Drewdroid

Midnightsnake, I tried flashing mine with my bus pirate (3.6 running 5.9 and current bootloader) and was completely unable to actually get the 1 entered at any point to break the boot sequence. I was getting a good read of data coming through the RX but figure it was an issue on the TX side. I believe the issue is actually the voltage on the bus pirate vs the needs of the pineapple to be. I was able to get to console on other older pineapples fine with the BP though, just not the 121U. For the sake of others, I went from Hiz< , b to set to 115200, m to choose UART, defaults for all UART options, and went into mode (1) for transparent bridge to use putty for the terminal. (pinouts differ depending on Seeed cable/Adafruit/Etc) I actually gave up and went with a straight USB to TTL adapter using the prolific 2303HX chip. It connected right up at 115200 without a problem and dropped me straight to the prompt. When in doubt - go with the hardware offered in the Hakshop :)

Been a while since I've been back on the boards.. here's my Mark II and MarkIV - some might have seen it on my twitter feed. RPi coming on the slow boat from China and some other things in the works

This is one of the sites I ran across that was/is a good resource when I started back up again last year - http://www.cprogramming.com/tutorial.html It covers C, C++, OpenGL, STL - I'll double check the books I picked up as well when I'm back at the homestead.

Just saw these come through my news feed and I think these are even smaller than my Sony drives - http://www.deonet.com/news.html Tiny! The new Micro UDP-chip measures 19,5 x 14,5 mm, barely the size of a fingertop, and it is only 2,9 mm thin. This super small USB-stick is available in 4, 8 and 16 GB and will be introduced in January at the biggest business fair for promotional gifts in Europe: PSI Düsseldorf.

I think it might work but I'm not sure about the gains. It's small enough for sure to fit anywhere but I'd worry about the measurement of the elements.

I wanted to add an antenna that I had disassembled for internal use - it's one from this N300 Wireless PCI Adapter http://support.netgear.com/app/products/model/a_id/2605 The internals, although split for MiMo workings show how tiny they can end up being. The traces are on both sides of the board and are setup for frequency ranges covering B,G and N. It's an example of an antenna tuned for 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands. The ground is going to the ground plane traces - far side of the pcb in the picture (which is actually the "front" of the antenna) The positive is going to the near plane traces. Notice how they are mirrors of each other and the center trace is thinner on this side to make up for the extra distance added. They both have the same trace surface area. For scale, a standard business card covers all three of those antenna elements. I'm going to run a few signal tests on an individual element and try to get back with some hard data.

@ The Sorrow, it sounds like you're essentially against the hacker spirit. I'd posit that a career in law enforcement living by the letter of the law is appropriate for you. Many times there are rules or laws that are in place, but it does not mean that they were created by knowledgeable IT personnel. Most of those "laws" and rules are in place to cover the collective legal behinds of the administration. Would you prefer to use a cryptography suite that wasn't poked and prodded at until it broke and was fixed? The cryptography that has been hacked to death and fixed is more trustworthy than something that lives behind a shroud of secrecy. It's by pushing boundaries that we find issues in the software or security procedures. Should the kid have been poking around? No, not if he signed the acceptable use policy. He did bring it to the attention of the school rather than using it for his own personal gain. We exist in many gray areas when it comes to what is right or wrong. I see what you are saying about going against the policies. Do I fault him for poking around the network? Hell, no. It's human nature to explore. I'm growing tired of a society that is being forced to think in black and white terms. OBEY, all else is wrong and shall be punished. In regards to the actual question - Communicate with that youth that brought it up and if it something that he did do successfully, find out what paths he took to get there. I often have other eyes to check my work and verify I didn't miss something glaring in the details. Discuss the use policies and get his input on why they did not deter him. The administration might not agree but I believe you may be able to guide that kid in ways and levels that other teachers have not been to reach him on yet.

Nope, didn't see any Sears trucks running through the airport LOL

Anode, I definitely agree with needing a good analyzer but the prices for the nice ones hovering around $3k or so is definitely cost prohibitive. I'm hoping some of the members will have contacts with universities with RF labs or possibly work contacts that can lend some time to properly test. I've been trying to find designs that have been fully tested to work from as a basis. Throwing a shout out to other hams is a good way of tracking down equipment as well. Some of them have more disposable income to be able to get all the bells and whistles along with just doing ham activities versus all around hacking of things and software. The thing is to not let us get discouraged. I had a friend that was astounded when I built a bandpass sub enclosure by using pen and paper to do the spec design back when they were still a new idea. He insisted it was a miracle it worked as efficiently as it did. Common sense and some good basic knowledge can get us mostly there with antennas. For the true optimum performance gains we need the tools to tweak them. Look at how Marconi started out in the late 1800's. Another thing I wanted to bring up for everyone is that just because you've got the range to receive the signal doesn't mean you'll get back there. We need to make sure our send gets as far as our receive. Without that balance we've got a great listening device at the far ranges and that's not what we're looking for here. 73, KB1JPW

Any of you been out at Philly International lately? I was there a couple of weeks ago and one of the open access points was "pineapple" :) I connected to it with hopes it was and one of "us" and opened a browser to http://www.wifipineapple.com/ as a discrete "Hello!"

