HW089: Spectrum Analysis and Vibe Coding

0:00Welcome back to another episode of Heavy Wireless, part of the Packet Pusher's podcast network. My name is Keith Parsons and today I have with me someone I met, well I met him long time ago, but we were just together last week in Manchester at the WICO Fest and he gave a presentation. Chetilla, how are you? Ah, I'm good. Very good. So what was your experience at WIFI Fest? WICO Fest? Yeah, it was really cool since I wasn't able to come to come to Prague this year. So like WICO Fest, that's some school and I see your name there and Nick Turner and Peter McKenzie and Matt Parker and Dan Jones and all of that, the same kind of people I always meet and greet at Prague. So I need to go here and I need to show something, a presentation that I've been working with for so long time and I only want to be shown at WICO because it isn't recorded.

1:00So, I'm excited. This time the president, usually I love to end up on YouTube, I love it, Keith, but this time I was a little bit unsure but I really wanted to show what I was supposed to show. Well, we got to see it and cheer and applaud. Well, for our, this is an audio podcast so they can't see what you did, but let's talk them through. Well, first, what was the reason behind why you even prepared that demonstration? Yeah, I think it comes down all the time to be on my very first presentation at the WPC where I had this demonstration to explain how the ECHOS psychic worked and knowing my brain usually when I don't know exactly how things works, I dig deep until I know how it works. And I always looked like I have other types of speck malice that I have and when I configure that one to be similar, very similar to how the speck sheet of a psychic too behaves

2:03because the speck sheets for the psychic is massive, like 50 sweeps a second, 19, 39 kilohertz is an insane amount of quality, but it doesn't resonance when I look at AR pro. So I just felt something is up. I need to see what I can do to help out because I want to see all three bands at once that I've been asking for since we got three bands. Well, I think everyone's been asking for that. One of the things that for a long time ago, this isn't for psychic too and I don't have any inside information, but ECHOS did say that their speck and is delivering way more data than they can show on the screen so they had to kind of slow it down. And that was something public from a long time ago. So that might be part of it. But you took that little desire to figure out what was going on and so what did you build? Yeah, I build my own tool. Similar thing that I did with the NetAli NXT. I saw that the G3 was a bottleneck. So I built my own tool to visualize how that looks.

3:03And that is free and publicly available that you can download if they have that one. And I just want to see if I do the similar thing to see if I can some way or another get access or some of the data to see if I can visualize it without slowing it down with showing everything at once. And that is the thing that was able to show at WICO. And I think people like that. You kind of got them to stop for a second and just go like, what is he showing? So you knelt down, you picked up a sidekick to plug it in and then your app and how was your app coded and where was it running when we got to see that demo? It runs. It does previously run on Windows and then because the MacBook is so relaxed to have a new lap in the living room, it just work. I just made it all to Swift instead because it's so easy to call on a MacBook with

4:05a cloud. But all kinds of AI and but mostly a lot of it is manual tedious work to know how things work. It's really manual because parsing a lot of data to AI is not feasible and giving it too much data. It doesn't want to help you. So a lot of things is manual. But it visualized the domain Mac and an iPad. You used to show it on my phone, but my phone was on my chair in the audience. So I wasn't able to do that. But showing it on iPad was pretty cool as well. Yeah, it was a little bit, but a little bit small screen to hold up like an 11 inch laptop on stage, but yeah, it worked. So what kind of things did you demonstrate? With all three bands at once, demonstrated a built-in speed test, real channel power arrangements, like power spectral density, a decent channel, like things you see in other

5:06type of spectrum and a lot of stars in lab environments and doing a speed test and show it visualized with spectrum and how long it took and an average low and maximum value of the spectrum utilization. That is just based on if you see anything above, for example, minus 82, recorded as something into the percentage. And then it shows you how overloaded you do the Wi-Fi. So for 16 seconds, the Wi-Fi is barely usable when you are doing your speed test if someone else is connected. And that speed test wasn't running, it was running on the max Nick. It was a Wi-Fi speed test, not a spectrum. Yeah, yeah, max Nick. And if the psyche is close enough, it resembles what the MacBook has, right? Just have it a little bit close, but not too close because then the channel power measurements will look all messed up because they will see too much a decent channel noise if it's too close.

