I will soon be involved in a science fair. I hope to display a home made cantenna (a wifi antenna made from a can - mine is for 802.11b). I have that part down and working, but I'm hoping to do soemthing cool with the p2p network that would be created with the two cantennas facing each other. Any ideas on how I can use Fedora/linux to do something interestign that high schoolers would apperciate? Last time i attempted i did video conferencing, but with Windows. For wat ever reasons the quality was poor, i'm hopinmg for suggestions on something different that i could show case.

Thanks in advance.

Sounds cool! Let me try my creativity... :-)

Idea 1)

Video conferencing is actually not a bad idea. But warns you, I have done some webcam based project with Linux and that just drive me crazy because of the driver issue. So, maybe if you can stream the audio between two linux boxes via Can-tenna, it is kindda cool ... to me and fun enough to do :-)


Idea 2)

Can your cantenna detect signal strength and direction?

If so, create a "base" which keeps boardcasting signal from the cantenna. Mount a linux PC and another cantenna (or two *) on 4 wheels (call it "Can-Mobile"). Ask student to place the C-Mobile anywhere in the exh hall away from the base. Based on the signal the C-mobile will seek out the base.

* two cantenna may be more accurate in detecting where the signal is from

You may need some vision thing to implement optical flow to avoid obstacle, perhaps. It also involves some robotics stuff: the Linux PC has to be able to control the motors (wheels).


.....



After writing these, I have to admit I am a really boring geek... :-(