WiFi Wireless Projects

Presence detection

Working on detecting when my phone enters and leaves the Wildsong AP.

Alfa

I have these two USB WiFi adapters from Alfa, both of these are 2.4GHz and have RP-SMA connectors.

Alfa AWUS036NHR
Alfa AWUS036H

Famous race condition causes it to come up sometime as wlan0 and other times as wlan1, basically annoying the daylights out of me.

I tried the raspi-config (really kalipi-config) "predictable names" option and it failed.

Next I tried this, which works!!

sudo rm /etc/systemd/network/73-usb-net-by-mac.link
update-initramfs -k all -u
reboot

I think the .link file (which points to null) was masking the one with actual information in it in /lib/systemd/network/ Read carefully "man systemd.link", especially how the directories are searched in order, so the fake .link file was overwriting the real one. Now I have the builtin wifi at "wlan0" and the Alfa interface at wlx00c0ca52c04b. No more confusion as to which one is the Alfa.

On Murre (Linux Mint) the Alfa AWUS036NHR reports via lsusb and lsmod as

(Bus 001 Device 009: ID 0bda:817f Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL8188RU 802.11n WLAN Adapter 

lsmod | grep 81
rtl8xxxu              290816  0
rtl8192cu             114688  0
rtl_usb                24576  1 rtl8192cu
rtl8192c_common        90112  1 rtl8192cu
rtlwifi               139264  3 rtl8192c_common,rtl_usb,rtl8192cu
mac80211             1720320  4 rtl_usb,rtl8192cu,rtlwifi,rtl8xxxu

The older AWUS036H board reports via lsusb and lsmod,

Bus 001 Device 010: ID 0bda:8187 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL8187 Wireless Adapter

lsmod | grep 81
rtl8187                61440  0
eeprom_93cx6           16384  1 rtl8187
rtl8xxxu              290816  0
rtl8192cu             114688  0
rtl_usb                24576  1 rtl8192cu
rtl8192c_common        90112  1 rtl8192cu
rtlwifi               139264  3 rtl8192c_common,rtl_usb,rtl8192cu
mac80211             1720320  5 rtl_usb,rtl8192cu,rtlwifi,rtl8xxxu,rtl8187
cfg80211             1327104  4 rtlwifi,mac80211,rtl8xxxu,rtl8187

Driver build on Linux

https://felixkohlhas.com/random/rtl8188fu-monitor-mode/

Alfa + Pi

But it works great on a Pi 3. So I am going to set up a Pi 3 with the Alfa. The Alfa will hopefully connect to my office when I am sitting on the hill at lunchtime, and become a hotspot, allowing me to connect via its internal WiFi or possibly its wired ethernet. The only reason to do this is to see if I can.

Some instructions to follow. https://thepi.io/how-to-use-your-raspberry-pi-as-a-wireless-access-point/

Install iptables, hostapd, bridge-utils and dnsmasq.

Edit /etc/dhcpcd.conf, /etc/dnsmasq.conf, /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf, /etc/default/hostapd, /etc/sysctl.conf.

Enable MASQUERADE

Create a file to set iptables

sudo sh -c "iptables-save > /etc/iptables.ipv4.nat"

Load it from /etc/rc.local

Add bridge interfaces

sudo brctl addbr br0
sudo brctl addif br0 enxb827eb6f44a5
sudo brctl addif br0 wlx00c0ca52c04b    <-- oh oh this failed

Wardriving

Setting up a Raspberry Pi to do some wardriving (or warcycling or warwalking?) Will probably use an Alfa 802.11b/g/n adapter from Rokland.

Horst = Highly Optimized Radio Scanner Tool = low footprint
Kismet = been around longer, more features

Testing on Pi 4 Tenrec today with sudo iwlist wlan0 scan|grep SSID With the Alfa I see 35 stations. On the built in wlan0 I see 9. So, Alfa it is. The built in interface is dual band (2.4 and 5.8) but the Alfa is 2.4 only. I might want to replace the Alfa later but most access points advertise on both bands so I don't think it matters to me right now.

MAC on the Alfa is 00:c0:ca:52:c0:4b
MAC on the Pi WiFi is b8:27:eb:3a:11:f0

Quickie test: sudo iwlist wlx00c0ca52c04b scan

Examine interfaces with

sudo iw dev
sudo iw phy phy0 info
sudo iw phy phy1 info

Packages on Pi 3 (Name "clear" because of the transparent case.)

apt install horst emacs-nox minicom

To-do:

Install and test Alfa (DONE)
Install and test Horst. Done but need to know more about it; logging? GPS?
Install and test Kismet
hook up a GPS (in car: UBlox AEK-4P walking? I have a little chip GPS around)
remove the Pi 4 from the 7" screen -or- go with a Pi 3 -or- even a Pi Zero?

