This comes from Bob Sharpe, K0RIS, who sent me the following question:
I am president of ACARES (alcorn county amateur radio emergency services). We have been challenged to deploy a county-wide mesh network interconnecting all fire stations thoughout the county. Myself and another ham have attempted to establish a 'beta link' on 900Mhz utilizing Ubiquity NanoStation Locos. We loaded BBHN firmware (3.0.0) and are not able to establish a link between our QTHs (about a 4 mile patch) which air link sez is a 'good' path. I am a retired Motorola field engineer and my associate in this endeavor is a certified Cisco assoc.
We noticed that the original Ubiquity firmware gives you the option to use either the internal antenna or an external antenna.....the BBHN firmware dosen't offer this option. I have been asking for support in the BBHN chats to no avail. While on the BBHN websites I learned of your existence, and it seems that AREDN supports the Ubiquity line better than perhaps BBHN which seems to support Linksys equipment more. Is my perception correct?
Does your firmware address the antenna option? ACARES has this commission from the local EMA director to develop a wireless mesh networking system that can be deployed at ECOM locations across the entire state, but quite frankly we have hit an impass and could use some support and direction from persons that have actual 'hands-on' experience.
73,
Bob Sharpe / K0RIS
Feedback on the M9 from the field has been somewhat limited since we added it, and the only tester to step forward did not (and to my knowledge still does not) have any external antennas to verify operation.
At the moment I beilive the external port is tied to one of the internal channels, either H or V, as I do not recall the driver reporting an additional antenna port, however I can not guarantee this is the case w/o a bit of field testing and reporting to come back on one of these units.
We are also still looking for real-world feedback as to how well the band works with real world ISM noise and real world terrain so any feedback in that regard would be useful as well as it becomes deployed.
So, Bob, we could use a hand in testing the controls for these antenna ports. If we find the firmware is not controlling them correctly, then we will likely be a ble to tee-up a fix for our next release. Can we count on you to help us with this?
Yes, I think I can speak for ACARES and we are willing to help resolve this problem any way we can.
Of course the first thing that we need to do is to load a copy of AREDN firmware and see what the results are
as we are currently using BBHN firmware. WE feel that we have a real need for these 900Mhz units as
links off our 5.8Ghz backbone network. We'll advise as soon as we have some resultsa.
73,
Bob / K0RIS
Bob, on the nanobridge I have there is an internal antenna and an rp-sma for adding another antenna. In the AREDN software, there are two antenna settings in the lower left for this device - similar to what my rocket has.
The bad news is they show up as RX antenna and TX antenna, with the options of horizontal, diversity, or vertical. I have mine set for diversity. Changing the settings appears to have zero impact on my link quality.
I'd say more work is needed on this to determine what is what. I'm happy to help...
Michael, I forgot to tell you that the nanostations (loco & bridge) have the option for an external
antenna in the original factor firmware. My wife is the software engineer at this QTH but I haven't
been able to get her to quit testing other software long enough to look into the delima.
regards, Bob / K0RIS
Bob,
If you will confirm the results of the antenna control... If it's not working, then I'll post a bug report in Bloodhound so the developers will have a look at the issue. I guess I got a little a head of myself earlier.
Andre, K6AH
[edited to request that testing be done before a Bloodhound bug report is issued. - Andre]
Are you wanting us to test the factory firmware to see what its result is? Just checking...should be a quick thing to do if that's what you need.
I found the test you want perfomed in the ticket. I'll try to get to this later today..
http://bloodhound.aredn.org/products/AREDN/ticket/92
Test Scenario:
Node A is a Rocket M9, two antennas, both connected, power at lowest level. Node B is a Nanobridge M9.
Both units were separted enough that by rotating the Nanobridge the signal would be lost.
Attaching an external antenna to the Nanobridge while the unit did not have a signal did not result in the signal returning. Changing the antenna settings from Diversity to Horizontal or Vertical did not make the signal return.
Conclusion:
The external rp-sma connector is not enabled in the AREDN software. This is on a node running 3.0.2.
Thanks Mike,
I'll release the issue in Bloodhound.
Andre
I'm building a backbone based on M9 900MHz gear. I'm using two rockets and a nanobridge. The rockets have to use external antennas - I'm going to use two directional antennas at one site and two old Nextel sector type antennas at the other. The nanobridge will be used with the internal antenna at a site 2 miles from one of the rockets. The nanobridge can use either the internal or a single external antenna.
So far in the house they are working great. :-) The next step is a field test with 5 miles of distance. Shoot me an email if you'd like any other details at kg9dw at arrl . net.
Bob,
Have you verified that the factory Ubiquiti code is actually switching the antennas?
Also, have you tried them in bridge mode using the factory code to see if the path works?
73,
Gordon, W2TTT
201.314.6964