WD Wireless Tools
A suite of Ekahau workflow tools.
Eight focused utilities for organizing projects, managing Ekahau Cloud, editing walls,
converting scale, building installer-ready reports, trimming floor plans, and labeling access points.
Read the User Guide · Download the Full Suite · Report an Issue
Table of Contents
What WD Wireless Tools Does
WD Wireless Tools removes the repetitive work around an Ekahau project. It gives wireless engineers a fast local workspace for cloud and file organization, wall remapping, scale conversion, and field-ready reporting—without turning those jobs into another subscription or another place to upload client data.
The suite runs from a tiny local Flask server and opens in your normal browser. Every tool runs on your own machine.
The important distinction: the interface is browser-based, but nothing leaves your machine. Files are read and written locally; Cloud Manager contacts Ekahau Cloud only when you direct it to operate on your own tenant.
Eight Tools, One Workflow
Cloud Manager
Compare Ekahau Cloud projects with local .esx files, find duplicates, and manage project movement from a single table view.
- Side-by-side cloud and local inventory with character-level name differences
- Duplicate clustering with newest/largest indicators and focused cleanup
- Bulk upload, download, rename, move, and delete operations with previews
- Direct access to local files in Explorer or Finder
- Encrypted local Cloud-session cache backed by the operating-system credential vault
Cloud Manager's EkahauAPI client implements the reverse-engineered upload/download flows required to reproduce the web application's presigned upload and client-side .esx assembly behavior.
Quick Walls
Open an .esx, visually remap every wall type, apply reusable templates, and save the updated project.
- Local, client-side
.esx parsing with JSZip
- Color-coded wall types and attenuation values
- Ekahau factory presets plus custom JSON templates
- Default-template auto-apply and
[1]–[9] keyboard shortcuts
Squirrel
Turn loose project files into a predictable folder structure after reviewing the proposed result.
- Recursive
.esx discovery and project classification
- Configurable naming and folder rules
- Image, floor-plan, and report organization
- Duplicate detection and supported-operation undo
Scale
Convert architectural measurements between feet-and-inches, decimal feet, inches, meters, and millimeters.
- Bidirectional conversion with synchronized results
- Architectural fractions such as
4' 6-1/2", 4' 6 1/2", and 1/2"
- One-click copying for every output
- Runs entirely on your machine — no upload, no round trip
Report
Transform an .esx project into print-ready, installer-facing documents. Nine report formats are available today:
- AP Installation
- Predictive Design / AP Placement
- Site Summary Sheet
- Interference / Rogue Devices
- Bill of Materials
- Antenna Aim Sheet
- Coverage Cell Boundary
- Change / Audit Report — two
.esx files compared
- RF Design Review — a pre-flight check of the design: co-channel neighbours, the 2.4 GHz plan, power balance, naming and mounting gaps, with a channel map per floor
Every report's review step also has AP schedule (CSV): one row per access point with each band's channel, width and transmit power, mount, height, aim, grid reference and notes, ready for Excel or a controller provisioning sheet.
Every report supports its own options and print-optimized renderer through the shared report registry.
PlanTrim
Crop the empty canvas off a CAD-imported floor plan and rebase every object's coordinates to match.
- Detects the bounding box of all placed objects (APs, walls, areas, notes)
- Trims the floor-plan image to the used region
- Rebases coordinates so objects stay in the right place on the smaller canvas
- Crops PNG, JPEG, BMP, GIF, TIFF, WebP and SVG plans, each written back as the format it already was
- Downloads a cleaned
.esx ready for design work
AP Labeler
See your access points on the floor plan, pick a spatial ordering, set a naming pattern, and download a labeled .esx.
- Visual floor-plan viewer with zoom and pan
- Spatial orderings: proximity (nearest AP, the default), snake (rows, alternating), row by row (L→R / R→L), column by column (T→B / B→T), clockwise, counter-clockwise, by colour groups in an order you choose, and manual click order
- Structured naming with CLLI, building, floor (auto from ESX), suite, and AP tag fields
- Freeform naming with custom text and number as prefix or suffix
- MAC address naming with hex incrementing and configurable format
- Live preview of generated names overlaid on the floor plan
Capacity
Read the device mix out of a project you have already set up in Ekahau, and apply those ratios to the next building.
