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Wireless Networking Books Media Book Reviews Hardware

Wi-Fi Toys 71

Posted by timothy from the xmas-time dept.
prostoalex writes "A lot of avid PC users got first introduced to the computers through games. Some later turned their hobbies into full-time jobs. The ExtremeTech series of Wiley books aims at the readers who are curious about technology and are willing to dedicate some time to personal to projects that educate and develop skills. Before this review starts reading as a press release, I will throw in a link to my review of another title, Linux Toys, the book that pioneered the series." Read on for Alex's review of Wi-Fi Toys.
Wi-Fi Toys
author Mike Outmesguine
pages 408
publisher Wiley
rating 9
reviewer Alex Moskalyuk
ISBN 0764558943
summary 15 cool wireless projects for home, office and entertainment

Wi-Fi Toys by Mike Outmesguine offers 15 projects for radio enthusiasts and those, who have never dealt with wireless networking beyond buying an 802.11 access point at local electronics store. Former US AirForce and National Guard engineer, the author is currently running a technology services company.

Assume for a minute that you have had limited experience with wireless technologies, but are young, ambitious, and eager to dive into the deep sea of wireless data. What kind of projects would be fun to play with? What kind of projects would be educational as well as useful? Probably improving the reception via various antenna hacks would be a cool thing to do, and improving access point to increase coverage would be another way to wow the neighbors with your wireless skills. Discovering other people's networks and wardriving is a must for any wireless security beginner. The author dedicates the first three parts of the book (table of contents here) to building antennas, wardriving and hacking access points. Yes, the book requires toying with hardware and occasionally being outside in the fresh air.

The first chapter, Building Your Own Wi-Fi Antenna Cable, is available online in PDF format and it talks about building your own antenna cable. The rest of the chapters in Part 1 take the reader through building a paperclip antenna, creating a tin can antenna, and modifying the existing access point with a high gain antenna.

Probably there are some people that read the last sentence and asked themselves, "So what is a high gain antenna?" Which brings us to the next point - the readability of the book. Outmesguine did a really nice job outlining the projects step by step and supplying all the major steps with the photos. The pictures are black-and-white, and so are the diagrams. Overall the pictures turned out nicely, but I wish the author had the color version on the Web site, since some of the images (like on page 79), displaying computer graphics on dark backgrounds, did not turn out very detailed. Everything essential to the project is there, but still, color photos and screenshots would have made the difference in some cases.

The author does a good job of explaining terminology before launching into the project. Where needed, Mike Outmesguine provides helpful diagrams, that any radio amateur is probably already aware of, but they still make a nice and readable book for the rest of us. Also, the goal of the chapters is not just build the toy and get done with it as soon as possible. For example, in chapter 4 when talking about modifying the existing access point, the author understands that the only reason you want to do that is to increase the WiFi coverage in your house. So a few pages are dedicated to propagation losses, interference and everything radio-related that the reader needs to take into account before strengthening the access point with a high-gain antenna.

Chapter 14 is probably the coolest in the book, as it talks about creating a car-to-car wireless link for the purpose of... videoconferencing involving two Webcams and Microsoft NetMeeting. Naturally, this is not for driver-to-driver communication, but in case you've got two cars on the road trip, the passengers now can use their WiFi-enabled laptops (and by now everyone should have one) to launch a video conference.

Overall the book reads great, even if you're not serious about doing some projects, it's still fun to follow photographs and see what Mike and the contributors have done in terms of wireless projects. Each chapter is presented as a single project, so with the exception of terminology knowledge there's no preceding knowledge that needs to be there, so one could theoretically start with a digital picture frame (Chapter 15) that hangs on the wall, downloading the pictures via the wireless link and playing occasional videos.

Overall, this is an interesting book to read, and if you've been looking for simple and intermediate projects involving radio technologies and WiFi, the Wi-Fi Toys is packed with useful information.

You can purchase Wi-Fi Toys from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews. To see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
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Wi-Fi Toys More

Wi-Fi Toys

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  • My GF (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 11, 2004 @07:25PM (#10793451)
    knows a thing or two about whiffy toys.

  • Cool! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dshaw858 ( 828072 ) on Thursday November 11, 2004 @07:26PM (#10793456) Homepage Journal
    Chapter 14 is probably the coolest in the book, as it talks about creating a car-to-car wireless link for the purpose of... videoconferencing involving two Webcams and Microsoft NetMeeting. Naturally, this is not for driver-to-driver communication, but in case you've got two cars on the road trip, the passengers now can use their WiFi-enabled laptops (and by now everyone should have one) to launch a video conference.

