How in the Tech

Creating a heatmap for wireless signal strength

By Adam Myers ⋅ August 31, 2009 ⋅ Tags: Networking

Wireless networks or WiFi is all around us – it’s become a game changer for most of us. Nearly every home, office, and coffee shop has some form of wireless Internet available. Initially, WiFi was overly complicated to setup, deploy, and secure but nowadays that is of lesser concern. Vendors have automated the installation process as much possible using software based install and configuration wizards. Really the only issue that users need to be concerned about is the physical placement of the wireless router. Some locations are better than others; high is better than low for example.

Router placement is key to a quality experience. A weak WiFi signal because of poor placement results in a slow and generally unstable connection. Most users treat this placement process as a trial and error until they’ve dialed in the optimum location within their surroundings.  It shouldn’t be of a surprise to anyone that there is software that can facilitate arriving to positive outcome faster and more efficiently than the less scientific approach of trial and error.

HeatMapper is a free application for Windows that collects and visualizes wireless signal strength within your environment. With the software installed on your laptop you traverse your location and plot signal strength points with the click of a button. When you are done with your surveying, HeatMapper produces a heat map of your area based on signal strength. You can quickly address problem points from the visual results and work to address them with some adjustment of the router location.

There is one slight caveat to HeatMapper, to get truly meaningful results you will have to import a floor map of your place. It doesn’t need to be perfect, in fact it could probably be thrown together in something as simple as Paint. If you are in an office environment you probably already have an emergency exit strategy that includes a map of the office – this would be a perfect candidate for HeatMapper.

HeatMapper may be something you only use once in your lifetime but that doesn’t mean it’s any less useful.