- Captures device profiles, usage profiles and their counts straight from an
.esx
- Stores ratios per person, not raw counts, so a template taken from a 500-person building applies to a 200-person one
- Applies by typing how many people work there, as one number for every floor or a separate number per floor (0 leaves a floor alone)
- Previews per floor before anything is written, including where the requirement area would go and how big it is
- Draws each floor's requirement area on the plan, as a rectangle or any shape, instead of taking the one worked out from the walls; the same tool as Prep's Areas stage
- Writes the requirement areas into a new copy of the project and downloads it; your file is never written to
- Carries the device and usage profiles themselves, so a template applies to a project that has never seen them
- For a floor that already has devices, asks per floor whether to keep them, replace the device count and keep the outline, or replace the count and redraw the outline; replacing sets the count and never adds to it, so running it twice does not double anything
Prep
Get a freshly imported project ready to draw in, in one pass over the file instead of three.
- One workbench: the stages down the left, one plan canvas in the middle that every stage draws on, the current stage's settings on the right, and a footer that always says what Prepare will write
- The Trim stage is PlanTrim's box editor on the plan: drag a box, adjust it by its handles, Suggest, Draw my own, Apply to all floors, Back to automatic. Boxes are shared with PlanTrim, so a box drawn in either tool is used by both
- The Areas stage draws each floor's requirement area on the plan as it will sit on the cropped sheet, lets you draw one yourself as a rectangle or any shape (the same tool as Capacity), and captures a new capacity template from a finished project without leaving Prep
- Crops the empty canvas off each CAD sheet, puts a requirement area on every floor and loads your wall types, from one load and one save
- Takes a headcount per floor for the requirement areas, the same way Capacity does
- Keeps or replaces the devices on floors that already have them, starting from the same saved default as Capacity, with a choice per floor
- Runs the steps in the order they need: trim, then areas, then wall types
- A requirement area counts as something that must stay on the plan, so an area put in before the trim holds the crop open and the trim then reports there was nothing to crop — which looks exactly like success. The order is enforced in code, not left to whoever calls it
- Previews every stage before anything is written, floor by floor, on the plan itself
- Re-runnable: wall types that already match the template are left alone, a trimmed floor is skipped, and a floor that already has a requirement area is left alone
- Except the one case worth re-running for — an area that still covers the whole plan had nothing to measure when it was made, and tightens to the walls once you have drawn them. A polygon you moved, redrew or cut around an atrium is never touched
- Open from disk reads the project where it sits — nothing is uploaded, and on a project of a couple of hundred megabytes that is the difference between a preview that keeps up and one that does not
- Opened that way, the prepared copy is written beside the original as
<name> (prepared).esx and Prep offers to show you the folder, because the next thing you do is open it in Ekahau
- Preparing again when that file already exists asks before replacing it — by then it may be the file you opened in Ekahau and have been drawing in, and nothing in the archive tells the two apart
- Dropped instead, the result comes back as a download. Either way the original is never written to
Quick Start
Which tools you get
All eight tools are part of the desktop suite. Quick Walls, Scale and Report used to run as a browser demo on the project page; they are desktop-only now too, so every tool behaves the same way and every setting is saved in one place rather than depending on which browser you opened. The project page has a quick start.
Install the complete desktop suite
Install Python 3.10 or newer first. On Windows, enable Add Python to PATH during installation.
Then run one command. It installs the suite, or updates it if it is already there.
Windows (PowerShell):
irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/WeirDave/WD-Wireless-Tools/main/install.ps1 | iex
macOS / Linux:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/WeirDave/WD-Wireless-Tools/main/install.sh | bash
On a fresh install it asks which method you want:
| Method | What it means |
|---|
| Git | The folder is a tracked checkout. Updates take seconds because only what changed is downloaded. If git isn't installed, the installer offers to install it first with winget — usually under a minute. |
| ZIP | No dependencies. Each update re-downloads the whole app and verifies its SHA-256. |
Pick either — you can switch later from Menu → About without reinstalling. Skip the prompt with -Method git or -Method zip (--method on macOS/Linux). Either way the installer adds missing Python packages and offers to launch the suite.
- Open the latest release and download the versioned
WD-Wireless-Tools-vX.X.X.zip asset—not GitHub's automatic “Source code” archive.
- Extract the ZIP to a permanent folder.
- Double-click
Start WD Wireless Tools.bat on Windows or Start WD Wireless Tools.command on macOS.
The launcher installs missing dependencies, starts the local service, and opens http://localhost:8675. Keep its terminal window open while using the suite.
For detailed, task-by-task instructions, see the WD Wireless Tools User Guide.
Updating
Open Menu → About and click Update now. The suite detects how it was installed and uses the right mechanism—a git pull for a cloned install, a verified ZIP download otherwise—then offers to restart into the new version. Progress is printed in the launcher terminal as it happens.
