Homemade EVDO/WiFi Mobile Access Point

Tamundson writes "Over the last few weeks I've built myself a mobile access point for my car. It's based on a Soekris net2421 embedded Linux box and uses Verizon's 1xRTT/EVDO network as its uplink, resharing it over 802.11b. Wherever my car goes, my Internet link goes! :) I finally put some webpages together on how I built it. The components are pretty cheap and anybody with basic Linux skills can build their own just as easily. I've also got it interfacing with Google Maps to do live vehicle tracking via gpsd. It also uploads pictures from an on-board webcam every five minutes or so."

Two, now four wheels

[fembots]

Interesting, from two wheels [slashdot.org] to four wheels.

JIC, coral links for website [nyud.net] and GoogleMap image [nyud.net]

It'll crawl!

[SeiRyu]

The service companies like verizon/sprint offer using the 3G network achieves much of it's supposed '70k-100k' down speed from compression it applies on the images. (downgrades the quality of jpg, etc)
The real speed is barely comparable to 56k modem (if the use is light on the provider's network) and this is given you have a perfect signal reception. All this is with a SINGLE computer on the network. Now if this were used amongst 2.. or more computers you'd barely be able to browse the web, much less connect to your favorite Linux box via SSH.

Re:No such thing as a net2421

[Tugrik]

Yup. :) That's what I get for submitting a /. story in a rush...

At least I got it right on the project pages!

Re:Why is it...

[Christopher Thomas]

Why is it... That we have invented a million different ways to distract ourselves while blasting down the highway, without developing self-driving cars?

Building self-driving cars is a Very Hard Problem. It's being worked on, and great progress has been made, but it's not going to be ready for prime time yet.

The problem is that it has to work safely even under strange or pathological circumstances. Guaranteeing this is much, much harder than getting a car to drive on an empty road and stop at well-marked intersections.

On the plus side, as soon as a car autopilot drives better than the average driver, the insurance rate perk for getting one will make the switchover very rapid.

As for distraction, you'll note from the article that the access point was never used by the person driving the vehicle (and that it's in fact illegal to do so in California). It's a passenger perk (and great for when you get _out_ of the car, with the range it has).

Also check out CLIVE

[Tugrik]

Thanks for all the comments and email so far; I'm glad folks seem to like the project.

While you're there, be sure to check out our other hardware hack from last year, stored on the same server: CLIVE [fbrtech.com]. It's an Iridium Flare Tracker we built out of a Gameboy Advance and a DPSS laser.

I've moved all the images from both projects to the same high-bandwidth server so they shouldn't stall out any more. Being slashdotted is rather fun to watch. :)

Re:Why is it...

[pixel.jonah]

I witnessed the first DARPA Grand Challenge [darpa.mil]. Very eye opening to say the least. The first place entry cost over $1 million to build and went less than 8 miles. One of the close runners-up that went almost as far was built by two guys for around $40k.

Simple things were serious issues like - if you're going slowly and your wheel comes up against a rock and at the current amount of throttle, it can't get over, what do you do - how do you know to just give it a little more gas and drive right over vs. you're up against something a little bigger that you should back up and drive around.

Re:stop moving!

[Cat_Byte]

Speaking of...I wanted to do something similar in my camper trailer for vacations or heading to the races. It would be nice to implement this along with some way to make my linux box auto scan and attach to the best non-encrypted signal. Can you do this on linux? I haven't found a way yet. It would be nice to just keep driving around the camp ground until I get a ping response ;)