www.zeroshell.org

[gcams]

I use zeroshell exclusively with multiple 3G dongles and find it excellent. One thing I've noticed is that all the 3G dongle model's I've used, provide a serial "management" interface which can be used to interrogate the modem for signal strength, SNR, etc, whilst it's online.

This is done via a separate management serial device. For example, my new Hauwei E367 uses /udev/ttyUSB0 for the PPP connection, and /udev/ttyUSB4 as the management interface. Even while the device is online (via ttyUSB0), I can open minicom on ttyUSB4, and issue an "at+csq" command to get the current signal strength.

It would be superb if zeroshell perhaps provided a facility to display the signal strength via the web interface, or even better, graph it with MRTG? This would be really useful, as I use the zeroshell platform inside a mobile weather lab, and having graphical/web access to the signal strength would be excellent.

The only parameter zeroshell would really need to be told, is the path to the management interface(s) for the dongles to be monitored (e.g. /udev/ttyUSB4).

In fact, it could even be possible to incorporate auto gateway switching based on the signal strength of the dongles (e.g.. if signal strength of dongle 1 drops below a value of "5", switch to the fail-over spare dongle 2, providing it's signal strength is > "5").

Anyway, the above is just an idea. I'm happy to provide more information on any of the details above if required. I would try and write something myself, but my scripting skills are fairly rudimentary and I haven't managed to find a way to communicate reliably with the serial management interface of the dongle, via a script.

If anybody is interested in how I use Zeroshell, see here:

http://www.weatherevents.net/

I believe it's probably one of the more unique uses for the platform.

As an aside, I've written a guide on how to get the E367 HSPA+ dongle working with zeroshell at the following location. Perhaps this could be incorporated into future versions to support this device natively?

http://www.zeroshell.net/eng/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2986

Thanks again to Fulvio for all the work he has done on this amazing platform!

Cheers,
Graham

[benryanau]

Great idea... although I'd like to see updates to the modeswitch package published as ZS updates first.

Yep I like it, most modems report all kinds of cool data inc stats on thruput, signal, band, cell switches etc.
Having ZS log, track, graph and possibly act on these data would be swesome!.

Sadly the way the ZS project is managed it's unlikely to happen - Fulvio controls everything and nobody else can help him because it's not an open development project.