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Comment by ekwogefee | Hacker News Reader

Good. I tried it, and it works.

I've been in this space now for some years, running a similar product (http://www.feem.io).

Just one observation.

The windows version of your code uses the HostedNetwork API to create an ad-hoc wireless network. Microsoft deprecated the Hosted Network API in Windows 10, in favor of the new Wi-Fi Direct APIs. This means that Wi-Fi vendors don't need to support the old HostedNetwork API, and Dell, Intel and Realtek have all already ripped out support. Your code won't work on many modern Wi-Fi cards for Windows. To fix this, you'll need to support the new Windows Wi-Fi Direct APIs in future versions of your open source project.

Hope this helps.

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Thank you so much for trying it! You're my first tester outside of friends and family, haha.

I wanted to use Wi-Fi Direct but Mac doesn't support it so that wasn't an option unfortunately. I have a line about the deprecation in the Restrictions section of the readme, with instructions on how to see if your card supports hosted networks.

Do you know of any way to use Wi-Fi Direct on Mac? I've been trying to learn more about how Airdrop works as I think they use a stripped-down version of it but I haven't gotten very far yet. Thanks for the feedback.

Edit: Feem looks awesome! Will definitely give it a try when I'm around two laptops again. So it requires a normal WiFi network if neither device supports WiFi Direct then? And does it require a WiFi network for the devices to discover each other, prior to setting up the WiFi Direct connection?

AirDrop uses a combination of Bluetooth (for discovery) and Wi-Fi for file transfers. AirDrop's software and hardware is so coupled together that you couldn't use AirDrop on older Macs and iPads.

Feem doesn't use Bluetooth. It only needs a LAN (wireless or cable). Discovery is initiated as soon as both devices are in the same Wi-Fi (LAN) network. Doesn't matter how you obtain your LAN (router, mobile hotspot, Wi-Fi Direct for devices that support it, ...). This approach helped us support as many devices as possible.

For questions regarding Feem, you can find my email in my profile.

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