The car hack: Modding my car into a roving network hotspot

[tim_n]

I've just purchased what I hope is a very cheap car.

It cost £20. Yes, £20. Only problem seemed to be a dead battery as it sat on my friends nans drive for a long time. We've stuck in a different battery, modded the circular battery holders into flat ones and off we go!

It's got the MOT tomorrow and I'm getting my hopes up on whether I'm going to mod it into a roving network hotspot. I've just purchased a WRT54GSUK which I'm going to stick some shiny new firmware on it (HyperWRT probably) and allow general public access to my storage device.

The storage will be an Asus WL-HDD which is a simple network based HD caddy. It's running hacked firmware made by Oleg from the old chupa forums (now wl500g.info) which converts the thumb drive USB port on the front to a webcam port. It'll also run an httpD.

To start with the project is so I can park it up outside my friends house etc and just access it from his wireless bits and pieces and dump across work documents

I intend to take the odd pic and post here if anyone is interested - I'd like to know what type of aerial or antenna would be best for this project involving as little drilling as poss. I'd prefer to have it attached via magnet or similar outside my window....

Any bright ideas? Since the power range can be upped I ought to get a fair range on it too if I do a good job on the antenna.

[Howard]

What car is it?

[tim_n]

M-reg mondeo with plenty of go left in it - it's picture perfect and belonged to a mechanics nan who's christian and been my buddy for about 12 yrs so unlikely to be dangerous - the MOT will hopefully come back clean! it's got full service history too, they were just going to scrap it so we'll see how it goes!

[Howard]

... For £20?

[TheAnimus]

some kinda omnidirectional antena with the best gain you can afford will be the best.

As to if it would be legal, well that depends on if your running the firmware that kranks a little extra mW from your access point or not

[tim_n]

some sort of omnidirectional antenna needs to be more specific - has anyone seen a magnetic mount that's worthwhile? Most of them seem to be for cards and only really take the signal outside the car!

[nvening]

you can get a minidish on top of it and then you can connect anywhere - however you would have to be stationary and have to move the dish unless you want to spend ££££££ on a tracking one lol

im not really sure how it works but i swaw it on the gaget show lol

[dave87]

...or you could go for the essex favourites - half thought out soundsystem, some overly large alloys and a glued on spoiler? would be just as effective

nah, in all seriousness, your best bet would be to find a way of adapting a larger aerial to fit, and then finding the best place to fit it. Also - have you ever considered running a car pc - music etc stored in the car already, just something to play it with?

Dave

[tim_n]

...or you could go for the essex favourites - half thought out soundsystem, some overly large alloys and a glued on spoiler? would be just as effective

nah, in all seriousness, your best bet would be to find a way of adapting a larger aerial to fit, and then finding the best place to fit it. Also - have you ever considered running a car pc - music etc stored in the car already, just something to play it with?

Dave

actually I was considering canabalising an xbox to do just that! Not sure where all the power is going to come from though = )

Next consideration is battery and power... mind you if those essex boys can pump out their terrible beats on stupid amps, I ought to be able to remove any mpg by kitting myself out with a few submarine batteries!

[TheAnimus]

http://www.wirelesspro.co.uk/store/c...hp?cPath=1_2_4
http://www.wirelesspro.co.uk/store/c...hp?cPath=1_2_4

something like that, omnidirectional means that the signal is designed to go out in all angles, gain is measured in dBi, be careful not to get too much gain, because then it becomes illegal (uk radio laws are all i know about, duno what its like for anyone reading this in other countries).

You will get best performance with a line of sight parabolic thou, yagi's are often over-rated, but a prabolic has a hudge mesh and needs to be angled. But if you've line of sight (nothing in way) you can go for miles and miles with just one parabolic, and a standard ariel.

Because A and G use a diferent frequency (5.8 and 2.4ghz respectivly) you want to buy an ariel for the type of signal your going to be using.

[tim_n]

it failed, but only because the offside drivers handle doesn't flip down properly (I already knew that, but didn't think it a problem!) and the lights need angling up a bit.

Apart from that, fine = )