Updated with more sources - 03/10/2012 After Darren had posted the Mk4 Pineapple Urban Assault Mod, I started wondering again about concealed antenna options with high-gain possibilities. I've not come to any definitive conclusions but started looking at the circuit board patch antennas which led me to fractal antennas. (I guess it's the Ham operator in me) I'm going to test some of the fractal designs as well as some patch antennas. Keep in mind that the enclosures will definitely affect the antenna tuning. Even just a layer of plastic can shift the frequency response and make it less efficient. This is where designing the antenna comes in handy. You can also take the knowledge below here and use it to correct for your enclosures. I've started this with the hopes of coming up with a good community guide for antenna selection and options for increasing the pineapple range. Yes, there's plenty of high gain antennas such as the yagi and parabolic but sometimes we want to be a bit more discrete. Please keep in mind that what you end up using could be considered illegal by the FCC if you output too much power. What I'm hoping for is as follows: A) A list of antennas that you've tried either commercial or DIY 1)cost and construction 2)actual gain compared to what was marketed 3)environments tested in such as urban, heavy foliage, rolling hills, rocky terrain etc. with a description of line of sight 4)actual db readings of before/after B)Links to resources you've found and any designs you want to share c)overall opinion of your various antennas and types of WiFi hunting scenarios such as omnidirectional/sniping/combo and how they work for that purpose. D)how well would the antenna blend in if left in place somewhere E)Possible pictures along with pineapple for scale Some resources I found so far in my searches: http://www.dxzone.com/cgi-bin/dir/jump2.cgi?ID=22298 Design and material types selection guidelines http://fermi.la.asu.edu/w9cf/yagipub/index.html Yagi antenna modeler software to scale up or down and get perfect measurements of elements and location http://jcoppens.com/ant/helix/calc.en.php Helical antenna calculator http://www.dxzone.com/catalog/Antennas/WiFi/ http://www.andrewhazelden.com/blog/2011/02/homemade-sierpinski-gasket-fractal-wifi-antenna/ http://www.qsl.net/n9zia/ http://members.fortunecity.com/scienziatopazzo/fractalantennas.htm http://www.jpier.org/PIERC/pierc16/03.10062206.pdf http://www.orbanmicrowave.com/The_Basics_Of_Patch_Antennas.pdf http://highfrequencyelectronics.com/Archives/Mar09/HFE0309_Tutorial.pdf http://archive.rocketreviews.com/reviews/all/scratch_patch_antenna.shtml http://colinkarpfinger.com/blog/2010/the-dropouts-guide-to-antenna-design/ - Awesome guide and intro to designing/testing antennas http://www.n5ebw.com/2008-09/antenna-solutions-on-the-cheap/ Images of a patch antenna and Yagi antenna both on etched on circuit boards http://www.qsl.net/n9zia/wireless/appendixD.html - Bi-Directional 2.4 GHz One Watt Amplifier With Receive Pre-Amp http://www.iw5edi.com/ham-radio/?building-a-2.4-ghz-10-el.-yagi,115 Building a 2.4 GHz 10 element Yagi http://www.dxzone.com/cgi-bin/dir/jump2.cgi?ID=12603 slotted waveguide antennas - Unidirectional & Omnidirectional High gain, Simple construction http://www.trevormarshall.com/biquad.htm Very simple and compact Bi-quad design http://www.ti.com/lit/an/swra350/swra350.pdf 2.4 GHz YAGI PCB Antenna compact and VERY Flat - 100 x 150 mm. http://www.instructables.com/id/Easy-to-Build-WIFI-24GHz-Yagi-Antenna/ Slightly Ghetto version of Yagi using popsicle sticks - but the theory and measurements are sound http://www.ab9il.net/wlan-projects/wifi6.html another wood and copper Yagi http://www.instructables.com/id/Bi-Quad-WiFi-Antenna/ Double Bi-quad antenna http://www.ab9il.net/wlan-projects/wifi3.html Interesting helical coil attached to satellite dish collector - apparent 26dB gain! http://www.ab9il.net/wlan-projects/wifi3A.html simple helical antenna with better gain than bi-quads

Awesome, no worries, I take notes as I'm playing around and post them for the Mark IV unless someone beats me to the punch. Unfortunately I just found some scripting ideas I want to take a look at for automating the web traffic capturing and sorting.

If you don't mind posting the code you're using I'd like to play around with it a bit. I just uploaded the new firmware, reset my password and already have "customers" showing up. Might as well do something interesting with them since they're using my "ISP." :D

That works slick! I think the https: would clinch it but it looked and acted good from watching the video. The only issue I could see would be any systems that cached the DNS for Facebook prior to connecting to you but chances are they would already have logged in so I suppose it would be a missed attempt either way. Have you attempted that with a profile that uses the location aware feature (aka IP address block check for new locations)? I can't see it being an issue if you're tying into the same ISP connection but it might be if they're being routed through a wireless modem such as the USB 3g or 4G.

As if you guys don't hear it enough - You Rock!