That's Great! When is it going to be available. I have a Delorme Eathmate usb GPS unit I'd like to try with it. I've used it with netstumbler by running DeLorme Serial Emulation Driver for Earthmate® GPS Receivers
http://www.delorme.com/support/supporttemplate.aspx?id=319
but I've had problems sharing the virtual serial port between the applications. I saw you listed comocom which I hadn't heard of before. I hope it works better than the other programs I've tried. I'm not a programmer but I'm happy to test it with the equipment I have.

Thanks!
I don't know when it will be available.

I think it should be released as a short-term beta for testing. (I only have 1 GPS to test it with)

GPS should work as long as it outputs standard NMEA 0183 sentences.
Yours should work. (1st gen. Earthmate serial won't work, Not standard NMEA)

com0com is a suite of virtual serial port tools:

com0com - Virtual null modem cables - simple(ish)
com2tcp - Use serial devices over network - dunno
com4hub - Use 1 com port (ie. GPS) on several application at once - a bit more advanced

If I could I'd post the pre-compiled InSSIDer with GPS support, but I don't think I'm allowed :/

PS: What do you mean "but I've had problems sharing the virtual serial port between the applications." between what applications?

The Delorme virtual com port software allows you to share the data. it can create up to 3 com ports. When I've tried using the mapping program and netstumbler at the same time it works for a short time say 20 minutes then locks up. Some times so badly I have to reboot to renable the gps. I purchased a usb to serial port adapter which works most of the time.

I use Delorme street atlas on a Toshiba Core 2 duo laptop, XP Pro, Intel Centrino wirerless. At a previous job I traveled alot and would war drive for fun while on the road. I don't travel as much now but I still have the war driving bug.

Oh.

I can't go war driving much. (Most I can do is use a pda I have with my GPS and WiFiFoFum :)

Sometimes at home I will "pentest" the neighbors wifi. :)

A few(several?) years ago, My dad would sometimes go war driving in town.
At night, our WiFi would ghost (2 signals, same MAC address, but ghost had no SSID, and low signal) 0_o

We'd like to do an official release in 5-8 weeks, (once every quarter).  I'll see what we can do about allowing notaclue to post his version up on this forum :)

We are going to release the Beta version of inSSIDer publicly pretty soon.  We're testing it right now.  We'd like the community to help out with the various differnt GPS devices.

We had to use GPSGate to get our Garmin to work, because Spanner didn't work.

Exporting to NS1 works great!  Opens up in Netstumbler fine, and even uploads the data to a visualization map.

Public beta 1.2 released. Here: http://www.metageek.net/products/inssiderbeta

Any chance this will work with my BlackBerry Storm? Google Maps 3.0.2 can address the GPS chipset, so I know it is possible for 3rd party apps to do this.

I don't think so, There doesn't seem to be any software to bridge the GPS to a pc. Sorry.

Tried my Garmin 60csx with GPSGate and had intermitent results, in 10 to 20 attempts of opening Insidder (v1.1.4.0422) it would only see the Lat/Lon data about once. GPSGate appears ok and verifys data and that the client is attached. Intel Pentium 4 CPU 2 2.80Ghz 2.73 Ghz 2.5GB RAM, XP Pro SP3.

On another subject can you make available different coordinaters for the readout and export. You have hddd.ddd, how about hddd.mm.mmm and also hddd.mm.sss.

Really appreciate all the work you folks do. Thank you

We just received an update, that we're testing before we post it up as a second beta.  The following were updated:

Ability to turn graphing on/off
- Sometimes having the graph is annoying and a waste of value CPU and
screen space. For instance, I war-drive with a small netbook with a 10"
screen. It's not very powerful and I don't have much screen space. In a
small area you can easily pickup a 1000 wireless access points these
days which makes the graphs unreadable anyways.

However obviously graphing is good for aligning antenna or survey a small site with only a few APs.

Network Scan Rate
- Again, if you're flying along in a car, once every 3 seconds might
not be enough. Although it all comes down to how fast the card itself
can sample, and how quick your GPS updates. Having the option is nice.
Setting it less than a second would probably be pointless though.

Driver Mode
- I found it handy to be able to choose the between native or ndis
modes. For instance I used InSSIDer on a Windows Server 2008 x86
machine and found that ndis actually worked (netstumbler also works).
So even though it was detected as vista, I was still about to use the
ndis mode.

GPS
- The GPS functionality implemented is pretty comprehensive. The class
nmeaParser implements all the functionality of most GPS systems, and
I've used more of it in my code. I have replaced GPSTool.cs

The
nmeaParser class itself implement not just the one type of NMEA
sentence as the previous version did, but the full set which allows
extraction of altitude, time, fix types, satellite SNRs, magnetic
variation, course...you name it.

