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Thu, 14 Apr 2005I noticed this evening that we handed out 12 leases...there is also a growing congregation of laptops on the 5:10 train. Also, I wrote this one program. When users view our content page, they will notice a little surprise:
If you haven't guessed by the image, the portal knows all the people who sign on via instant messenger (AOL, MSN, Yahoo, etc.) and displays the buddy name in a list. Now you can talk to fellow riders using WiFi on the train. Don't worry, it does not log or watch conversations. The user list is also saved on RAM disk and is lost when the device is powered down each day. Thanks to Michael )again) for the HTML web design and imagery to really make this gadget appealing to the eye. Otherwise it would be pretty boring. Wed, 13 Apr 2005I think Voelpel did a great job at writing up this article about the project, so I will link to this one. There was also a short blurb in the Seattle Times a couple weeks ago. Sounder Rider Brings Internet to the Rails And, with the exception of the 5:50 typo (should have been the 5:10 train), it did attract a lot more users. We are now averaging about 5-8 on the evening train, and its really getting hammered by one or two particular "power users". Please guys, lets not play MMORPG's such as "World of Warcraft" on this thing. I know its cool to cast spells (or whatever you do in that game) while on a train, but it really eats up bandwidth. I *really* really want Verizon or SprintPCS to hurry up and deploy CDMA2000 EVDO in Seattle. This would really help out our contention issues. Thu, 07 Apr 2005Michael and I completed the software and web design for the portal last night. Our current RSS feeds include: The News Tribune, King 5, KOMO, Slashdot, Phonescoop, various northwest stocks, and live view of Seattle 911 emergency calls. I have been pretty lazy, but maybe i'll finish my weather XML soon :) Michael has been doing a great job on the web design. It really helps keep a semi-professional image in our project full of hacks. Peter really helped us out on the train yesterday. Apparently there were some crazy out-of-control supervised processes running on pebble. The box was always at a 1.60 load average, it was slow. I thought the 133MHz CPU was just a POS. After killing these insane tasks, I dropped the load average down to 0.00-0.06, which is nothing. Everything is much snappier. The CPU, which was always running extremely hot, is not even warm to the touch. Now that the software and system are stablizing, Peter has also suggested that we work towards logging and statistical gathering. No, we are not going to spy on what people do -- but just gather the number of people who actually use the device on a routine basis. It will be better to automate it instead of randomly showing arp tables and looking at the NoCat status page. If we time stamp it, it will even tell us how many people were using it on the Everett sounder that evening -- before our train pulled out and cut their internet off ;)
Tue, 05 Apr 2005The software is just about complete. While I do have a couple of nifty items working today, such as RSS news feeds, there will be more and more additions in the near future. RSS feeds such as local news, stocks, weather, slashdot, daily wireless, NPR, etc. are updated every 5 minutes. I hope our users this morning liked it as much as we did. Here is TrainNode in action, along with some photos of Peter, Mike, and myself on the train. (Click on the image for a larger version)
Mon, 04 Apr 2005Over the weekend, I was able to get a little bit more work done on my mobile hotspot. Michael was able to get NoCatAuth working with his cool splash web pages and Peter has also helped me a great deal getting around Linux. While I can get around a shell and do basic things, this project has really tought me a great deal about the actual interworkings of the operating system. Operation: After the device is plugged in, it automatically connects to Sprint and shares the internet connection. It looks like a typical wireless access point...but there's more to it than that... When the user opens a web browser and attempts to hit a web page, they are redirected to a "splash page". This splash page indicates that public access is encouraged, and indicates terms of use. Once the user clicks "I Agree", they are then sent to our mobile portal. From here, they can surf to any website they like, or make use of our portal. Why force people to view the portal after connecting? While this can offload a bulk of traffic off our fragle 144Kbps link, it also serves as a communication hub for our small mobile community. The portal also pulls data from various XML sources to show weather, news, and other relevant travel information. Once the portal designs are pleasing to the eye, I will try to post some screen shots. For those interested, here is our new mobile hotspot. And yes, its just a bare circuit board right now:
Fri, 01 Apr 2005For those interested, yes, usage has been increasing...we have more new users joining us. People are getting excited. I have also found significantly more usage in the evenings than the mornings. I do not know why this is. The idea for quite some time now has been to replace my windows laptop with an embedded router. Not only would this provide internet access, but it will also serve as a proving ground for several proof of concept ideas. This will be very exciting, and I will document it in detail once it is in a presentable state. But lets get down to details. Here are the hardware specs:
Model: Soekris 4521 Andrey, our resident mathematician wrote me this really cool math bit....I hate to be a tease, but I will explain what it does later for those who don't know already. I want to make sure I can even implement it before I tell you how neat it will be ;)
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