I agree that it should be optional, but the problem you're describing
shouldn't be an issue unless you've *never* picked up any network
other than your weak target network since installing that adapter in
KisMAC. Otherwise, the weak network will still give you very low
scaled numbers compared with the strong network that you picked up
once-upon-a-time.
I think for this signal strength stuff, we should at least be able to choose between a scaled and an absolute value. A scaled value is convenient, but it is necessary to know when you're signal strength is really low on one of the usb dongles because it could be responsible for the failure of packet reinjection, etc (i.e. your signal not reaching the router because it's so far away). If the router is giving a weak signal, it's likely your response will be even weaker because the usb cards are much lower power.
On Feb 28, 2006, at 8:46 AM, Christoph Koehler wrote:
About the bug, yeah I can reproduce that, and I already submitted a bug report a few days ago, but on the old system. Don't know if they were taken to the new system. As for the signal strength idea, I like that a lot. Are there any signal bursts, where it spikes up to an insane amount sometimes, maybe internally? I don't really know, but signals are weird like that. So maybe an averaging part with that so any bursts that are insanely high are not taken into account.
On 2/28/06, Robin L Darroch <robin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:Another possible bug: while gathering data to compare my DWL-122 with my Airport Extreme (active and passive modes), I actually hit a bug which needed a reboot to fix... but I *think* it may be reproducible:
- install one passive driver (e.g. DWL-122) - tell it to scan only one channel - quit and relaunch - click "scan"
I'm pretty sure, with my DWL-122, that killed it. As far as I can tell, if you start scanning the first time with more than one channel, then subsequently scan with only one channel, it's fine... but if the first scan since starting KisMAC is a single-channel scan (at least with a USB Prism2) then it hangs.
Can anyone else reproduce this?
P.S. I think the algorithm in my other message needs a little more work - the Airport Extreme passive mode never seems to report anything less than about 60, which doesn't make sense... so I think we may need to scale both the upper and lower limits. The problem then is where to initialise the values so that the algorithm will work before gathering data and after. Also, it occurs to me that the minimum must be 1, not 0, since 0 is reserved for "no longer picking up this network".
Perhaps:
max_sig = null min_sig = null
(if already saved, load the above values from the driver prefs)
[on signal received: raw strength = r (must be > 0)]
if (! max_sig) { max_sig = r; s = 100; } else if (! min_sig) { if (r > max_sig) { min_sig = max_sig; max_sig = r; s = 100; } else if (r < max_sig) { min_sig = r; s = 1; } else { s = 100; } else { if (r > max_sig) { max_sig = r; s = 100; rescale_previous(); } else if (r < min_sig) { min_sig = r; s = 1; rescale_previous(); } else { // raw value is in existing min-max range s = 1 + 99*(r - min_sig)/(max_sig - min_sig) } }
I think the above pseudo-code should more or less work, and automatically give scaled readouts between 1 and 100 for any adapter in any mode... anyone feel like having a go at implementing it? Naturally the max_sig and min_sig values would need to be saved to the driver prefs record at the end of each scan, and the *raw* strengths for the current network list would need to be kept for the rescale_previous function to work. Not quite sure how we'd handle loaded files yet. --
------------------------------------------------------------------------- Robin L. Darroch - PO Box 2715, South Hedland WA 6722 - +61 421 503 966 robin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx - robin@xxxxxxxxxxx - robin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
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Robin L. Darroch - PO Box 2715, South Hedland WA 6722 - +61 421 503 966
robin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx - robin@xxxxxxxxxxx - robin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx