Wi-Fi Toys - 15 Cool Wireless Projects For Home, Office, And Entertainment

Who This Book Is For

This book is for you if you are interested in spending a little extra time with your Wi-Fi access points and computer. The primary focus is the technical enthusiasts with a few extra hours on the weekend. A small degree of technical know-how is helpful in understanding the concepts and putting together some of the more involved projects. The hardest physical skill you will encounter is drilling and soldering.

Many of the projects in this book can be accomplished with an assembly of off-the-shelf, easily purchased products, so hobbyists of all skill levels will find something in this book.

How This Book Is Structured

This book was designed for the novice wireless user. We expect you to know what a wireless access point is and how to plug it into your network at home. Where wireless gets really interesting is when you start to go beyond the plug-and-play nature of Wi-Fi-enabled devices.
This book is divided into four parts. Each part separates a general concept and builds upon that concept. You can jump around to the different projects in each part. But it should be noted that earlier parts introduce earlier concepts.

Part I: Building Antennas

This section of the book introduces you to the concept of an antenna as a transmission line. All wireless signals travel into and out of a network through the antenna. By understanding what the antenna does, you can take a wireless radio signal and cow it to your will by choosing the right antenna. You will be shown how to make and find cables, build antennas, and finally add one to your wireless access point.

Part II: War Driving—Wireless Network Discovery and Visualization

Some of you will jump straight to this section and that’s fine. War driving is one of the coolest things about Wi-Fi. In fact, it’s one of the reasons I co-founded SOCALWUG. It can be
As this book is broken down into four main parts, you may wish to jump straight to the section that interests you. For example, in Part II, Chapter 5 introduces you to the art of war driving to find wireless networks in your neighborhood. In Part I, Chapter 4 shows you how to add an antenna to a wireless access point to increase usable range. And in Part IV, you can learn what it takes to get your TiVo onto your Wi-Fi network at home.

The book tries to introduce new concepts early in the book and build on them later as the book progresses. If you jump around and miss something, just go back and read the concept.argued that war driving has increased the popularity of wireless. It certainly got Wi-Fi its day in the news more than once. Hardly a week goes by without some newspaper somewhere mentioning war driving. This section shows you how to war drive and how to use the most popular program, NetStumbler. It also introduces many techniques for mapping your results.

Part III: Playing with Access Points

This section can be very interesting. Wireless access points are the gateway between the wired and unwired world. By exploiting this ability to create connections between the physical and ethereal world of wireless, access points become a tool for your Wi-Fi endeavors. In this section, you will see how to build a weatherproof access point and create a free hotspot to share your wired connection with neighbors. Also, you will build a solar-powered repeater, connecting users to the Internet with no wires at all! And finally, we coined the term “AP games” to help describe the growing trend of using wireless access points for sport.

Part IV: Just for Fun

Well, perhaps not all fun and games, this section presents some very cool projects as well as one or two that you may not be able to live without. Learn how to add Wi-Fi to your TiVo and create a wireless digital picture frame. Add Wi-Fi to a roadtrip and perform car-to-car videoconferencing. And ultimately, bring a computer more than 20 miles away onto your local wireless network by creating a long-distance Wi-Fi link.

What You Need to Use This Book

Some of the projects in this book can be performed using stand-alone wireless networks, especially if you are experimenting or just “playing around.” At a minimum, you should have a computer with wireless capability. Ideally, this computer is a laptop. Laptops with 300 MHz processors can now be found used for just a few hundred dollars on eBay.

If you will be sharing Internet access or setting up an in-home network, a high-speed connection is practically a must. On the other hand, if you just want to build an in-home network, all you need is two computers.

About the only strong requirement for this book is the desire to obtain wireless equipment. Each chapter will describe which components you will be working with.

You will also need tools. Tools are mentioned at the beginning of each chapter. You can expect to use common tools such as screwdrivers, wire cutters and strippers, crimping tools, and soldering irons.

Wi-Fi security is an ever-present concern. As you will see in Chapter 5, “Gearing Up for War Driving,” finding a wireless network is not difficult. If you do not secure your network, anyone within range can eavesdrop on your network and possibly gain access to your files. It’s like letting them in the front door. Basic steps to secure your network are to enable the built-in encryption capabilities of your wireless devices, using WEP. If you plan to share your connection with others, make sure you install a personal firewall on your computer.

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