6:07Did you happen to ever test, I didn't see any demo, I was just wondering, did you ever test the channel utilization numbers that the APs announce in their beacons with the channel utilization you got while you were running that test? No, I haven't had that yet. I'm thinking just using the Corville and on the MacBook to pull that out and see if I can resemble this, but the psyche gives like fast, I get like 45 to 50 FPS. So it can be really, really good to do a fairly accurate real time number that is faster than the QBS element because it's so fast, but it will be based on what it can hear over some signal, obviously the areas. So compared with the AP here's and calculates. Yeah, yeah. Sort of their features. Did you have, I saw you do a little record in playback. Yeah, record. That is something that I ask since the psychic one, I think because I've been to, as not often you see noise when you walk around with these tools.

7:10And when you finally see something, you get a little bit excited. And then everything it can do is the screen record and screen record is not a condition. Okay, just to say not everyone gets as excited as you do when they find something. Yeah, that's true. That's true. And just have a screenshot or something. I didn't want that. I always want to just the thing you see when you record and play it back, it will be a 100% representation of what you recorded with no data. It would be exactly the same. So no compression. That's just raw. I don't know if it's not packetized bit. It's, I don't know how much I can say, but it's the raw, it's the data from the psychic. And how they do it, it's, it's how they do it. You're not recording it out of the air. You're recording it from what the psychic heard and then you can play it back. Yeah. So when I, when you, that you see, I just record the frames on the screen. So if you have play something back and press record, it just records the actual frames.

8:10So if something is playing back in 50 FPS, it records 50 FPS, records everything that is on the screens. When you play back, it will be the same. Well, how, how did, I mean, I was in the audience, but afterward and everyone came up and talked to you, how did, how did the audience take your little demonstration of your software? Yeah. Everybody loved it. Of course, everybody want to know how and I, but the, the, the whole presentation is a little bit fun with a base on what if in an alternate universe. That was really cool. That true. It wasn't happening. Yeah, it wasn't happening. Yeah, Troy had a really good representation about talking about different universes right before me. So it's really good that he was right before me because then I can say that this is from an alternative universe. Well, this is kind of the, the culmination of what you've been working on for a while. A couple of years ago, your first presentation in Prague, you did a evening event talking about spectrum analyzers and had the first Aronia. How much have you learned from the Aronia that's now applicable into these other NXT year

9:12the sidekick? So I mean, I've been using this Aronia thing almost like one and a half year before I then got the hardware, been doing some pressing in the buttons. And it helped me a lot by having something that to real time. It helps me even more by having an RF chamber and it helps him more having calibrated on tennis because how, for example, let's say NXT, for example, that wasn't, it depends on who you ask, but that wasn't that hard to figure out. But you have to interpret the data, you have to interpret the data, you have to interpret the data, you have to interpret the data from how, when you put something in a chamber, it's dead silent. So if you send a signal inside a chamber, it will only see that signal. So then you do manual work, what happens when I send a signal here and then go back and I move that single one mega to the right and I go back and I look at everything. And that can be, and if you have then encrypted data, you have binary data, you have whatever data it is, where something is dead, it will always be the same.

10:14If you add something, it would be different. So then you do manual work with the coffee and some glasses and some music and you just scroll forever for days to see a pattern by yourself. Sounds like a wonderful evening alone you had there. Yeah, or maybe multiple evenings. So you, you took some things stuck in the chamber, kind of did a little bit of reverse engineering was the next to the first one. Did you do other specends first? Yeah, a couple of different SDRs that you buy on, but there are more publicly available tools. So different like hack or F thing, how to get that to look even better at tools, but I never liked that. Pluto, Pluto SDR, but that is open. You have a lot of tools to do that. NXT was like, I'm used to having SDRs, they're open source, so everything is available. And then, but this NXTs and this psychics, everything they use the same kind of hardware and chipset like an SDR. Exact same thing.

