Ekahau HeatMapper maps out WiFi signals

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The term ‘warwalking’ isn’t used very often, but the Ekahau HeatMapper adds a new tool to the pod bound hacker’s arsenal. The tool maps out wireless access points as well as their signal strength within a facility. A test of the HeatMapper on a map made with AutoDesk Dragonfly accurately determined the location of a router within 3 feet and helped tune the angle it needed to be at for maximum range. Ekahau made a fantastically cheesy promotional video for their product, which is viewable after the jump. The program is free of charge, but unfortunately only runs on windows, so mac and *nix users are out of luck, though it might run under wine.

[via Download Squad]

Comments [34]

tagged: autodesk dragonfly, ekahau, heatmapper, map, wardriving, warwalking, wifi, wireless

Reader Comments

kismet with gps

Posted at 6:43 pm on Jun 16th, 2009 by Adam Ziegler

(oops didn’t mean to submit quite yet) as I was saying… kismet with gps is another (larger scale) solution for neighborhoods.

Posted at 6:46 pm on Jun 16th, 2009 by Adam Ziegler

Downloaded it and within 10 minutes had a wifi map of our apartment building. I noticed heavy overlap right on top of our router, moved it, and now I get better signal. This is frickin’ sweet and it’s extremely low profile when running. I see no reason it can’t be used on something like a palmtop or netbook anywhere you go. Excellent find.

Posted at 7:25 pm on Jun 16th, 2009 by M4CGYV3R

this looks pretty cool, maybe tomorrow after class I’ll map out URI

Posted at 8:07 pm on Jun 16th, 2009 by sean

an iPhone app with this functionality would be kick ass. probably already been done though.

Posted at 8:09 pm on Jun 16th, 2009 by Jon Roelofs

@jon, yah and with an IPhone you could use the internal GPS and google maps API in order to map it automatically

Posted at 8:11 pm on Jun 16th, 2009 by sean

sweet, anyone else notice the map looks like a wang sideways?

Posted at 8:58 pm on Jun 16th, 2009 by psycodrew

Lol, I believe this is an awesome find, downloading it now and can’t wait to try it out.

Posted at 10:03 pm on Jun 16th, 2009 by Shane

Okay, this program is just crazy. A bit basic but … wow. One thing I\’d LOVE to see implemented is a way to pre-draw a route that you will be taking and then using a mouseclick to indicate that you are at a checkpoint. Would make it easier to warwalk for AP points. (Ie, predefine a route of 4 points, clicking once at each corner of the block, walk once around your block, clicking the 5th time to indicate standing at starting position and to end the survey)

As far as known APs in the area, neighbors, etc… it was pretty much spot on. My roommate knew where the router was for our neighbors upstairs after helping them with their computer, I did not. I took a walk outside and then pointed where I thought it was. He said I was dead on.

I\’m gonna have a lot of fun with this one…

Posted at 2:44 am on Jun 17th, 2009 by Jimbo

Testet in office, works great.
Missing only one thing:
How to zoom in/out & scroll the map?

Posted at 2:54 am on Jun 17th, 2009 by miharix

@miharix

I don\’t think that feature is implemented, but I did brainstorm a bit. Using the dragonfly app, you can adjust your scale for the area you\’ll be walking. Just means you\’ll have to click with shorter lines instead of dragging from edge to edge for one side of the house to the other. (ie, make the house about 1/4 the way across, a poor man\’s way of keeping zoomed out and centered)

Alternately, and what I plan to do… using the dragonfly app to tile together \”square rooms\” to act as city blocks.

Posted at 3:00 am on Jun 17th, 2009 by jimbo

Very useful – a nod to the author. Maybe not as much soldery goodness as some of the more arduinolicious hacks that have been here of late, but to me, this meets the threshold of a seriously solid hack.

Posted at 3:45 am on Jun 17th, 2009 by Andrew Pollack

This is genius.
I’m going to hack this into a triangulation software for my robot.

Posted at 5:35 am on Jun 17th, 2009 by Hackius

i love the epic video :D

Posted at 6:52 am on Jun 17th, 2009 by pod

@jimbo:
if you’re planning scanning your neighbourhood, just load a screenshot from google maps of your area as a heatmapper map

Posted at 8:02 am on Jun 17th, 2009 by pod

How is this news? Ekahau has been on the market for years, and the functionality afforded isn’t exactly ground-breaking – most cellcos have employed heat-mapping as a radio planning and profiling output since early analogue days. Furthemore, it’s not exactly hard to map out coverage using open-source and off the shelf tools.

This isn’t a hack – it’s a sales presentation.

Posted at 10:27 am on Jun 17th, 2009 by boom tsh boom tsh

If you ever wanted to ‘upgrade’ to a paid version (Their sales pitch):

Ekahau Site Survey (ESS) comes in 2 forms – Standard and Professional.
ESS Standard is $ 1995.00 and one year Support & Maintenance is $
359.00.
ESS Professional is $ 3995.00 with Support $ 719.00 per year.

