AlexZ

When we tried our early prototype at RSA 2017 in SF, we were able to trace and detect >20K wireless appliances in proximity - I doubt any other gadget will be able to do the same, and this is not a limit - dragorn had a massive optimization update since February. Another point is that Airbud was not designed as a "mobile" back-pack gizmo, so comparing it to Pineapple or a like wouldn't be entirely correct - it's just a bit different breed of wireless appliance with extended capabilities. We are after passive monitoring solo, without being exposed to surrounding environment. Of course one can always install high power Mikrotik cards, and blast away anything one desires.

When I designed this appliance router was a last thing I had in mind. The rationale behind was to create a multi-radio gadget flexible enough to throw any currently available and future radio cards. As a matter of fact appliance allows you to install even "extended" size radio cards that do require additional 5V rail for power amps (visit Compex web site a d you will see what I am talking about). Bare in mind that coming soon quad chain Wave 2 AC mini PCIe cards do consume up to 13W - good luck with standard mini PCIe slots in legacy boards. On the other hand, having x12 slots that do support anything, one can create very sophisticated router/gateway/bridge indeed - sky is a limit. BUT, I did create this beast for one sole reason - to make tools like Kismet to benefit from multi-radio environment. Take a look what Kismet creator says about it : http://blog.kismetwireless.net/2017/05/fun-with-new-toy-kismet-on-alftel-airbud.html We worked with dragorn extensively and as a matter of fact some current (git) multi-radio Kismet features will be very hard to realize on any other platform. Another point is that after being long time ARM designer and follower, I finally got fed with constant dependency from silicon vendors and their overseas support forces (TI, STMicro, NXP to name a few). The only true platform that will allow you to drop-in anything you want at will is x86. Airbud is using commercial grade x86 board, but we already sent few samples to community members with pcengines APU3 (absence of video is somewhat annoying, but Ubuntu server with serial console runs just fine). Remember that our quad x86 CPU has only 5W TDP (Thermal Design Profile), and bits any quad ARM to the dust when it comes to legacy software packages. You can treat it as a development platform, and we have current plans to create a specialized 4 chain radio cards for it, such as sub-GHz, 2.4 ISM, BTLE5, etc. Also on a table very special antenna split circuit that will allow us to decrease antennas count x4 times with very significant and ultra low noise RX amplification. Current plans also include fixing ath10k firmware and drivers to create a solid and reliable RX sniffer environment with 40MHz, 80MHz and 160MHz channel width capture capabilities. You can always approach me directly via email (on our web site). BTW - we will station Airbud live permanently at Wireless Village, DEFCON 25, Las Vegas, July 27-30 - come and take a look, I will be somewhere around as well (including a small talk on Saturday).