Having used the WgtStumbler in various incarnations for a couple years now, and having noted the appearance of faster single board computers of late, RussellSenior decided to try building a stumbler device based on the Alix 3D3. This is a board with a 500 MHz AMD Geode CPU, one LAN port, two miniPCI slots, two USB ports, VGA, and onboard sound. It holds the prospect of eliminating the need for external usb hubs and many of the "scary" wires. Flush with some recent income, Russell went ahead and purchased directly from PC Engines of Zurich Switzerland:
Qty |
Part |
Price |
Total |
1 |
Alix.3D3 system board |
$121.00 |
$121.00 |
1 |
Box2c enclosure |
$5.50 |
$5.50 |
1 |
Bracket for alix3d3 |
$0.50 |
$0.50 |
1 |
CompactFlash card 4GB |
$16.00 |
$16.00 |
2 |
ipex to rpsma pigtail |
$1.35 |
$2.70 |
1 |
2.4GHz antenna |
$2.30 |
$2.30 |
1 |
5.8GHz antenna |
$2.85 |
$2.85 |
2 |
Wistron CM9 |
$26.25 |
$52.50 |
Shipping & Handling |
$35.00 |
||
Total |
$238.35 |
||
The items were shipped directly from Zurich, arriving in Portland in 9 days time.
The experiment began by compiling the current release of OpenWrt (r12616) for x86 and Alix. The .config used can be found here.
Copy the resulting squashfs image to the CompactFlash card. Install it in the Alix board with a serial console attached:
Copy the extra files to the root directory thusly:
Then enable the init scripts that were added:
# /etc/init.d/alsa enable # /etc/init.d/setclock enable
Disable scripts that are useless:
# /etc/init.d/firewall disable # /etc/init.d/httpd disable