Wall templates, settings, and your saved Cloud session live in ~/.wd_wireless_tools/, outside the application folder, so an update never touches them.
Re-running the install command above does the same thing from a terminal, which is useful on a machine where the suite will not start.
Manual launch
pip install -r requirements.txt
python server.py
The startup banner identifies the installed suite version:
WIRELESS TOOLS v2.238.0
A suite of Ekahau workflow tools.
Open http://localhost:8675/ in your browser to get started.
Press CTRL+C in this window to stop the server.
Privacy and Local-First Design
- Quick Walls, Report, PlanTrim, and AP Labeler parse
.esx archives locally in your browser with JSZip.
- Scale performs every calculation in the browser.
- Squirrel accesses only the local folder you select.
- Cloud Manager connects only to the Ekahau Cloud account and local folder you select.
- Saved Cloud-session data is encrypted; its key lives separately in Windows Credential Manager or macOS Keychain.
- There is no telemetry.
No hosted WD Wireless Tools service receives your survey files. As with any production workflow, keep backups and review previews before bulk file or Cloud operations.
First Run
Cloud Manager
Sign into Ekahau Cloud in a normal Chrome, Edge, or Firefox window, then choose the parent folder containing your local Ekahau projects. Safari, Private, and Incognito sessions are not supported for session discovery. Your selections are remembered locally.
Quick Walls, Scale, and Report
No setup is required. Drop an .esx into Quick Walls or Report, or type a measurement in Scale.
Squirrel
Choose a folder containing loose project files. Squirrel shows the proposed organization before moving anything.
Local data locations
- Custom desktop wall templates:
templates/
- Cloud Manager settings:
~/.wd_wireless_tools/
- Hosted Quick Walls templates: the browser's local storage
Troubleshooting
Python is not recognized
Install Python 3.10 or newer and enable Add Python to PATH on Windows. Reopen the terminal afterward.
macOS blocks Start WD Wireless Tools.command
Right-click Start WD Wireless Tools.command, choose Open, then confirm Open. This is normally required only once.
Cloud Manager cannot find a session
Confirm that you are signed into https://www.ekahau.cloud in a normal Chrome, Edge, or Firefox window. Close and reopen the browser if its cookie database is locked.
Port 8675 is already in use
Close the other running instance, or choose another port:
set PORT=8676 && "Start WD Wireless Tools.bat"
PORT=8676 bash "Start WD Wireless Tools.command"
Browser does not open automatically
Open http://localhost:8675 manually while the launcher terminal remains open.
Project Structure
WD-Wireless-Tools/
├── server.py # Local Flask/Waitress service and API routes
├── Start WD Wireless Tools.bat # Windows launcher
├── Start WD Wireless Tools.command # macOS launcher
├── requirements.txt # Python dependencies
├── BACKLOG.md # Unfinished product work only
├── tools/
│ ├── cloud_manager.py # Cloud client and reverse-engineered upload/download flows
│ ├── template_store.py # Wall-template persistence
│ ├── folder_organizer.py # Squirrel scanning and organization
│ ├── rename_manager.py # Bulk rename operations
│ └── settings.py # Suite-wide settings and migration
├── web/ # Application source and the public project page
│ ├── assets/
│ │ ├── versions.json # Suite and component versions
│ │ ├── lib/ # Vendored browser libraries
│ │ └── js/
│ │ ├── wd-shared.js # Shared UI utilities
│ │ ├── walls-swap.js # Wall-remapping workflow
│ │ └── ... # Tool-specific application code
│ └── pages/ # GitHub Pages landing/stub templates
├── templates/ # Bundled wall-type templates
├── docs/
│ └── USER_MANUAL.md # Complete user documentation
├── scripts/
│ ├── build_release.py # Allowlisted release ZIP builder
│ └── make_test_projects.py # Fictional ESX fixture generator
├── tests/ # Python, server, asset, and JavaScript safety tests
└── .github/workflows/ # Tests, releases, and Pages deployment
The local .claude/ directory is development-tool configuration, not application code. It is intentionally excluded because it may contain machine-specific paths and permissions.
Help and Support
- Start with the User Guide — one document, a chapter per tool.
- Search existing GitHub issues.
- For a reproducible bug or focused feature request, open an issue with the tool version, operating system, expected result, and actual result.
- Never attach client
.esx files, credentials, session data, or other confidential material to a public issue.
Contributions are welcome when they keep the tools focused, understandable, and safe for real wireless work.
License
Released under the MIT License. © R David Paine III.
Built for wireless engineers, by a wireless engineer.
Made with signal strength and caffeine by WeirDave.