11:15They just have their custom firmware on top of it, but it is the same thing. So that's just one of many of my presentations. I mean, based on that, our Wi-Fi spec analyzers are locked, but they use the same hardware as an open source SDR that do the exact same thing. Well, could you buy an open source SDR and do the same thing? Yes, you can, but usually like I said on stage for the WPC, for a ecostatic 2, for example, it has a really good front end, it has good filters, it is calibrated, it has a good calibrated antenna. So what you pay for is like a package of everything. So usually when you buy an SDR, it maybe isn't calibrated. So the data that you see can be really wrong. You don't have the protection, so you need to provide your own filter. You need to buy an antenna and do you know the exact gains for 2.45 and 6 for that antenna? Maybe you don't. So that everything of this adds up in cost if you need an SDR that shows the data.

12:16So psychic 2 is expensive because you have everything that is done. It is calibrated, it has a proper antenna that is 2.25 and 6. So you can do the same, it just costs a little bit more. Sometimes you can have it really sheep, something on all the express for example, and it can do the same with a little bit of work. Well, this is just one of your memory projects you've been working on lately. So what got you started in doing all the 3D modeling bits? I remember maybe two years ago you started just making weird little things. Yeah, I think my whole structure, whatever. Yeah, my former job, we had grocery stores and they were so easy to draw. You just have really few walls, small stores, grocery stores. And then I had more times and then I manually just draw like flowers and chairs and just did this manual work all the time.

13:18Well, then I found out that it's just the copy paste from Hamina. It's just copies when you paste that in J.A. Can you render this for me? And then it rendered it. And I think one time in the early days of A.I. met a car and it crashed Chrome browser when I pasted it into Hamina. It crashed. So it did something. And I think it can fail so much because this is the negative thing of vibe coding, right? You paste something that have a color code of 8Fs, that is black and then it pasted 4Fs. But the beauty of Hamina when it reports something, it's the clouds, it was fixed just a couple hours later. If someone else pasted in a wrong typed hex code. So you didn't miss out too many people then? No, no, no, I think like Dan said on a comment post, I think that I stands for 8% of the GPU project. I brought Bill. I don't think so, but it's a nice thing to say. But I do test in their tools, just make something and paste it.

14:21And I think all these tools that are available started with, I don't know the name. It's wasn't a Wi-Fi Pro Slack. That's someone. Maybe someone can find and figure that out because I can't see it anymore. Ask how to make trees. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I made a tool that made trees and then people ask, can you do cars, can you do humans, can you do this? And then it just got a little bit fun. So then what do you have available now that people can play with? Human generator, different furniture for like offices with like chairs, TV, sunshares, different colors, couches, cars. Do you even can add snow on top of the car if you need that different type of cars? Speaking from the Norik, we're not everyone has snow on their cars. Yeah, but now you can. And it adds like a small layer of snow on the top of the car. Well, and it's an editor. I don't know him. I mean, but if you like made that really huge, like a really advanced object that you made,

15:26you can paste that object inside the editor and then you can change the colors, smooth things around and you can do that while it is in 3D. So you can optimize some maybe a metal logo for your customer or something. And then you can tune that and change the colors and do all that and then paste it back into homina when you're done. So it's kind of a tool box for people to make different things. Now what's the, what's the format that that goes back and forth in? Yeah. Like that is just pure JSON, the copy paste from homina. If I take the whole site, this open intent, then it's the entire design. So open intent is just from Jake Snyder, I think started it and then you can export entire design to open it and but homina since it has clipboard, you can copy whatever and just paste it in a notepad or sublime or whatever thing that you use or just directly into AI and say render this for me and it will do it. So you mentioned homina and open intent.

16:29We had an episode a couple months ago with Jake talking about open intent. How do you use open intent in your projects? For open intent, I made for my my cellular survey tool. I use a mock up open intent like with JSON and a zip file. I used open intent to convert ESX files to open intent if I want to do that or for open intent back to ESX, ESX if I want to do that. But now that homina support like a donation objects now I can like convert entire buildings for sites back and forth to this open intent format. So I really hope that more vendors will add support of it because it is a good way of having backup of your files because we already experienced from a 10 to 11 the file format was changed and then maybe from 11 to 12 it will change.

