Just an introduction and to get some input.
I'm new in ham (KN4MDJ), my last job was military satellites 20 years ago so I'm familiar with the physics of radio, just not ham culture/history or acronyms.
15 years ago I setup a wifi grid in our city downtown (5ghz backbone, 2.4ghz/G points) and it's been used for a bit, though less as shop keepers put in their own hotspots. When I setup the original city grid we used Linksys WRT54G/v2 (openwrt, WhiteRussian) as they had the largest ram compared to V3/V4...but those radios are now 10-15+ years old. I've been out of the market since,...they just worked. I seen a couple ubiquiti bullets but wasn't aware they can run on openwrt also. What are you all currently recommending for new installs?
Should cell towers go out, in our current cellphone addicted society, people would try wifi, hoping a neighbor still has power or internet...if we could give them a beacon, they could email/imessage/connect to family to tell them they are safe. All we have to do is transmit and forward data to the internet. If our area is dead in the water on utilities, HAM could be used to get a backhaul to another city that still has inet access. (and our node would then be a backhaul repeater for other areas beyond us...essentially planned infrastructure based mesh.)
By doing a captive portal on the public side (part 15 low transmit then part 90 during emergencies), we can control what they access (limit bandwidth) and put in live NOAA radio, along with local emergency FM stations via a webapplet (i.e. or even HAM channels via websdr.org). This would also cover the FCC ID every 10 minutes by having that in a frame on the portal page.
anyways just looking for advice/info.
http://air2fl.com/
KN4MDJ
I'm new in ham (KN4MDJ), my last job was military satellites 20 years ago so I'm familiar with the physics of radio, just not ham culture/history or acronyms.
15 years ago I setup a wifi grid in our city downtown (5ghz backbone, 2.4ghz/G points) and it's been used for a bit, though less as shop keepers put in their own hotspots. When I setup the original city grid we used Linksys WRT54G/v2 (openwrt, WhiteRussian) as they had the largest ram compared to V3/V4...but those radios are now 10-15+ years old. I've been out of the market since,...they just worked. I seen a couple ubiquiti bullets but wasn't aware they can run on openwrt also. What are you all currently recommending for new installs?
I'm looking for new transmitters that have good reception s/n and max legal power (1W?).
There has to be something better than the WRT54...more transmit power, better reception..more ram.
I could just use PC cards since I can run LMR400 direct, but that eats power in a disaster.
Our wifi was operational even when cell towers were down in 2004 because we had bigger/maintained batteries.
(deep cycle 12v powering WRT54 directly, lasts for days.)
Anyways I came across your site and love the idea of highpower wifi to link a backbone during emergencies (races/ares). I have a lot of handme down cellphone/wifi antennas, i.e. 12dBi 3 sector, a few 20dBi omni's. I like the idea of being able to broadcast a strong wifisignal for locals to connected to, and have it uplinked to another ham beyond the disaster area. (i.e. like ssid ARES-EMERG-PUBLIC-WIFI)
(deep cycle 12v powering WRT54 directly, lasts for days.)
Should cell towers go out, in our current cellphone addicted society, people would try wifi, hoping a neighbor still has power or internet...if we could give them a beacon, they could email/imessage/connect to family to tell them they are safe. All we have to do is transmit and forward data to the internet. If our area is dead in the water on utilities, HAM could be used to get a backhaul to another city that still has inet access. (and our node would then be a backhaul repeater for other areas beyond us...essentially planned infrastructure based mesh.)
By doing a captive portal on the public side (part 15 low transmit then part 90 during emergencies), we can control what they access (limit bandwidth) and put in live NOAA radio, along with local emergency FM stations via a webapplet (i.e. or even HAM channels via websdr.org). This would also cover the FCC ID every 10 minutes by having that in a frame on the portal page.
anyways just looking for advice/info.
I like the idea of being able to get a backbone using highpower ham, maybe on HF or VHF for emergency use?
or 3GHZ (Learned from your site) The key will be knowing what sister cities can give you a backhaul before you need them.
My idea is to use 3 sector arrays for backbone connections, each sector on it's own radio...
first as a WET looking for an uplink, then if it gets one, the other two sectors switch to AP mode and rebroadcast as an uplink for others.
Ken Lyonsor 3GHZ (Learned from your site) The key will be knowing what sister cities can give you a backhaul before you need them.
My idea is to use 3 sector arrays for backbone connections, each sector on it's own radio...
first as a WET looking for an uplink, then if it gets one, the other two sectors switch to AP mode and rebroadcast as an uplink for others.
http://air2fl.com/
KN4MDJ
Hi Ken,
Welcome to the AREDN Project. The following will give you an introduction to us and what this technology will do out-of-the-box when loaded with the project's software. We are OpenSource and based on OpenWRT. We specialize in developing features and functions useful for disaster communications as delivered by hams.
An Introduction to AREDN: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkl5Nbnz24Y
2015 TAPR Digital Communication Conference Presentation: https://www.tapr.org/pdf/DCC2015-AREDN-Project-K6AH.pdf
2016 TAPR Digital Communication Conference Presentation: https://www.tapr.org/pdf/DCC2016-AREDN.pdf
2017 Hamvention Presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Wynms9xKkI
You could also read over the How To's as well as the many forum articles and posts on this website. I look forward to hearing how you will use the system for Public Service/Public Safety.
73 for now.
Andre, K6AH