wlanmon

bulkin's picture
Submitted by bulkin on Sun, 2015/03/15 - 20:31
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4.875
Your rating: None Average: 4.9 (8 votes)

WLAN Monitor initiates scanning for WiFi networks and displays a list of found BSS base stations.

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AttachmentSizeDate
File wlanmon-0.2-1.armv7hl.rpm35.84 KB15/03/2015 - 20:31
Changelog: 

* Sun Mar 15 2015 Vasili Bulkin <bulkin@letterboxes.org> 0.2-1
- Version 0.2:
  * Fixed SSIDs with spaces
  * Fixed UI discoverability problem:
    details are now accessed by swiping
  * Added BSSID display in landscape mode
  * Added pause/resume
  * Added basic save/load functionality

* Mon Mar 09 2015 Vasili Bulkin <bulkin@letterboxes.org> 0.1-1
- Initial release

 

Comments

Ygorr's picture

Ygorr

Mon, 2017/02/13 - 06:35

thank you for great useful app.
Please add feature:
- To log/save list of APs every N (adjustable)seconds in new txt file(differing with the serial number or the date in the title). Or ability to append AP list data through interval to existing file.

bulkin's picture

bulkin

Wed, 2017/03/15 - 23:50

A more flexible solution would be to just write a bash onliner, something like this:

for i in `seq 100` ; do iwhelper > ~/iw-list-$i & sleep 10 ; done

This will write the full output of iwlist scan (iwhelper is a binary installed with wlanmon so scanning does not require root) to files ~/iw-list-1..100 with an interval of 10 s. Want timestamps instead of indices? Easy: replace -$i with -`date +"%F-%T"`. Inifinite configuration possibilities.

bulkin's picture

bulkin

Sun, 2015/03/15 - 20:49

Updated to v0.2

Manankanchu's picture

Manankanchu

Mon, 2015/03/16 - 01:13

Congrats -  what an incredibly fast way to fulfil wishlists !!!

  • BSSID presented in landscape
  • saving results of scan

Thanks heaps - great work !!

fjacob's picture

fjacob

Wed, 2015/03/11 - 11:39

Regarding the BSS details page, I didn't find it until I read your comment here that it exists. What about a white shine-through tutorial overlay that explains to the user that the functionality is there and what to do to access it? Besides the official jolla applications, I saw this in kodimote. I don't know whether it's the best way to implement it, but the relevant parts are the introLabel1 and introLabel2 here:

https://github.com/mzanetti/kodimote/blob/a4eecf5a28d8982b17ec4bc7cdd939...

Regarding the actual access to the SSID details, my first intention was a long tap, like you would open the context menu in the email or notes application. I think it's intended to actually be a double tap? Long tapping works, but not as expected, because I have to lift my finger for the action to occur. Usually I just need to wait half a second or so and the action itself happens on its own. While I tried this, the SSIDs tend to slip away under my finger as a new scan moved their position, so I had to find it again. My proposal would be to use a half-second long press that gets you to the details page, and to not update the list while a finger taps on the screen.

While I think about it, pausing the scans in some way to be able to read everything whithout a new scan interrupting you wouldn't be a bad feature, either, and holding one finger on the screen not the worst gesture for pausing. But it would need to be explained in a tutorial, too, I guess.

Thanks for creating this, bulkin. Now I can stop carrying my trusty old N9 around for wlan monitoring. :-)

bulkin's picture

bulkin

Wed, 2015/03/11 - 18:18

The idea is that you tap to select an item, and tap a selected item to get to details. I'm thinking about improving this, adding a tutorial for such simple interactions is a sign of bad UI in my opinion. Pause/resume will be implemented in the next version.

gnikandrov's picture

gnikandrov

Wed, 2015/03/11 - 06:36

  • There's still TEST_VERY_LONG_NAME_name present in the list
  • My SSID with spaces in it displays only first word
  • Legend for the table would be nice
bulkin's picture

bulkin

Wed, 2015/03/11 - 18:11

Thanks for catching the SSID with spaces bug. Could you expand on the legend idea? The table display seems obvious to me: green, yellow and red signal levels.

Manankanchu's picture

Manankanchu

Mon, 2015/03/09 - 21:51

Great work - had been waiting desperately for a WiFi scanner !!!

I dare pointing out 2 wishes (being very happy anyway ;) ):

- saving the list of results as file (simple text would be enough)

- allowing (activation in settings) display on BSSID level

 

bulkin's picture

bulkin

Tue, 2015/03/10 - 19:19

Hi Manankanchu!

Thanks for your feedback. Concerning your feature requests: what use case do you have in mind for saving the result list? Would just piping the output of iwhelper (installed with wlanmon) to a file be enough? I didn't quite understand the second one: do you want the BSSID to be displayed along with/instead of the SSID?

Also, a question concerning usability: did you find the BSS details page and was it intuitive?

Manankanchu's picture

Manankanchu

Wed, 2015/03/11 - 19:13

Took me quite a while to find the BSS details page by accident - maybe it's sufficient for a quick resolve to write in the App description on Warehouse "Double tap on network to show BSS details" ...

Piping iwhelper to a text file would be too much information for me, the screen content (SSID, channel, field strength) would be sufficient for me -  I currently simply take a screenshot.

BSSID is relevant for me, as I frequently check WiFi networks with many Access Points and it would be helpful to see, which AP (BSSID) delivers what fieldstrength at a given location. For me it would be great, an additional column would show the BSSID. I expect that this can be only used in landscape, so it would be helpful to allow switching off that feature in settings ...