Wi-Fi radar system for your desktop

Some time ago, a friend of mine managed to convince a buddy of his that the Sonar screensaver from xscreensaver was in fact tracking all other computers in the neighbourhood – which happened to be laptops, of course. Great fun – wish I’d been there to witness it 🙂

Anyway, I just came across a recently released gizmo from Xirrus that will in fact do almost that, pinging all wireless networks in the area and displaying their locations relative to your computer.

The Xirrus Wi-Fi monitor - the radar display is in the upper left corner

The gizmo, which has been available as a gadget or widget for Windows
XP and Vista for some time, has just been released for Linux as a
“desklet” for the gDesklet framework.

As I use Kubuntu, and my friend uses openSUSE, I’ll just point out that gDesklets are already available from the default Ubuntu repositories and merely need to be installed using the Synaptic package manager or the like.

For openSUSE, you need to first enable the Build Service GNOME:STABLE repository (which you can find with along other community repositories in the Installation Source module of YaST), then you’ll be ready.

Once that is done, visit the link below and get the desklet package. Then launch gDesklets and select “Install package” from the File menu – then you can put the desklet onto your desktop.

Advanced IT Wi-Fi Networking Tools – Xirrus Wireless LAN