The Brunswick Shores Amateur Radio Club (N4GM) is setting up a mesh network with the assistance from the Town of Oak Island. The initial plan is to link Oak Island with two nodes approximately 2 miles apart and a third node at the Brunswick County EOC about 11 miles away. The hardware will be on water towers located on Oak Island and the EOC Tower in Bolivia, NC.
We have the hardware and have been bench testing this week with the different routers and tunnel configurations.
Our first test will be this weekend (April 30) as part of the Coast Guard Station Oak Island Safety Expo. A Ubiquity 2.4 Ghz Nano will be temporarily placed at the top of the Oak Island Lighthouse. This will be linked to a Ubiquiti Rocket with Omni antenna located at KI4KK QTH approximately 2 miles away on a 72 foot tower (the Omni antenna will be at the 40 foot level). At the KI4KK QTH location, a Linksys router meshed with the lighthouse will be connected to a TenTec Omni VII radio. The Omni VII operates directly over the network and needs no PC interface. Remote control provided on the laptop located at the lighthouse using the TenTec One Plug software.
A PC will also be connected to the Linksys router at the KI4KK QTH. This PC will provide remote control of the 3 element yagi located on the 72 foot tower. The PC is connected via USB to a Green Heron Engineering rotor controller and running PSTRotatorAZ server.
At the lighthouse, a Linksys router will be connected to a laptop. The laptop will run the TenTec One Plug control program to operate the TenTec Omni VII and the PSTRotatorAZ client to control the radio and rotor remotely. VOIP is provided by the TenTec Omni VII and the One Plug software.
The system has been bench tested. Saturday we will see how it operates in actual contacts. Listen for N4GM between 10 AM and 2 PM on Saturday, April 30. Listen on 20M 15M and 10M for the Omni VII remote operation. N4GM will also be operating on 40M at the lighthouse but this will be on a Kenwood TS-590 connected to a G5RV hanging from the top of the lighthouse. (like a sloper). The 40M will not be using the Mesh or remote but if you hear us, give us a call.
The club website is www.n4gm.org. Currently we do not have a page about the Mesh Project but we are working on adding one soon.
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Oak Island NC Mesh Project
Wed, 04/27/2016 - 21:05
#1
KI4KK
Oak Island NC Mesh Project
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Darryl
I know time is short, but, if you have the funds, I would highly recommend using this an opportunity to do a side by side test.
- Perhaps buy 2 Nanostations (~ $160 for a pair, new)
- load with AREDN 3.16.1.0b2
- channel -2
- 10Mhz bandwidth
- One at the lighthouse and one at KI4KK's QTH
That would be a great real-world deployment comparison!P.S. FYI.... active ebay auction for 2 used NSM2, currently at $94 with shipping.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Ubiquiti-UBNT-NanoStation-M2-NSM2-Outdoor-Access...
George, correct me if I'm wrong, but for this event there will be a 2 GHz nano station temporarily mounted on top of the lighthouse which will talk to a Rocket on George's tower. This path is just under 3 miles. Both units are running 0b02. As you point out, time is short, so there will be no cat5 run from the link equipment upstairs to the ham equipment on the ground or inside George's house. This link will be handled by separate Linksys nodes. Note that the Linksys boxes will not talk to each other, they will only talk to the Ubiquiti nodes on their respective ends. Since Linksys will not go to channel -2, everything will be run probably on channel 3.
The club has all the equipment on hand for the longer term project - 2 & 3 Ghz nanos, 2 Ghz Rockets, some 5 GHz Ubiquity equipment that unfortunately will have to run in AirOS mode and several ToughSwitches. All equipment is flashed to 0b2 already and has appeared over a tunnel connection for a day or two.
I'm sure George would like to do the A/B test but that's not possible this time.
73, Mark, N2MH