Car Aquired!

Well, I got a barbie car. My neighbors had one that they didn't want anymore, so we got it for free. It doesn't work, and it needs some serious help. It had been sitting outside for a long time, so pretty much all the screws are rusted beyond ever being unscrewed again. It still has a battery and charger though. Here are some pictures of it with the seat removed. Luckily, new motors look pretty easy to install. We will be meeting in the next day or 2 to discuss hardware and everything, so parts should be in the mail soon. Yesterday I started working on a stripped down version of Ubuntu to run on an old desktop we will use. It is command line only, no GUI, and has a good collection of common linux tools. I wanted Ubuntu rather than something like D*mn Small Linux (DSL) because of apt-get. Waaaaay easier to install new stuff. So the main stuff it has on it is SSH, Python, and Remastersys which I use to make a liveCD of the current installation. I managed to get to version 2 yesterday (I'm not messing with partial versions, the first ISO I make is version 1, the second is version 2, etc). It also has gcc on it of course. It turns out that there is a really nifty Python command that spawns an HTTP server that serves the current directory:
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.