Ad-Hoc on a PocketPC

[Saaby]

I would like to, if it is possible, set up 2 PocketPCs on an Ad-Hoc network and then use some sort of software to chat between the two. The goal here is to allow the 2 PocketPcs to communicate wirelessly without having to be near an accesspoint.


OH, one more gotcha--I don't have a wireless card yet, just want to know how/if it can be done when I get one.

[delfuhd]

download Microsoft Portrait for pocket pc, just do a google search.
Then get two wireless cards, or if you have an h5400 or e740, etc. (integrated wireless) thats good too. Well anyway, you need to set it up, with the channels and what not, and assign an ip addy, i dunno it's super easy but I'm tired, there should be tutorials online I guess..

[Saaby]

OK I got portrait--that's the easy part...now how would one set up the AdHoc?

[lurch]

When you get the 2 wireless cards, there should be a setup option for "Infrastructure" or "Ad-hoc".. make sure the ad-hoc option is chosen. And make sure the two PPCs have different IP addresses (you can set this by going to Settings->Connections I think it is... and then choose your wireless card from the list, and you should be able to assign the IP addresses there). Then, since I haven't actually done anything past that, I would imagine that they could "see" eachother, and you should be able to reference the other one via it's IP address. I know my wireless card config software includes a ping utility, so I could ping an IP to see if I can see it. You can try that, if applicable, to make sure it's working.

Then in Portrait type the other PPC's IP as the computer you're calling and it should work! :way to go:

UNLESS when you said "chatting" you meant typing, i.e. instant messaging... then portait isn't what you want (unless I missed one of it's features). But I can't imagine anybody wanting to TYPE over TALKING! :)

Hope it works out...
:alfdance: (I've gotta use this alf-dancing thing every now and then!!)

[Saaby]

OK well I ordered myself a CF WiFi card tonight so when it gets here I'll attempt this setup with Ad-Hoc to my Laptop<>PocketPC. My other friend with a PocketPC hasn't purchased a wireless card yet but when he does I'll let you know how it all works out.


I know with the desktop version of Portrait you can "Chat." Don't know about the PPC Versoin. Anyway when I came up with this crasy idea I had no idea Portrait existed. Like I said, I'll keep you updated.

[delfuhd]

with the pocket pc version of microsoft portrait you can type (i.e. "instant messaging"), talk to each other (voice communictaion) and you can catpure/send video, if you have a camera for yer ppc. it's quite a program, the talking on it works well and I frequently talk with friends over it lol.

[ctmagnus]

I read something on this last night.

If you set your PPC to connect using DHCP but no DHCP server is present, the PPC resorts to using something called APIPA (Automatic Private IP Addressing). Essentially, the PPC assigns itself an IP in the 169.254.x.x range (subnet 255.255.0.0) if it can't get an IP anywhere else. This saves you the step of assigning a static IP for something you won't be doing very often.

Get a program like PocketDHCP (http://www.geocities.com/lincomatic/software.html) or vxIPConfig (http://www.cam.com/vxipconfig.html) and renew your IP a couple of times to expose your APIP. As long as the two PPCs have different APIPs, you should be able to ad-hoc between them.

[Janak Parekh]

If you set your PPC to connect using DHCP but no DHCP server is present, the PPC resorts to using something called APIPA (Automatic Private IP Addressing). Essentially, the PPC assigns itself an IP in the 169.254.x.x range (subnet 255.255.0.0) if it can't get an IP anywhere else. This saves you the step of assigning a static IP for something you won't be doing very often.
Yeah, every Windows OS since Win95 does this. Having said that, you can also assign an IP so that you can more easily find the other device in a predictable manner; otherwise, every time you soft reset or maybe even power-off/power-on, this IP address could change.

--janak

[ctmagnus]

every time you soft reset or maybe even power-off/power-on, this IP address could change.

--janak

Don't know if this matters, but at HKLM\Comm\WLLUC461\Parm\TcpIp, I have string/value combinations of AutoIP/169.254.69.55, AutoMask/255.255.0.0 and AutoSubnet/169.254.0.0. This is persistent across release/renews and soft-resets. Other values in this key change according to the profile I select but these stay.

[Janak Parekh]

Don't know if this matters, but at HKLM\Comm\WLLUC461\Parm\TcpIp, I have string/value combinations of AutoIP/169.254.69.55, AutoMask/255.255.0.0 and AutoSubnet/169.254.0.0. This is persistent across release/renews and soft-resets. Other values in this key change according to the profile I select but these stay.
Hrm! Thanks for the find. So it's possible that it only does a lazy change (i.e., if upon startup it sees someone else already with that IP address). Now I'll have to go check and see how desktop Windows OSes do it... I thought it was always fairly randomized on startup.

--janak