    Yeah, that does sound pretty dang cool. Some friends and I are taking a two-to-three car caravan to Defcon this summer, and that would be a lot of fun to try.

    - dshaw

  • Hmmm.... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    A lot of avid PC users got first introduced

    I'm not so sure you be should doing book reviews.

  • pull the wool over your *own* eyes (Score:5, Funny)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Thursday November 11, 2004 @07:29PM (#10793487) Homepage Journal
    I want a WiFi tinfoil hat!

  • Love the title of this book.. (Score:3, Funny)

    by fiannaFailMan ( 702447 ) on Thursday November 11, 2004 @07:36PM (#10793556) Journal
    "Hacking Windows XP"

    Is this really so complicated that someone had to write a book about it?

  • I want a wi-fi microwave... (Score:5, Funny)

    by PornMaster ( 749461 ) on Thursday November 11, 2004 @07:41PM (#10793599) Homepage
    A wi-fi microwave that would IM me that my food's done would be quite nice...

  • This stuff is cool but... (Score:5, Funny)

    by sharpone ( 706018 ) on Thursday November 11, 2004 @07:42PM (#10793603)
    ...when do we get wireless power?
    • Yeah nothing like REAL electricity flowing through the air waves. Get electricuted without knowing it.

      • Re:This stuff is cool but... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by magarity ( 164372 ) on Thursday November 11, 2004 @08:08PM (#10793821)
        Sarcasm over broadcast electricity; sheesh, what are they teaching kids in school these days? Tesla invented technology to do exactly this around 100 years ago. No, you don't get electrocuted. The down side is that modern electronic widgets would get their unshielded brains scrambled. And maybe migratory birds would fly in random directions. And maybe a few other things. But no, you don't get electrocuted. Anyway, Tesla had a flourecent light bulb with nothing attached to it that he could just carry around his lab because he had a mini electricity broadcaster rigged up. He had plans to set up gigantic versions (and actually build one in Colorado) to serve households but it fell through for funding reasons.
        • Tesla had a flourecent light bulb with nothing attached to it that he could just carry around his lab because he had a mini electricity broadcaster rigged up

          If you've got a spare flourescent tube light or similar you can do this yourself too. Ideally, make sure it's dark, then take your light, and a friend with one, and go stand under one of the mega-pylons/electricty wires with 5 bajillion* volts running through it. As if by magic the light will light up; now you and your friend can have lightsaber ba

      • coughcoughlightningcoughcough

    • Re:This stuff is cool but... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by calibanDNS ( 32250 ) <brad_staton@hotm ... com minus author> on Thursday November 11, 2004 @07:47PM (#10793652)
      One chapter of this book covers building a solar-powered access point. It's not really wireless power, but it does let you have power just about anywhere that you have access to sunlight.
    • You mean like this [permanent.com]? I suspect that's probably more than you were after...
  • The author dedicates the first three parts of the book (table of contents here) to building antennas, wardriving and hacking access points. Tick .... another item on the Christmas list to myself. Should pay for itself in no time... :)

  • Doesn't seem like a Ham approach (Score:3, Interesting)

    by beaststwo ( 806402 ) on Thursday November 11, 2004 @07:45PM (#10793632)
    While the Web page doesn't say so, I just don't see them giving schematics and a list of parts to go find. Instead, it seems more like "look what you can do with these commercial products".

    Fine if your into that, but if you really want to tinker, user scrougeable WIFI parts seem few and far between...

    • Re:Doesn't seem like a Ham approach (Score:4, Insightful)

      by craenor ( 623901 ) on Thursday November 11, 2004 @07:53PM (#10793702) Homepage
      user scrougeable WIFI parts seem few and far between...

      Well, you can make a CanTenna (Yagi Semi-Directional High Gain antenna) from a Pringles Can (or other suitable can), some pieces of plastic, some washers, some standard copper wire and a few connectors you can buy at Radio Shack pretty cheap.

      Judge for yourself, but I'd say that's reasonably scroungeable.

  • No offense... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by rlandrum ( 714497 )
    But this book doesn't really look all that interesting. When I think about WiFi toys, I don't want common things that might be practical... I want toys. Something I can play with and has virtually no practical application.

    For instance, I read awhile back about some guys using one of those cheap robosapiens and a bluetooth module to make a wireless robot controllable from the PC. There's a toy I wouldn't mind reading a step-by-step about.

    Maybe a wifi enabled RC car. Or wifi-ing an old palm pilot that
  • Wi-Fi Velcro Sheep.

    Damn, where's that VC's phone number..
  • Open frequency selectable 2.4 GHz card with capability of larger spectrum sizes..

    You know, for the ham operators? Where's THEIR cards at?

