Hardware & Making
Wireless Drivers: Freedom considered harmful?
An OpenWrt perspective on the development of Linux 802.11 support
A review/rant about the progress that free software wireless drivers (especially on Linux) have made over the recent years, as well as the current challenges that driver developers (and users) are facing.
Many users of free software have realized that 802.11 wireless chipsets can be used in more ways than simply making their laptop connect to their home AP or hotspot.
Many people are replacing their router firmware with OpenWrt to have a better AP with free software drivers. Mesh network communities like Freifunk are building decentralized network infrastructure, which is also used to provide internet access to refugees in Germany. There are countless other examples of useful and innovative projects that are enabled by having free software wireless drivers.
However, the sad reality is that the hardware choices for these kinds of innovative projects are very limited, not because of limitations in the actual hardware, but because of the lack of datasheets, information, reference source code, developer time, etc.
In this talk, I will show how we got the state of Linux wireless support to the point where it is now, and I will rant viciously about what's holding us back.
I have been working on wireless drivers for a few years now, and as a contractor for chipset manufacturers, I was given a glimpse into the maze of insanities that is holding back progress significantly.
But no matter how much bureaucracy, lame excuses, NDA crap and other weird things vendors (and now also the FCC) throw at us, there is still hope for a better future...
Weitere Infos
| Format | lecture |
|---|---|
| Sprache | Englisch |
Weitere Sessions
| 27.12.15 |
News about the rad1o half a year later – cool stuff that happened, and why you need an SDR.
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| 27.12.15 |
Yosys (Yosys Open Synthesis Suite) is an Open Source Verilog synthesis and verification tool. Project IceStorm aims at reverse engineering and documenting the bit-stream format of Lattice iCE40 FPGAs and providing simple tools for analyzing and creating bit-stream files, including a tool that converts iCE40 bit-stream files into behavioral Verilog. Currently the bitstream format for iCE40 HX1K and HX8K is fully documented and supported by the tools. Arachne-PNR is an Open Source place&route tool ...
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| 27.12.15 |
The Amiga was one of the most powerful and wide srpead computers in the late 80's. This talk explains its hardware design and programming.
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| 27.12.15 |
CubeSat are small standardized satellites typically flown as secondary and containerized payloads piggybacking on the launches of larger satellites. Their low entrance cost have been a revolution in opening access to space for a broad range of institutions. In this talk the basics of CubeSat standards, technology and development are going to be presented. The goal is to proliferate the knowledge of what it takes to successfully build, launch and operate a CubeSat within and beyond the hacker ...
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| 27.12.15 |
In this talk Matthew Borgatti, Lead Scientist at Super-Releaser, will take you through the process of turning a puddle of goo into a working soft robot. He will take you through the different mechanisms that can be created, simple processes for fabricating soft robots, and methods for joining elements together into sophisticated assemblies.
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| 28.12.15 |
There are two lines of research in the world about decreasing poverty in low-income communities: (1) to create solutions and share them with people living in low-income areas or (2) build the capacity of people from low-income areas to create their own solutions. Maker Spaces to BoP have showed great results to the strategy two. The lecture has the goal to expose all the experience we have learnt in the last three years to project, implement and manage a Maker Space in a favela in São Paulo - ...
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| 28.12.15 |
This talk is a brief recap into EEG / BCI for hackers, makers, researchers, and artists. It will give an overview of current consumer devices and their flaws, and subquently present fully open-source, high-quality hardware and software. Finally implications for the future of modern society are outlined, especially how commercial EEG consumer devices or services may be exploited by corporations to cloudsource market research, or spy on health conditions, brain states or even leak private ...
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