great work! I'm very expressed.
What would have been really cool is if you placed slab of led to see how the waves reflect off of it!
This is awesome! I have an idea and came across this, which got my wheels turning some more. I'm thinking about mapping the inside of things using density. Instead of using a hardware device to detect signal strength at a single point, could you use another field passing through something (like invisible cnc routing) to detect density either by signal strength at a given point or by wavelength change from point to point? You'd essentially be able to map the inside of something using wifi. Like an internal 3D printer.
Very cool, and very nerdy.
Pretty cool stuff. Small sidenote with your superlongexposure, looks like you're writing to stdout extremely frequently, this is generally quite slow, depending on the terminal and buffer settings. You might gain a significant speed benefit by removing those prints. Could still see progress intermittently by spawning a new thread and getting status reports less frequently.
JaTochNietDan superlongexposure actually doesn't take /that/ long... but, on Linux, printf is extremely fast unless you're dumping megabytes to the terminal. In fact afaik, it actually does the byte-moving in a different thread.
CNLohr Fair enough
I think the mill test probably didn't produce real results because the moving metallic parts probably influenced the signal differently at each position, and so you're not getting the same results as you would get if you just had the receiver floating at each position with the mill resting at it's zero or whatever other static position; the readings at all other positions are probably different for each current position being read, than what they were when the mill was positioned to read them there.
Maybe you could get the real results using something sorta like those coordinated cable spooling/unspooling camera rigs they have in some stadiums and stuff that will move the camera thru space; but using some non-conductive, non-absorbing, and non-reflecting kind of string to suspend your sensor?
I did try testing to make sure that was ok by holding the sensor still at one location, and moving the mill around, and the change it made was minimal. To minimize the mill's impact is why I put it on a long wooden dowel rod. Doing it the other way would be even better.
Excellent work
@CNLohr, how did you record the elevation z ? Did you use a barometer/altimeter ? Or do you infer the elevation based on x/y and the distance to the hotspot + previous led locations (x,y,z)?
thanks !
I drove the mill to a specific Z. I recorded many XY slices, each one at a different Z.
Amazing ! Good job genius !
At very least I see a business here. Wi-Fi mapping. Sure, process could be streamlined but like other person mentioned it is a gold mine.
At most, it is a cool party visualizer. You just need to get a few ESP8266s in a grid and move around with a portable hotspot. Profit!
Really awesome! Have you considered using different antennas to see the different results? I know that's a lot more work, but after seeing this video it seems like a cool thing to do, also I'm very much into 1.3/2.4/5.8GHz antennas right now as I'm getting more and more into R/C :) Anyhow, great video nonetheless :)
Genius idea!