  • What about... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by RealProgrammer ( 723725 ) on Thursday November 11, 2004 @08:00PM (#10793767) Homepage Journal
    some other ideas:

    • Simple controller for remote control of A/C circuits - turn on/off, sense on/off, something like Smarthome [smarthome.com] or X10.

    • A robot with wifi link running embedded Linux

    • R/C car using wifi so you can drive it visually - geek NASCAR!

    • Wifi enabled dog collar; you train the dog with basic commands and then "drive" it just like the R/C car (and no, PETA need not be alarmed)

  • For those of you interested in spying on your lesbian neighbours... I mean, of course, keeping an eye on your kids at night, check out ebuyer.com and search for "Secure Teddy" ;) Yes, a wireless video camera inside a teddy bear! Genius!
    • I'm surprised that you didn't get a (score:5) interesting, yet. Girlfriends might been around ;)
    • Speaking of wireless, is there any sort of wireless speaker/microphone small enough to fit in a stuffed animal? My kids would love to have stuffed critters that talk to them, even if they know Daddy is behind it.

  • This one's easy (Score:5, Informative)

    by TheAntiCrust ( 620345 ) on Thursday November 11, 2004 @09:35PM (#10794470)
    C'mon, forty plus posts and no one's mentioned the glaring grammatical mistake yet???

    The ExtremeTech series of Wiley books aims at the readers who are curious about technology and are willing to dedicate some time to personal to projects that educate and develop skills.

    First thing I noticed... =/
    • Sorry, reading headers is too close to RTFAing. The Slashdot Heavy Mob [tm] has been dispatched to your home to correct this unacceptable behaviour. Please stay calm - it will all be over very shortly.

  • Had it for a while now too (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    First things first--why is this just now being reviewed? This book is several months old now. Now that that's out of the way, I'd like to say that the book is good in that it collects the information into one place for you, but to be honest nothing in the book was truly origianl. Every project it has in it looks like it was ripped right off the internet. But, like I said, it is nice in that it puts all of the information in one tidy little desk reference. In all actuality it was a decent showcase of some
    • I agree that the book seems like a rehash of previous material I've seen on the web. Not to mention if you've had any previous work experience with RF then most of this book will probably feel very amature in nature. But then I guess that's okay considering its amature RF modders that the book is focused towards.
  • No mention of WiFiMaps.com [wifimaps.com] for drawing Wardriving data onto a map? I would figure that even mentioning Netstumbler [stumbler.net], Kismet [kismetwireless.net], and talking about maps and stuff would give at least a mention -- sheesh! Guess I'll have to wait for O'Reilly's Mapping Hacks [amazon.com] book to come out.
    • I didn't include any of the upload/plotting sites like yours, nodedb, wigle.net, and others. Partly because I am a purist that prefers to gather and plot the data myself. Partly because it's a DIY book and the chapter was devoted to showing people how to make their own maps. And partly because of the unknown privacy implications of gathering and sharing this type of data in raw form. In any case, your site is a useful tool among others and should not be overlooked when that topic is being discussed.

      btw

      • The reason we created WiFiMaps.com [wifimaps.com] -- to show exactly where these things are.

        There are lots of privacy concerns, and this is why we've recently deprecated the display of "unclassified" APs -- those that are not explicitly free, or explicitly pay. This way, you can examine your neighborhood without being directed only to your neighbors houses! Another way we try to stay on the good side of things is to not display the MAC address in our queries.

        Thanks for the comment, and I look forward to reading the bo
  • "Assume for a minute that you have had limited experience with wireless technologies, but are young, ambitious, and eager to dive into the deep sea of wireless data." Why 'young'?
  • Here's what I want:

    1. "terminal server" wi-fi transmitter. Sends out compressed screen update (like RDP, VNC).

    2. "terminal client" wi-fi receiver -> DVI adapter. Receives screen update, converts to video signal, transmits over DVI to a connected monitor.

    Then you could have flat panels with receivers hung all over the house with sessions open on the central server. (In particular I'd like one near my drum kit, so I can access MP3s, look at tabs, etc).

  • Oh my absolute favorite is the "Chapter 15: Making a Dynamic Wireless Digital Picture Frame"

    Ha, ha, ha....

    Sounds a lot like "Chapter 15: Creating a Digital Picture Frame." from the Linux Toys book, doesn't it?

    Hmmmm, given that the Picture frame was a scavanged and hacked LAPTOP (!?!?!?) what new info could they have added to the WiFi version? Oh, I get it, "insert a PCMCIA wireless adapter card."

    What a great book. What's next, "G'whiz WiFi Toys, version 2" in which you just replace the B cards with

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