Review: a few hours with StarTech's Wi-Fi Detective

StarTech sent in its combo Wi-Fi detector and 802.11g stick, which you can pick up for about $50 online. A Wi-Fi detector when not plugged in and a USB wireless adapter when it is, the WiFi detective worked in both roles without any trouble.

Pros
• If you want quick WiFi network detection and have an old laptop with no WiFi, this is your dream gadget. You can find the best WiFi-bathed corner of the coffee shop without annoyance.
• Don't want to have that big obvious WiFi-less laptop open and running Netstumbler when you're doing whatever it you're doing? Here you go, wardrivers. Voila. Enjoy. It'll even tell you exactly what sort of encryption you're up against.
• Battery charges over USB.

Cons
• No Mac drivers.

Amusements
• Its software doesn't hide what it's doing. So if you enter an incorrect password or select the wrong sort of network, you can watch it report its failures, thrashing away like crazy trying to connect instead of having all that jazz hidden by a little "connecting" animation. I suppose the people that want this sort of thing know who they are.

Wi-Fi Detective: Wi-Fi Finder with LCD [StarTech]

Discussion

Take a look at this

#1 posted by Eicos , October 20, 2008 9:05 AM

"Mroing"? Is this dongle in the process of explaining, in text, how babby is formed?

#2 posted by Rob Beschizza

, October 20, 2008 10:42 AM

It is explaining how robby wifi SSID is formed.

#3 posted by A New Challenger

, October 20, 2008 12:33 PM

I use my DS to look for open routers occasionally.

#4 posted by Dillenger69

, October 20, 2008 1:04 PM

I am lots, how is WhyFye formed?

#5 posted by chef

, October 20, 2008 11:14 PM

This product has been in Asia for a while - it seems that this design was OEM'd out to several different companies for rebranding:

Planex GW-US54GD(the one I got a while back)
http://www.planex.co.jp/product/bwave/gw-us54gd.shtml

LevelOne
http://www.shop4thai.com/en/product/18485/

This is the best device I've seen for wardriving (saves my DS battery power for Disgaea), and the unit I got (the Planex one) is about $40 or less in Taipei. The display is a backlit dot matrix screen, so network names and such show up cleanly - pretty spiff.

#6 posted by Anonymous , October 20, 2008 11:24 PM

This piece of hacking on a related product shows some interesting potential:

http://wifi.openschemes.com/

--Phil.