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points by mncharity 4 days ago | 0 comments
Hmm, situational awareness of the local wireless environment? Like a travel router, but more?

Even when working from a fixed desk, I appreciate alternating desk work with strolling-thinking, when the environment permits it. Now, with incoming HMDs capable of laptop-like angular resolution, I've been exploring what an all-day NYC wander-and-pause setup/build might look like. Mobile local computes are easier now than they've ever been. Perhaps a SFF PC with multiple snap on MCIO/quick-disconnect-water GPUs+radiators? But agentic power demands... strolling with rolling battery luggage? Eep.

So perhaps ultra-light instead, a cloud PC, and always-on mobile networking to it? Multiplexing multiple cellular providers, and wifi? Perhaps with panel and cantennas. And... clueful juggling of the local wireless environment?

To get "for a better signal, I should walk along here rather than there"? Accumulating a personal neighborhood heat map? Or maybe "neat, in this weather, a cantenna gets library community wifi from across the river"? Or ...?

Wireless environment awareness has long seemed to me a fun concept, but with unclear use cases. It just now occurred to me this might be one? If not the Flipper One necessarily, something...

[–] nhecker 4 days ago
WiGLE WiFi is probably something you might find interesting, then. Or possibly Pwnagotchi if you're looking for a more specific use case, to which another comment has linked.
[–] mncharity 3 days ago
Interesting. WiGLE might be good for searching for libraries and such? Maybe for "which lunch places have great wifi"? Meta observation: If a site's functionality is non-obvious and behind a login, a static preview might help potential customers gain a clue.

Something like [1] seems helpful. To learn: "for 5G, the south end of the park is much better"; "this ferry trip has good signal here but not there"; "this pretty harbor island does have good signal available along this path, but it drops off along here, and the interior isn't good". WiGLE tower locations might help with "oops - which way should I turn now to restore bandwidth?"?

[1] https://www.cellmapper.net/ or maybe https://www.nperf.com/en/map/US/-/-/signal