watch network connections with dbus and ruby 2

Posted by Don Tue, 12 Aug 2008 18:12:00 GMT

four portland area tech entrepreneurs launched shizzow.com. automatic checkin is an important way to get services like these to be used. the dbus message system on linux machines is a great way to passively detect connections to a wireless network. using the package 'ruby-dbus-0.2.1', this is all it takes to be notified of any change in network status. note this prints any change including signal strength. i believe the [3] value is association to a new network. 
require 'dbus'
bus = DBus::SystemBus.instance

# register for signals
#
mr = DBus::MatchRule.new
mr.type = "signal"
mr.interface = "org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"
mr.path = "/org/freedesktop/NetworkManager"
bus.add_match(mr) do |msg, first_param|
  puts msg.params.inspect
end

# Main loop
main = DBus::Main.new
main << bus
main.run
The output looks like: 
["/org/freedesktop/NetworkManager/Devices/wlan0", 100] (using the applet, re-associate now)
["/org/freedesktop/NetworkManager/Devices/wlan0", 89]
["/org/freedesktop/NetworkManager/Devices/wlan0", 4]
["/org/freedesktop/NetworkManager/Devices/wlan0", 99]
["/org/freedesktop/NetworkManager/Devices/wlan0", 100]
["/org/freedesktop/NetworkManager/Devices/wlan0", 5]
["/org/freedesktop/NetworkManager/Devices/wlan0", 6]
["/org/freedesktop/NetworkManager/Devices/wlan0", 7]
[3] (use this for network association hook?)
["/org/freedesktop/NetworkManager/Devices/wlan0", "www.personaltelco.net"]
["/org/freedesktop/NetworkManager/Devices/wlan0", "/org/freedesktop/NetworkManager/Devices/wlan0/Networks/www_2e_personaltelco_2e_net", 77]
Using the [3] or the essid announcement as a trigger, an http post could be launched to report to shizzow or plazes of one's current location. This would be packaged into a .deb file for ubuntu and launched as a daemon at startup.
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  1. Brandon Philips about 11 hours later:
    This is cool how do you plan on doing the mapping from essid to location? It would be handy if shizzow had a way of searching by essid.
  2. Don Park 5 days later:
    Yeah thats a problem. I expect shizzow will add essid support of some sort. Or possibly a mapping of essid to street address is possible from some other service. Basically plazes will be supported first.
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