geolocator-software-defined-gps-second-evaluation

Hi everyone,

 

I am now taking you over my second evaluation. A German version of this blog post can be found here [0]. For people who did not read over the geolocator (Software defined GPS) project before, here is a link to the project introducing (english)[1] and (german)[2]. The first evaluation from last month can be found here (english)[3] and (german)[4]. First of all I would like to tell you about the web backend:

 

Web Backend

As I said it in the blogpost before, the new web backend should replace the old one.
The current openwifi.su web backend consists of a collection of different programs in different programlanguages. The new one is written in Golang it has a fully backward compatibility. The new web backend is more secure.  It checks all requested strings at the end of the url that they contain only comma separated macaddresses with 12 hex characters, as a validation check.

 

Also the new web backend fix an issue by calculating the requested position. The method before just adds all latitude values and devides them over the amount of positions. Same for longitude. The new way is a geographic midpoint calculation. First the lat/lon values will be converted into radius and then the radius will be converted into a Cartesian coordinate system, after that the midpoint calculation will be done and will gave us a lat/lon in the form of radius and the values will be converted back into degrees, that is all.

 

The web backend has a new feature which should help to enhance the position quality. If there are BSSIDs unknown in the database of openwifi.su, the new backend sends an extra request for the unknown BSSIDs to Moziller location service [5] and brings that information into the calculation of the response.

 

At the moment the new web backend is being tested. In the next few days a first version of the new web backend will be released. The current code can be found here [6].

 

LEDE Package

The last project is to build packages for LEDE and send merge requests to Gluon. The idea behind that is, for WiFi routers and other WiFi devices to be able to automatically receive their own position. This could be a nice feature for mobile Freifunk Routers. It could also provide a good alternative instead of setting positions by hand. A first version of that package is here [7].

 

For the integration in Gluon I plan 4 new packages. The first one is the gluon-geolocator, which depends on gluon-node-info and provides the programme with the capability of receiving geopositions based on surrounding WiFis.

 

The next 3 packages are just for the Gluon configmode. The configmode is a state that begins at the initial start of a Gluon router and the owner of that router can configure it over a LAN connection.
I would like to integrate the following 3 packages within the gluon-config-mode-geo-location.
They are named:
gluon-config-mode-geo-location-with-geloc-map,
gluon-config-mode-geo-location-with-geloc,
gluon-config-mode-geo-location-with-map

 

As their names indicate, the package gluon-config-mode-geo-location-with-geloc-map should integrate the options of the geolocator and an OSM map into the configmode. The other 2 packages, gluon-config-mode-geo-location-with-map and gluon-config-mode-geo-location-with-geloc should either integrate only an OSM map or just the configuration options of the geolocator. Also the package gluon-config-mode-geo-location should be able to and will show the current location interface without any map or geolocator.

 

A merge request of the above new packages will follow soon. Some of the gluon-config-mode-geo-location extensions are currently not finish yet.

 

In the next few weeks I would like to finish the integration into Gluon, as well as continuing to develop the new web backend and releasing the first version of it. There are many ToDo points currently open e.g. Multicore functionality, optionally other geographic midpoint calculations. At the beginning of August there is the SHA2017[8], which I will use for a marathon session.

 

With best wishes
Jan-Tarek Butt

 

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