Hello!
I haven't been very active in the Colorado HAM community in the past, but just stumbled across AREDN and became intrigued at its possibilities. I live in the Denver Metro area (33rd & Humboldt) and decided to dig out some network equipment I had to setup a node. I work in Emergency Management and dabble in computer networking on the side.
Without further ado, here's the setup I just completed:
Pictured: Ubiquiti Bullet 2.4 GHz M2 (BM2HP) connected to a 15dBi Yagi Antenna, a ToughSwitch 8 Pro is powering it.
I poked around on the roof tonight but wasn't able to pick anything up. Tomorrow, i'm going to take the setup with me to work to see if I can connect to the NCAR node in Boulder. I have an Omni directional antenna on order and once it arrives I plan to put it up on the roof as a permanent node.
Anyway, just thought I would say hi, hope to contribute to the mesh in Denver!
-Bryan
KI4LLB
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New Guy
Thu, 07/20/2017 - 22:39
#1
New Guy
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Yes, the node at NCAR is a good one to try and connect to from around the area using the AREDN SSID.
There are now quite a few additional nodes on the air using a SSID of CARBBN, so you might try changing your SSID to CARBBN and see what you can see in your area. There are nodes from north of Ft. Collins down to myself in Castle Rock, with quite a few in between in the Denver area proper. As far as I know, everyone is using channel -2 with a 5 MHz channel width. There are just some using an AREDN SSID and some using a CARBBN SSID. MeshChat is running on nodes using either of those SSIDs, so leave some messages if you connect to a node with MeshChat and say hello. Folks are using and experimenting with the usual assortment of services - VoIP, Email, ftp servers, cameras, etc. Lots of interesting things to try out with mesh networking. By the way, the CARBBN folks have a website at carbbn.org
73,
Gary, WB5PJB
Castle Rock
Be sure to do the "wifi scan" when pointing your antenna. This will show if any AREDN mesh node signal is in range, then change your channel # and SSID to match and reboot. One key setting, however. wifi scan ONLY shows signals on the same channel bandwidth. So if your mesh node is set to 10mhz, you will only see devices, including home wifi access points, using this same bandwidth. Thus, to see all possible signals, you have to reboot 3 times and successive wifi scan on 5, 10, then 20Mhz channels.
Joe AE6XE
Not having much luck picking anyone else up in Denver with my yagi antenna (although, I've only been testing in on a lower portion of the roof with lots of obstructions around). I'm going to try to get the omni up over the weekend as a permanent node, hopefully with a little more elevation someone will find me.
Planning to run things at:
KI4LLB-ColeDen-1
Ch: -2
SSID: AREDN-5-v3
Just put my station on the map as well... just keep in mind that it's on a yagi pointed towards downtown Denver at the moment.
Have you been able to see anything from downtown?