17:29But if you have it in open intent, you have a file that can be opened in whatever tool if you have like a really old file. So I hope really hope more people will use it. Well, what's next on your list of all these crazy vibe coding things or are you looking for ideas? Yeah, I was looking for this but I got a garden and an old idea that I had and all that I had I wanted to know how clean air worked or cleaner pro worked and how HB worked. Old Cisco cleaner. Says yeah, yeah, yeah, I know how it works but can I pull the data directly from that as well. And then I have some old app that is you probably remember that the old some older Qualcomm chipsets that can do basic spectrum data to use as a spectrum analyzer. It's also used as well. So I bought a couple of old ones for like $10 that supports it and see if I can make a complete replica of Cisco spectrum expert just for the fun of it.

18:33And there's a lot of people that would just think that's just for the fun of it but glad you're doing it. But six. Yeah, why not? Yeah, you might even be able to improve on some of the things because it's been a long time that we've learned a lot about spec and since that first one came out long time ago, the old card in the one. And do some like like the thing with the egg outroll for example is something that I can't really I can't really make new things of that. So I'm reversing that app to support typical SDRs like Bluetooth SDR or move NXT to it if that better like any type of spectrumized so start as cheap that can buy from all the express and see if I can get everything supported in that tool. Well, I'm sure there's a lot of people who would like to have an alternative to play with yours and so if you can come up with a good Ali Express number, the people can order and try to be useful. So yeah, something that you aren't afraid of breaking like something you're just having your pocket. I can like the Roni has really, really cool but they are expensive and not something that

19:37you walk having your pocket all day long, right? So just something, something small that can do basic spectrum analysis things. You weren't a ham radio operator. I knew that because I asked you before. Yeah, how did you go about learning your RF skill set? Well, I've been a Wi-Fi guy for many years. You started all the way from customer service. A guy by just got interested in spectrum analysis. The first time I saw a picture of DBX or Merageek, I saw that and at my job, they used the Merageek to find out that one of their fiber to copper converters created a lot of noise on channel six. So that time, only at 2.4 that I SPA, we had to move that there are almost one to two meters away from that fiber to copper converter because it was like a small microwave or something that it get in your dollar noise. And we saw that in DBX and that was the first time. Then I got access to a 27.02 and Cisco Spectrum expert.

20:41Oh, I do remember your your prod WOPC 27.02 spec in a bag or are you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I asked Nick Turner to make something because he is a really good designer of these things and me and Nick was on stage but we haven't done anything more with it. But that was just a PCB, take out a PCB from a Cisco 37.02 and make a 3D box for it in a battery. And I think it with the battery and the API, I think it has like eight hours runtime on a good battery. And yeah, that is also like a free 2.4 and 5G get spectrum analysis if you get a whole of an old Cisco 37.02. Which are all over the place. Yeah, that's one cool alternative. So usually we see the most interesting stuff on five Gigares anyways but now lately we start to see more things on six Gigares as well.

21:42But it's still a good alternative if you only need 2.4 and 5. So what's to keep someone from looking at your software that you just did with the site gig or with NXT and use it on a DBX? There's a lot of people who have met a gig DBX is still hanging around. Yeah, I have not been successful to run DBX or any of those. For some, there isn't this super head to done receivers should be easier to understand and get to work. But this zero I have received is like different kind of real time receivers. SDRs are much easier to understand than DBX for me at least. Maybe because I haven't wasted too much time on them yet. Well, this has been fun talking about your presentation of WICO but also just spectrum analysis in general and your whole process of going through all these different vibe coding projects. If someone wanted to access the tools you've already built, where could they find them?

22:45Yeah, some of my tools is on tools.tagin.rf.org. I also have like a notebook for Aronia for Wi-Fi people that have bit free files that people can download to visualize different things. You don't need to have any hardware. You can just download some sample files to try and see how a typical spectrum analyzer looks like. And yeah, and I will try to add more things on that tool page that just need more interesting ideas. Okay, AF folder is 20,000 files with garbage. And you have a YouTube channel. Yeah, just my full name on YouTube. Not so many videos yet. I just need something. We will put all those links in the show notes. Yeah. Thank you, sir, for your time today. You've been listening to another episode of Have You Wireless? Part of the Packet Pusher's podcast network. My name is Keith Parsons. And if you have other ideas for content, please leave them in the comment section on Have

23:47You Wireless. Part of the Packet Pusher's network. Thank you.