Can I run this software on a Pi Zero? I just want to log data, nothing else. That would be Kali on Pi0W It works, but runs out of memory or drops messages or something. I decided to stick with a Pi3 on this project.

How about https://www.kali.org/docs/arm/raspberry-pi-zero-w-pi-tail/ Use Pi Zero + Smartphone (tablet in my case)???

Disable automatic connection on Alfa

I want to use the Alfa only for monitoring so I don't want it connecting.

This does not do it.

systemctl disable wpa_supplicant@wlx00c0ca52c04b

GPS

Delorme Earthmate

This one's been in my collection for many years. It's yellow. It still works. I added GPSd ("apt install gpsd") and fired up gpsmon. Yep. Works. GPS is done.

Data link

While reading Fona docs I learned Twilio now has access to narrowband IoT through T-Mobile, which is 400MHz. The Quectel developer board I found for it is $95 and also includes GPS. $3 for a SIM and $10 a year for 12MB for Narrowband. I wonder what it would take to use LoRa or Meshtastic?

Horst

There is a package for Raspbian but not Kali. I am leaning towards dumping Kali, which is 10# of software and I only need 1#. I wonder about the Re4son kernel?

git clone --recursive https://github.com/br101/horst
sudo apt-get install libncurses-dev libnl-3-dev libnl-genl-3-dev pkg-config

Kismet on Debian

The version in the repository won't install on Debian Bullseye

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 kismet-core : Depends: libprotobuf17 but it is not installable

wget -O - https://www.kismetwireless.net/repos/kismet-release.gpg.key | sudo apt-key add -
echo 'deb https://www.kismetwireless.net/repos/apt/git/buster buster main' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/kismet.list
sudo apt update
sudo apt install kismet

5" display

I am using this 5" display and a Pi 3 from SEARC

https://elecrow.com/wiki/index.php?title=HDMI_Interface_5_Inch_800x480_TFT_Display

I tried installing the drivers per the instructions here and the board did not reboot. I will try again someday. Who needs a touch screen anyway?

Kali

I tried installing Kismet on Raspbian and it failed, so I installed Kali.

Kali runs X11 by default; it can be disabled with

systemctl disable lightdm

I would disable HDMI too, to save power, but I am afraid I will need to connect the KVM up in the near future to get access when WiFi is not available.

About the Re4son kernel

uname -a
Linux kali-raspberry-pi 5.15.44-Re4son-v8+ #1 SMP PREEMPT Debian kali-pi (2022-07-03) aarch64 GNU/Linux

What is Re4son?? It's a kernel that has support for some of the wireless drivers that I don't need right now. :-) See https://re4son-kernel.com/re4son-pi-kernel/ See also https://davidtavarez.github.io/2018/re4son_kernel_raspberry_pi/

It's probably pretty easy to install it later on top of Raspbian.

Kismet

mkdir -p ~/.kismet/logs

sudo -s
vi /etc/kismet/kismet_logging.conf # Set prefix=/home/kali/.kismet/logs
systemctl enable kismet.service
systemctl edit kismet.service # Change to User=kali and Group=kismet
systemctl start kismet.service

Now go to a browser go to for example http://zebra:2501/ and set a username and password. It will put the web server setup in ~kali/.kismet/kismet_httpd.conf

Okay, it ran for a good 15 minutes and I think it wants at least a Pi 3.

GPS for Kismet

You can directly read NMEA data from the serial port but Gpsd is a more elegant approach, you won't be hogging all the data for Kismet. Other apps can use it. Go to that page (Gpsd), set it up, come back here, and edit /etc/kismet/kismet.conf to enable it.

Wireless resources

Personal Telco Portland

WISP news

Frontier Broadband Industry News http://www.frontierbb.com/blogger.shtml

Broadband Wireless Exchange http://www.bbwexchange.com/

Wireless Internet Service Provider Association http://www.wispa.org

Equipment suppliers

Single board computers

Rokland Alfa high power WiFi USB adapters

Metrix Wireless development kits

Fleeman Anderson Bird Antennas and a lot more. Really like these folks.

Manufacturers

E-zy made the EZ-2-Go radios that I just got for Chintimini

RouterBoard

[Ubiquiti] makes some products that look interesting including the "Bullet".

Organizations

Certified Wireless Network Providers Bluetooth
IrDA
Wi-Fi
Wi-Max
Zigbee