The best Science is Mad Science
Invisible signals!
A friend pointed out that it’s been ten years this month since I wrote an article about a particularly infamous DIY Wi-Fi antenna.
While it was never a particularly efficient antenna, it served as an inspiration for wireless geeks for the better part of a decade.
Happy anniversary!
The talk went very well. There was much animated discussion, and electrical zapping was had by all.
Thank you Ada’s for having me, and thanks to everyone who came out!
I’m very excited to be speaking at Ada’s Technical Books on Capitol Hill this Sunday 9/19, from 4:00-6:00pm. I’ll show some nice photos of wireless projects in Africa and Italy, followed by some hands-on high voltage shenanigans. Hope to see you there!
Two full days in Venice. First we measured the effect of strong motorboat waves on a hand-rowed two person boat called a mascaréta. We used seven wireless accelerometers (Waspmotes w/ Zigbee modules) to track five points on the boat and two points on one of the rowers. It turns out the rower is a world-famous athlete who has won a local rowing competition four times, earning the title “King of the Lagoon”. I didn’t catch his name, but I did help gorilla tape a sensor to his arm.
Next, we installed a splitter and a new antenna on the central node of our WiMAX / mesh hybrid network in the lagoon, and added two new links (8km and 11km). This included a few hours of water travel, lugging around many kilos of wireless gear, climbing sketchy ladders and walls, and generally trying not to drop anything (including ourselves!) in the lagoon. This network is helping to study the movement of the tides around Venice in realtime.
Now I’m on the train, blogging all of this from a smartphone using a data sim that cost a only few Euros. Wireless is a catalyst for rapid change, and I’m very happy to help feed it!
The ICTP wireless school rages on. On Wednesday we did the annual “long distance link” exercise from Muggia to the ICTP. This year was cold, but at least there was no snow this time. Two out of three groups made the link work, and one of them didn’t even use an external antenna!
Photos are up in the usual place.
It’s that time again: the 2010 ICTP school on wireless networking is rapidly approaching. I’m leaving in two days and won’t be back until the end of March!
This year we’re trying out the new curriculum that we’ve been developing over the last year. All of that will be available for free on WirelessU once the school is underway.
It really is astonishing how many things suddenly require attention when you’re about to leave the country for five weeks. Arrivederci, Seattle!
