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The SpaceWifi team showed off our work at the Innovations showcase on Apr 27th, 2005 at George Mason University. We brought home 2 awards, "Student's Choice" and "Most Potential for Commercial Application". You can view the certificates on our Awards page.
Who
are we?
We are a team of 7 students
working on our senior design project for IT 492/493 at George
Mason University. Our class is the capstone
course in the BSIT
program.
What
are we doing?
Our assignment as we received it is:
Using a Linux/GPS board with a WI-FI card interface, create
a secure network that can be launched (via balloon, model rocket, or RC plane)
to send encrypted messages. Applications might include military operations where
an individual needs to send encrypted messages from the field to an ally some
distance away. (You may be able to think of others.) A follow-on project might
include multiple nodes. The client will supply hardware and launching capabilities.
At least one team member must be experienced with Linux and another must be
willing to learn.
How
are we doing it?
From our
sponsor we received an Inhand Electronics FingerTip3 board. We then purchased
a Pretec Compact Flash 802.11b to provide the WIFI connection. We are using
HOSTAP to turn the FingerTip3 board into an Access Point. HostAP also allows
us to use the 802.11i standard with the 802.11b hardware. We are going to use
WPA encryption in corporate mode to secure the connections. A radius server
running on the FingerTip3 board will allow us to change the key periodically.
One of the key aspects of the project is that we want to use only commercial
off the shelf hardware to build this.
©2005 SpaceWifi
