Technical Ramblings

Thursday night at the Merrimack Linux Users Group, we met at Marthas, in Nashua., as per our usual. We accidentally ended up split into two groups to start, but shortly after I arrived at 7:20, adjourned upstairs.

It was one of the larger meetings I’ve been too, with about 15-20 people in attendance all told. The informal discussion was centered around theWRT54G, and OpenWRT. Our friend from the Great White North (“That’s Maine, right?”) showed off his WRT router, which he had hacked to bitsand back again. Hardware changes include:

* Addition of two serial ports, one for the console, one for standard serial comms.
* Addition of SD Memory card
* Modification of USB GPS to work as serial GPS
* Modification of power input to work from cigarette lighter.

The router software was then modified to work as a wardriver-in-a-box: GPS and wifi hotspot locations are recorded and stored to the SD card.

There was then some discussion about geo stuff: GPSes, how to work withthem under Linux, how the GPS system works, and more.

Some stuff which were tossed around:
* gpsd, the gps daemon that makes communicating with GPS devices easier under Linux. This software basically turns a GPS device into something you can telnet to and ask for a current position.
* GPSDrive. This is mapping software, which downloads free maps from the web, and displays your current location on the map.
* Kismet, a wardriving program.
* The increase of macs in the Linux users culture.
* Open Guide to Boston (http://boston.openguides.org/)
* Lots of hardware mumbo jumbo I didn’t understand
* Some software stuff about the WRT54G, a la discussion of NVRAM.

Afterwards, we adjourned for dessert, and discussed the incompetencies of the Mass RMV (http://crschmidt.livejournal.com/311494.html), the interesting ways of escaping West Berlin without a passport, and more geo geekery.

I think that’s a good summary of what was discussed: I had a few pictures that I’ll put on Flickr of the hacked device and the flock of geeks adoring it, at some point.

(Originally posted to GNHLUG mailing list. GNHLUG is the Greater New Hampshire Linux Users Group, one of the most intelligent and helpful bunches of Linux people around. I trek up to Nashua from Cambridge once a week to meet with these people because I can’t imagine a more interesting bunch of people to hang around.)