We recommend the optional DBx dual-band Spectrum Analyzer to
troubleshoot interference issues. With DBx, the prices are:

ESS Standard + DBx are $ 2495.00 and one year Support & Maintenance is
$ 359.00.
ESS Professional + DBx is $ 4450.00 with Support $ 719.00 per year.

Below are the differences between the two versions. We do recommend the
support as the software is always being improved and new features added.
If you have support in place, all upgrades are free for the year.
Support is renewable yearly at the same cost.

We also recommend our NIC card for the software. NIC300 is 802.11
a/b/g/n sells for $ 145.00.

You can purchase the software, analyzers, and NICs card directly from
me. We will take a company purchase order with Net 30 terms or you may
purchase with a major credit card. There is more information on our
website or please call and we can answer any other questions. We offer
free monthly webinars to go through the basics of ESS.

Posted at 11:02 am on Jun 17th, 2009 by fynflood

Wow, that sucks…the Ekahau website is having sql db problems.

thank for linking to a downed site :(

Posted at 11:38 am on Jun 17th, 2009 by supershwa

I love this!

Posted at 12:40 pm on Jun 17th, 2009 by Micheal Smith

I have to saw that I warwalk all the time.

Ipod touch or subnotebooks are amazing for that.

Posted at 1:33 pm on Jun 17th, 2009 by Spork

Tired of hearing how cool it will be in iphone, well if you want such feature get PPC there at least 5 programs that do exactly same thing and even better by using gps

Posted at 1:43 pm on Jun 17th, 2009 by therian

The interface is a little cramped on an Asus Eee 1000HA (10″) but its still very useful.

Posted at 4:09 pm on Jun 17th, 2009 by Chee

man this last guy’s name brings back some bad memories
“coatzee”…

Posted at 7:01 pm on Jun 17th, 2009 by steve

The idea behind the app is great, the implementation is better than anything I’ve seen.

However, the 15minute time limit is terrible. I decided to try map out my school (work) and see if it’ll find dead spots etc, however it would randomly crash, sometimes after 15 minutes, and occasionally after around 5minutes. You don’t have a chance to save the screenshots of the app at all, it’s just all gone.
It did work out where the points where almost exactly though which was cool.
I would use this app a lot more if it didn’t have the 15minute time limit, and perhaps allowed you to save the path, so you can go back and do another path.

I’m hoping that the prices aren’t anywhere near as expensive as fynflood mentioned above, I wouldn’t mind shelling out maybe $100 or so for a version of this app that allows saving and no time limit.

Ducky

Posted at 7:24 pm on Jun 17th, 2009 by Ducky

@steve
it’s not coAtzee, it’s CoEtzee, big difference. It’s an Afrikaans name so it’s got some sounds that aren’t quite in English, but you can get pretty close saying “could-see-a”. Either way, I’ve never heard of my last name giving anyone bad memories. I’m interested to hear why.

Posted at 8:01 pm on Jun 17th, 2009 by Gerrit Coetzee

if “coatzee” is a hint at what i think it is then i agree with bad memories. the days before we were desensitized.

Posted at 8:49 pm on Jun 17th, 2009 by Steve Watkins

@steve
@steve

dammit. yes. when you pronounce my name incorrectly… oh god. bad memories

Posted at 10:05 pm on Jun 17th, 2009 by Gerrit Coetzee

@Jon Roelofs: It’s already been done for pocket pc, its called visiwave, and it costs in the thousand(s) of dollars IIRC. It’s nice to see an alternative that doesn’t cost an arm, a leg and your first born.

Posted at 11:05 pm on Jun 17th, 2009 by James

I just checked, it won’t run using wine 1.0.1, crashing with a Java exception originating from sun.awt

Posted at 3:55 am on Jun 18th, 2009 by EisFrei

Just ran a scan of our office – over 35k square feet – just walked the perimiter of the call center and down the hall ways of the offices.

Works great! This is going in our security book for our wifi scan for PCI!

An iPhone app would be great. Things were cramped on my Acer Aspire One.

Posted at 7:57 am on Jun 18th, 2009 by Mario

Having used ekahau’s tracking tags before, I gotta say that they’ve got a pretty clever product. Glad to see that they’re offering up a little bit of it for free.

Posted at 11:33 am on Jun 18th, 2009 by glonq

The time limit is a killer, the earliest points you mapped start disappearing. I tried to map a city block, I don’t think it’s possible to get it done before you hit the limit. Not on foot, anyhow. Need a way to defeat that limit.

Posted at 1:36 pm on Jun 19th, 2009 by number11

this is over rated, check out wigle.net to see real wi-fi mapping

Posted at 10:37 pm on Aug 23rd, 2009 by Grafton

I tried this tool some time ago:
http://www.petrilopia.net/wordpress/software/ekahau-heatmapper/
and it really worked like a dream :-) Strange how it’s still free…

Posted at 3:29 am on Oct 27th, 2009 by Whig

Ekahau HeatMapper maps out WiFi signals

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