[Announce] WifiEye
 

Here is the first version of a small an app that displays the signal strength of available wireless networks.

You can get it from here for now.

It is available in extras-devel: http://maemo.org/packages/view/wifieye/. Please understand that using software from extras-devel may harm your device in many ways.

It is available in extras-testing.

All comments are welcome.

EDIT: It requires python-wifi, python-qt4-core, python-qt4-gui
EDIT: This version only works when wlan interface is up (e.g. when connected to a WLAN). It will be fixed in the next version
EDIT: This version is slow to start.

Re: [Announce] WifiEye
 

it also requires some python-qt4 packages with versions from extra-devel I think

Re: [Announce] WifiEye
 

Indeed, it needs python-qt4 but not from extras-devel.

Re: [Announce] WifiEye
 

Are the python-qt4 packages optified?

Re: [Announce] WifiEye
 

Because of the way python is optified; all python packages become automagically optified: The directories where python libs are stored are under /opt and they are bind-mounted from there. See the output of df.

Re: [Announce] WifiEye
 

Look forward to seeing it in a repo :-)

Re: [Announce] WifiEye
 

Έλα ρε Ελλάδαρα! :) Σμπρώχ' το στο extras-devel ;)

Good joob mate :)

Re: [Announce] WifiEye
 

Nice one, well done :)

Re: [Announce] WifiEye
 

Hi,
Did not work here :(

It ask for password on start, so i added application to sudoers, now i get a traceback about dt=wifi.scan() and bin/wifi.py dt=pickle.loads(c)

Fabrice,

Re: [Announce] WifiEye
 

Doesnt load for me

I installed it, failed on the dependencies so I did an apt-get -f install which installed pythonwifi and the wifieye

however on clickign the icon it starts to load with the little spinning disc then goes back to my main desktop screen

Re: [Announce] WifiEye
 

Wow, believe it or not, such a nice site survey tool doesn't even exist on standard Linux (GUI and everything). Even on Windows there is not much choice, best of them being inSSIDer. I think you should get some ideas from their UI (AP list, signal/time graph...). You already have enough data, just add it to GUI. And make the graphs as big as possible please, you should make a better use of screen real estate. And I know this is alpha/beta stage, I'm just suggesting improvements.

Video: http://vimeo.com/3284530

Re: [Announce] WifiEye
 

My problem is that it says I dont have PyQT4

I use inSSIDer a lot today and would be great to have that or equivalent on the n900 :D

Re: [Announce] WifiEye
 

Same effect here only i used apt-get install python-wifi after dpkg -i.

Re: [Announce] WifiEye
 

Ok i have this working.

@v13
/usr/bin/wifieye is a zero byte file I guess this should have been some sort of launcher.

This is really useful, I use inssider on vista this is so much more portable!
Some colours are a little difficult to see purple/pink , and it would help if ssids kept the same colour after a refresh. Other than than very impressed.

Re: [Announce] WifiEye
 

Hello again :-)

Please be patient until I properly package it and add it to extras-devel.

For what you're asking:

@all: It seems that there is a problem with pyhon-qt4 in extras-testing. python-qt4-gui and python-qt4-core cannot be both installed from there. You'll need to get python-qt4-gui from extras-devel. I don't believe there is something that I can do about this.

@fred123: /usr/bin/wifieye should be a soft link to /opt/wifieye/bin/core.py. Can you check that?

@rooted: Thanks for your feedback. I'm currently trying to make it similar to Android's WifiAnalyzer which I liked. However, this is a Qt app and should also run on every linux distribution (tested already). It only needs minor fixes (like the colors and sudo path). The graph that is shown is a widget so it can be reused anywhere. I'm planning to create another one which will also be widget, thus making it possible to make a pc-friendly interface, similar to the one the video shows.

@jaffa, giannoug: Going for it :-)

@BabelO: Indeed, that was my packaging bug. Please run update-sudoers as root. It should work after that. (or wait for the next version)

Re: [Announce] WifiEye
 

Oh.. and one more thing: This app is somehow portrait friendly/ready, but I can't get python+qt4 portrait mode. If anyone can show me a working python+qt4+portrait example I'll add it too. Unfortunately, using standard gtk/hildon methods for portait mode (or gpodder's) make the program segfault when the QApplication is created.

Re: [Announce] WifiEye
 

@v13
I've checked /usr/bin/wifieye it is symlink and having restored the .desktop entry it now works OK, not sure what changed but it was very early this morning.

Re: [Announce] WifiEye
 

Wifieye is now available in extras-devel. Version 0.2.1-1 should be working.

Remember that using software from extras-devel may harm your device in many ways.

Have fun :-)

Please reports bugs here or via e-mail.

Re: [Announce] WifiEye
 

I have it working now, many thanks for this :)

Re: [Announce] WifiEye
 

I see 3.0-1 has just appeared in devel any new features?

Re: [Announce] WifiEye
 

Ok I've just installed it really like the time graph, very useful for finding the best place to stand for a strong signal.

