[kismac] Re: KisMAC 0.05e

hi brad,

sorry for the long response time, i am still a couple of days late....
take this as a short response of your useful hints...

>       I recommend putting the BSSIDs on the chart as well as in the
> table.  I also recommend leaving the colors in the chart stable,
> based on readability of neighboring colors.  Don't change color
> assignments of a base station based on signal strength.

kismac 0.05e2 will show the BSSIDs.

>       I suggest that you choose color combinations that are equally
> spaced around the color wheel, based on the number of stations being
> measured.  This is usually easiest with an HSV color model, and
> dividing 360 by the number of stations and then using that as an
> index into the Hue axis.  Make sure to alternate color assignments
> for adjacent base stations, to maximize contrast and readability of
> the chart.

  i am still working on a good implementation of the algorithm.

>       In addition, max signal strength is clearly not really useful.
> We need either an average signal strength (in which case you'd also
> need to calculate a standard deviation), or a median signal strength
> (which is less subject to being thrown off by unusually high or low
> readings, and doesn't need an additional number like standard
> deviation in order to be useful).

i will need to learn a little more on statistics for this (not too hard 
i know, but i did not have this at school)...

>       Also, I would recommend that you do not clear the traffic chart
> when minimizing the window after data collection has stopped.  It is
> useful to be able to go back and see what traffic used to look like
> for the previous measurements, without necessarily being forced to
> take a screen dump after collecting the data and before doing
> anything else.

i did not program the traffic view, but as far as i can tell this seems 
to be some kind of a bug. still needs a little more investigation...

>       I'm hoping to use KisMac as an integral tool in preparing charts
> and diagrams of wireless signal strength here in the house (which I
> can then integrate into a 3D model produced with SketchUp), using
> various wireless NICs (built-in Airport card in my PowerBook G4,
> Lucent WaveLAN Gold, Cisco AiroNet 350, Senao 2511CD-PLUS, and
> possibly others) as well as with different base stations and base
> station configurations (Snow, Extreme, Extreme+external antennas,
> etc...), across all the floors in the house.  I want to use this as
> the basis for an article I want to write on wireless networking, and
> which I believe I can get professionally published.

the problem that i see is, that this measurements will not be really 
comparable, because the numbers that kismac shows, are depended on the 
card and the firmware...

mick

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