WI-Spy

Dec 24, 2005 7 Replies

No, but I just ordered one. $103 total including shipping via Paypal. Claims will ship on Dec 22 (yesterday) which is a bit optimistic. We shall (soon) see.

Looks kinda interesting, 96ms sweep time is good, but they don't say anything about sensitivity, which is pretty important. I've already got a Proxim 7400-based "spectrum analyzer", which is nearly deaf and unusably slow....

Let us know how it is! I almost ordered one myself, but I'll let Jeff do the honors.

Yeah, it looks pretty good. I dropped them a line to find out if they had any sensitivity numbers, and got back:

/* I have attached the datasheet, which should have the sensitivity information you are looking for.

*/

The included document, however, is the same one found on their WWWebsite, and while I agree that it _should_ include the information I'm looking for, it clearly doesn't.

Another little tidbit:

/* Wi-Spy sweeps the 2.4 GHz ISM Band about 10 times/sec, and samples every 1 MHz.

*/

Let us know! The Proxim card sounds really neat, too, until you realize how slow and deaf it is. At least this one is faster! 8*)

The ability to download actual recordings seems as if it could be useful, especially if it is continually being added to.

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Yeah, I have the same problem.

Try the AVI files to see how it should look.

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much better than the Proxim 7400 cards. If the calibration on the vertical sensitivity is accurate, it should be fairly sensitive. However, don't expect the same range as with a 802.11b/g connection. Without SS code synchronization, the de-correlation loss and the loss of the 10dB processing gain will drastically reduce sensitivity. The lack of an external antenna connector might be a problem. My guess(tm) is that this is really a USB dongle with frequency hopping firmware and software. That divides the band into 80-90 channels, each 1MHz wide (same as the Proxim 7400 FHSS card).

Did you look at those CSV file contents? All the values on the 3ea Wi-Fi recordings, at any frequency and at any time, are all around

-61dBm. Methinks they've goofed somewhere. Those files are useless. The GE Microwave CSV file looks reasonable.

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