One minor complaint the colour for my router keeps changing, would be better if an ssid kept the same colour all the time it is visible.

Re: [Announce] WifiEye
 

Avoid it. Only a part of it works.

But have a look at 0.3.1-1 when it appears. It has a new feature and an eye-candy and it seems to work well :-)

As usual, be afraid of extras-devel and submit bug-reports and ideas often :-)

Re: [Announce] WifiEye
 

Very nice app.

Thank you.

Re: [Announce] WifiEye
 

Well, it is supposed to keep the same color in time-graph (if not then it is a bug). I suppose you refer to the channel-graph. In that case, I'll add this in my TODO list.

Re: [Announce] WifiEye
 

I installed this gadget and out of app manager and when it starts the window just collapses ad crashes. Do I need to install anything else?

Re: [Announce] WifiEye
 

Open a terminal and run "wifieye". If it crashes it will (most probably) show some error messages . If you can show me those messages I may be able to fix the problem.

EDIT: If you used version 0.3.0 then this is expected behavior. Use 0.2.1-1 or 0.3.1-1.

Re: [Announce] WifiEye
 

I have loaded 3.1-1.

The time graph in 3.0-1 was much smother, this version is very jerky and leaves gaps in the graph when the display goes black and after a couple of timeouts the graph stops working even if I switch to channels and back again.

Re: [Announce] WifiEye
 

The jerkiness is a side-effect of the new timer. I'll fix that in a new version but be sure that this version avoids the problem when a scan could take more than a second.

As for the gaps, I can't see them. Can you give a screenshot or some more info on how I may reproduce them?

Also, what you mean by "timeouts"?

Re: [Announce] WifiEye
 

I have back light timeout set to 30 when the screen goes black there are gaps in the graph see screenshots.

Re: [Announce] WifiEye
 

Got it. This should happen with 0.3.0 too. I suppose that the device lowers its speed and that it takes more time to prepare the wlan0 interface when it is down. I didn't have this problem because I was always connected to wlan.

To fix this edit /usr/lib/pymodules/python2.5/wifieye/scan.py and:
a) add "import time" at the beginning, along with other imports
b) find the line "subprocess.call(["/sbin/ifconfig", iface, "up"])" and after that (before the try) add the line: "time.sleep(0.3)". Be sure to use the same number of spaces as the other lines.

It will make the graph more slow but it will not have gaps.

Re: [Announce] WifiEye
 

That seemed to improve it. However having major problems with the device at the moment that I need to fix widgets not working and hig battery drain. Will do some more tests later.

Re: [Announce] WifiEye
 

New day, new version, new features.

v0.4.0's changelog:

• Stable colors
• Pause button in time-view
• Code cleanups
• Async scanning using threads
• Bugfix: wait some time after making an interface "up"
• Auto-refresh button in channel-view
• Clear button in time-view
• Bugfix: time graph was shifted to the top showing wrong values
• Improved channel eye-candy
• Re-use time-view data when switching to channel-view

Check it out when version 0.4.0 appears in extras-devel.

Be aware of extras-devel and the harm that it may cause to your device before using it.

Re: [Announce] WifiEye
 

I wish for ------- that would make this mess ------- to watch.

Ver. 0.4.0-1

http://home.broadpark.no/~noway/N900....4.0-1time.png

http://home.broadpark.no/~noway/N900...-1channels.png

Thank you very much for a great tool :)

Re: [Announce] WifiEye
 

looks nice ... will try it out ..

Re: [Announce] WifiEye
 

Well.. if you have any ideas, I'm all ears. I can't think of a nice way to visually represent overlapping data.

Re: [Announce] WifiEye
 

Only idea i can steal from someone else is how its done in Inssider. Now you have 2 screens; Channels and Timeline, you could add another called Sort or Filter.
This screen could represent radioboxes for ssids in a column/spreadsheet-like page so you could sort on eg. signalstrength, then remove the ones hat your not interested in.

...and maybe a way to maximize the graphs to the display or zoom in some way(s)

IF .. Filter is a way; pleas make sort by: ssid / signal strength / channel

http://www.metageek.net/files/images/inSSIDer%2012.png
http://www.metageek.net/products/inssider

Re: [Announce] WifiEye
 

why does a color parabola extend in a range between two numbers?
what does that range represent?
wouldn't a bar graph be more appropriate for the purpose?

Re: [Announce] WifiEye
 

Each channel takes up 5 channels total width in channel bleed. The Parabola is representative of the interchannel cross bleed and cross talk.

Re: [Announce] WifiEye
 

In fact, AFAIK, each channel is 22 (some say 20?) MHz wide, while channels are 5MHz apart (except from channel 14).

A better question would be: why not use a square for each channel... Well, supposing that some channels use DSSS the arc is a correct representation. For FHS it would need to be a square (but 802.11 doesn't use FHS) and I'm not sure about OFDM (most probably a square too).

While not much informative, have a look here.

Re: [Announce] WifiEye
 

Just to chime in on this, it should be resolved now, a properly packaged pyqt is now in extras-testing. Thanks for this excellent tool !