
wpm, a Wireless Power Meter for Linux.

4/10/02, by Rob Flickenger.

This is FREE-ware.  Do something FREE with it.


It is intended to give you a nice signal strength meter for analyzing your
wireless connection, and facilitate setting up point-to-point links.

This tool came to be because I was tired of the lack of decent link
diagnostic tools for Linux.  It will run in any terminal capable of
displaying ANSI color (the Linux console, ETerm, Gnome Term, XTerm, Color
RXVT, etc.) and gives you a nice, big signal strength bar and vital
statistics.

Requirements:

* Radio ethernet connection that uses the Linux Wireless extensions

* The 'iwconfig' utility must be in your path

* Perl 5 (or better, nothing but core modules)


To run, simply type './wpm'.  To quit, hit Control-C.

There are some tuning parameters at the top of the file, like polling
interval, link margin, and red/green thresholds.  Use the Source, Luke!

No, this is NOT a NetStumbler-alike; it will only tell you how the
connection between it and your AP is doing.  You can use it in conjunction
with the 'iwspy' utility to also monitor other radios in an Ad-Hoc (aka
Peer-to-Peer) network.  See 'man iwspy' for details on how to do this: It's
terrific for proving point to point paths, and getting the antenna pointed
*just right*.

Please keep in mind that this is something I threw together in a couple of
hours.  I already get too much email, so bug reports and cries for help will
likely go unread.  But if you have made it do something really cool, I'd
like to get a copy. When I update it (if ever), I'll post it to
http://nocat.net.

Enjoy!


Rob Flickenger
rob@nocat.net
