The Power of Community Driven Development with Adrian Granados

Adrian Granados, a developer of WiFi Explorer presented at #WLPC US Phoenix in 2016 about how the community helps to shape and influence the development of tools.

You can watch the full presentation HERE.

One of the main challenges that I’ve been dealing with is I have no enterprise experience. In the beginning, people were talking about controllers and CISCO stuff and I don’t know all of these things.

Twitter has been a great help. It’s a tool that I used to engage with the community.

  • Identify the needs of the Wi-Fi community.
  • Observe and learn about the trends.
  • Get inspiration and ideas.
  • Get valuable feedback answers.
  • Help spread the word.

One of the very nice things is this Wi-Fi question that leaps every day. It’s a great resource. They have a great discussion and you have one example where he was asking about the spectrum analyzers.


Wi-Fi Explorer

This is the Wi-Fi explorer version 1.0 in early 2012, I was not on Twitter.

This is the latest version 2.1.

This app is a utility to scan, monitor and troubleshoot wireless networks. It has a graphical visualization of the environment and has a lot of details. When you open it, it’s a very simple interface, but it lets you get deeper into the details of the networks.

This is the result of twitter. All these names you see are people that one way or another have helped me build the tool, either testing net or suggesting features.


Wi-Fi Signal

Auto Draft

Wi-Fi signal is a system menu bar to get easy access to Wi-Fi connection details. You can get a size now, its SNR and other things. It has various configurations options and ideas that is very simple and if you want to know the MCS index, you can have it there.


Airtool

Airtool is a special tool and it’s very simple. I saw a couple of presentations of people doing capture on the common line and they type in all these commands. I said, “there must be a better way to do it”. I wrote this app and the very first version was very simple.

I want to give back to the community and I made this tool for FREE. You can access it to my website.

Most of the things that I have been doing is because you approach me and say, “Would it be nice if we can do these things like that?”


What’s Next?

Tools are continuing to evolve, thanks to the input of Twitter, blogs, podcast and the conference. I’m working on a new product, which is the Wi-Fi Explorer Pro. It has an expectorant analyzer integration. Right now, I work with Wi-Fi and the RF Explorer, possibly the HackRF later.


Wi-Fi Explorer Pro

It has passive scanning which allows you to see hidden networks, which is something you cannot do right now in the current version because of the limitations of the APIs.

I’m planning other features since I can do passive scanning now, I can get the clients that are associated with our IP. I’m trying to do better filtering and more views to help you troubleshoot networks.

At some point, I realize this is not a hobby anymore. I have a full-time job in a university and this is taking a lot of my time and I’d really enjoy it. I wish I could do this 24/7.


Adrian Granados is a Research Associate in Cybersecurity and Maker of Wi-Fi Explorer.  If you have more questions or feedback, connect with Adrian via twitter.