KML Output
- This is really the sweetest bit. The GPS data is logged as a GPX
format, so the raw data can be imported into Google earth as is,
however if you use the new Log Viewer form, you can export to a kml
file which really brings the data to life. The file can be exported as
one or many of the following

Summary
- This just shows the strongest point for each access point as a dot
with the color indicating the security type and the size representing
the signal level.

Individual
APs - Each Access point has its own KML file which contains every data
point measured. You can import this to google earth to really get an
idea about deadspots or other interesting information. The altitude of
the marker can be chosen to represent either the signal strength, the
actual physical elevation of the land, or the speed at which the device
was travelling when it made the measurement. It's really cool.

Comprehensive
- This outputs everything to one big file. It contains all measurements
taken organise by security, channel and access point.

It looks really good, and we're really excited about it!

Just testing V 1.1.4.0422 (beta) now.

Love the signal strength bar. Not sure when it was added.

Using a stock Garmin OEM GPS 18x via a USB/RS232.
With this gps, i made an adaptor that has the DB9 (to the usb) then a 2nd usb cable for power only. So fully powered from the notebook.

The only comment so far. I assume the GPS data is added/updated when something changes. The gps had been off for a while, so needed a little time to get a fix. The AP's that were listed prior to the gps fix still showed 0'ed values (no fix) and did not update until a stop/start of the scanning process. Any new APs found after the fix got to correct gps location.

If you get time and its not too much trouble, something like
- Scanning start
- Find ap and report - gps 0.0000...
- GPS now has non-zero value, update any active APs location to current value.

Bottom line, great program....

When testing, I went into town and parked in the local shopping centre car park. The graph was really good as it showed about 8 APs on channel 1, all about the some signal level. Without the graph I would have had to look at the numbers and compare. So Keep the graphs and just add the ability to turn on/off as you where thinking.

Cheers

I cant get inSSIDer to recognize my GlobalSat BT-338 GPS through BlueSoleil, but vistumbler can on the same virtual COMport(not at the same time though)

Looking at the tech specs for the BT-338

GPS Output Data NMEA 0183 protocol, and supports command:
GGA(1sec),
GSA(1 sec),
GSV(5 sec),
RMC(1sec)
( VTG and GLL are optional)
GPS transfer rate 38400,N,8,1

I will assume you changed InSSIDer from the default 4800 baud to 38400.

Im not sure which commands the sat data is comming from but I would assume it is from GLL which is in the optional list.

Check if GLL is being sent.
GGA Also has fix data in it, so I guess other programs are using that.

Note:
GLL - Geographic Position, Latitude / Longitude and time.
GGA - Global Positioning System Fix Data

Thanks for the reply.
I have set the baud to 38400, but it still does not work.
According to Vistumbler the gps sends GGA and RMC with position-data. Does InSSIDer need GLL?

I had a quick look through the source code, but could not find the gps position code (may have been the non-gps version). Could someone confirm the gps command, when received, is used to get the position fix.

Thanks

I've experianced a couple small bugs:

When setting the com port it apears as: COM3蹘

even though it is the correct port I have to delete the 蹘 so that it can detect the GPS, once I click on inSSIDer keeps crashing, though right before the crash I can see that it is getting the gps position.

I am conecting through bluetooth to my gps unit (bluetooth, outputs in the standard nmea format over a com port).

My specs:

Standard EEE PC 4G
Atheros AR5007AG wifi card
Azio Bluetooth adapter with standard Win XP stack
Running Windows XP SP3
Globalsat Bluetooth GPS Receiver BT359C

The error generates this:
[Description]

[Message]
Index and length must refer to a location within the string.
Parameter name: length

[Version]
1.1.5.0529

[WinVer]
Microsoft Windows NT 5.1.2600 Service Pack 3

[StackTrace]
System.ArgumentOutOfRangeException: Index and length must refer to a location within the string.
Parameter name: length
at System.String.InternalSubStringWithChecks(Int32 startIndex, Int32 length, Boolean fAlwaysCopy)
at Inssider.NmeaParser.parseCoordinates(String rawLongitude, String rawLatitude, String rawNSindicator, String rawEWindicator)
at Inssider.NmeaParser.ParseGPGGA(String sentence)
at Inssider.NmeaParser.Parse(String sentence)
at Inssider.ScannerForm.gpsMethod()
at System.Threading.ThreadHelper.ThreadStart_Context(Object state)
at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run(ExecutionContext executionContext, ContextCallback callback, Object state)
at System.Threading.ThreadHelper.ThreadStart()

Hope that will help you folks fix the bug.