Bill Kearney wrote:
[snip]
I'm going to setup just this type of rig sometime this summer. I'm going to
use an old PC laptop running linux to do it. The goal being to pick up a
shore-based WiFi network and "repeat it" to on-board PCs. The only
"complicated" part is how to tell this router PC to connect to the on-shore
access points. If you're willing to do the 'command line dance' it's just a
matter of knowing which wlanconfig setups to use. But I seem to recall
seeing a couple of web page setups that could be used to do it as well. As
in, surf from the on-board PCs to a server page on this router and use that
to tell it which of the detected access points to use and start routing.
I'll certainly summarize whatever progress I make with it but it'll be at
least another two weeks before I can get back into it.

Meanwhile, if you've got an old laptop that's got at least 64mb of RAM and a
Pentium 233mHz then take a look at getting it setup with "Damn Small Linux"
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org

-Bill Kearney

this is basically what i'm doing with a laptop too. i have a laptop in
my "vehicle prototype" system i've been working on that is running
fedora core linux. it constantly monitors gps, listens for wifi access
points, etc, and i'm in the middle or programming it to control the
icom radio using ci-v. it's also online using evdo whenever it is
available. just today i wrote a parser for the frequency data that
comes out of the icom and i'm getting ready to start the code to set
the frequency, etc. the end result, i hope, will be that i can use the
linux cron to automatically tune the radio to pick up weatherfax
transmissions, automatically transfer email over HF, and that type of
thing, sort of a general purpose gateway. any kind of relay/control
stuff is going through a seperate PIC processor that communicates with
the laptop via the PIC's usart/rs-232. it has been a lot of fun to
fool around with and it is all working really well.