FTP Data Synchronization for Fun-I: setting up a WiFi access point

In the data collection and data management scenario mentioned in one of my previous post Myanmar-Sar in R III: Light, SQLite, after data collection, first the enumerators would have to transmit their data to their respective supervisors. Next the supervisors would transmit their data files to the Township data manager who would subsequently transmit the data to the Central database.

In the CSEntry environment which I have been playing with, there are a number of options for transmitting data. For collecting enumerators' data on the supervisor's tablet or Android phone, you could use Bluetooth or some other third party software such as Zapya, or directly with a USB cable. This is also true for data communication between a supervisor and the Township data manager. Presently for the data communication between the Townships and the Central database you could use internet connection of some sort or manually carry the data back and forth.

A neat way for data communication in the CSEntry environment is to use data synchronization scripts to transmit files between the “client” and the “server”. This method is described in a number of documents:

CSPro User's Guide, pp. 143-153,Version 6.3.2 available here.

CSPro Synchronization, available here.

Synchronization File (.PNC), available here.

Among the methods you can use with Synchronization File,

1. Using a Dropbox account would be useful primarily for sending data from Township Data Manager to the Central database; additionally data communication problems between the supervisor and enumerator or between Township Manager and supervisors in out of the way places such as frontier areas would be effectively eliminated so long as they could get internet access.
2. Using a FTP server hosted by a desktop or laptop at the Township Office for the purpose of collecting data from supervisors. Here supervisors would have to visit the office and work within the WiFi range. You do not need to have internet access and all you need to do is to set up a WiFi access point on the desktop or laptop. Once the access point has been created and activated you could connect your Android phone to the access point and use the services of the FTP server.
3. Using Bluetooth synchronization for data communication between the enumerator and supervisor.

In trying them out, I have had the greatest difficulty in understanding and working with a FTP server and I have to go through a good deal of false leads before getting it done. If you'll look through the Synchronization guides listed earlier, you won't find anything on how to get started with setting up and using a FTP server. That's surely the penalty you've to live with when you don't have good internet access or smart phones and land lines could have cost you 2M Kyats or more not too long ago! It would have been a piece of cake for people out there, I guess. For us dummies, we are back to square one. Such basics were sickbases for us. Anyway I managed to do it, finally.

To set up an access point on your Windows desktop or laptop, begin with the three steps shown below. There I had been too lazy and combined into a single screen shot for what should have been three separate ones.

Now a bit of clarification. To be able to do (3) you'll have to right click on “cmd.exe” at the top to open the popup menu and then you may have to supply an administrator password. After that the command line will be opened.

At the command prompt you'll have to enter this command in full: for XXX you enter your access point name, and for YYY you enter your key (password) for it.

netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode=allow “ssid=XXX” “key=YYY” keyUsage=persistent

Let's say you use the following:

netsh wlan set hostednetwork mode=allow “ssid=ninjaFTP” “key=123NINJAftp” keyUsage=persistent

After creating the access point you can start it at command prompt with

netsh wlan start hostednetwork

and stop it when you want to:

netsh wlan stop hostednetwork

After activating, we should test to see if the access point works. First let's look at the connections in the network. This is what you see before you've activated the hostednetwork.

After you've run netsh wlan start hostednetwork:

To connect to this access point, you have to turn on WiFi on your Android phone. Now when you see ninjaFTP and tap on it (1), enter password (2) and then tap connect, and voilà you are connected (3):

Now look again at the network connections on your desktop/laptop:

And you see that your access point works fine.