Another car update

We have met once since the last post and have made several decisions. First of all, after getting the car, we pressure washed it and took it apart. The good news is that it now actually looks pink, not greenish gray, and the way it was laid out is friendly. We are going to order new motors for it, since the ones in it now are rusted. Replacement motors should run about $3 each. I am kind of in charge of electronics. Here is my plan. We will hook each motor up to a speed controller that will go in an arduino. The arduino will be powered from an onboard aspire one. The laptop will be feeding it C code, one program that takes in arguments that decide what to do. This will then be controlled graphically via PHP. To control it remotely, we will connect to the laptop with Hamachi. In the future, we will host a little http server on it and control it via a webpage. For now, we will use the laptop's wifi to connect to an access point. Ideally, we would have a cell phone piping internet to it so it would always have internet. Unless we can use my Dads phone, we will have to write an autoconnect shell script. I am thinking I am going to run ubuntu on it, but I am not sure yet. If so, then I have a couple shell scripts i can modify to aggressivly connect to networks. This is why 2 interfaces would be helpful. 1 onboard, 1 usb. It would always have 1 connected. The rules would be to always connect to an open network when the signal was above a certain level, and to try to crack wep networks by letting the operator know that they are in range and it is trying to crack. then it could store these keys on a keyring for later use. For the first beta test, we will be using a closed local network. You will also be able to control it via an ad hoc or p2p network. Then of course, you have to be within a certain range. There is a lot more to do, and we are going to order parts tomorrow. I can't wait to start playing with an arduino, I have heard so much about them. More later.
python -m SimpleHTTPServer

Which is way smaller than using Apache or something when all we need to serve is a single page of PHP. We will remote control it with SSH. I am less concerned with hard drive space than I am with RAM. The name of the game is minimal power usage, because we would like a long battery life. Yes, I know there are all kinds of great little linux boxes, or I could use a pico ITX, or a linutop (runs off 9v, very tempting), or even an EEE pc or something. The problem with those options is money. We don't have a lot to spend on this at all, and most of the money is going to be used buying the controller and battery. Unless we can mooch those off of someone, the budget is small. If we do end up having to buy a machine, we will probably end up getting a pico ITX, or an EEE pc because of simplicity.

As for scripting, I found something called airoscript yesterday. It is designed to be used with aircrack-ng and that suite of tools. It basically scans for networks and recommends attacks based on the encryption type. That combined with a simple network setup script should be really nifty. Airoscript even has a keychain thing so you can save old keys and use them again later rather than recracking. The problem with jumping on encrypted networks is going to be time. I really don't want to have to sit in front of a house for like 30 minutes waiting for IVs to come in, so that part will be experimental at first. Well, the whole thing will be experimental at first. Anyway, we plan on using 2 wifi cards, so we can be connect 100% of the time. I'm gonna go look for a cheap EEE pc now. More as it comes.

Edit:
Pictures coming soon. Also, to fund this, we are starting a little computer repair business. This will be interesting. Got a lot going on right now, will post more details when I have time.