Adding A Node

Paul, welcome to the world of AREDN!  It's so much fun to get these radios in place so they can communicate with each other, especially if you can get a couple of your nearby ham buddies to join you in the adventure.

1. You do not need to have a separate computer for each of your nodes.  One computer can view the web interface on any number of nodes.  As far as how to connect your two nodes, since they are physically at the same location (collocated) it is best to have them link with each other over an Ethernet cable, rather than forcing them to link over the air (RF).  Your Mikrotik hAP ac lite is great for this because port 5 is preconfigured for "Device to Device" (DtD) linking.  Simply connect an Ethernet cable from port 5 to the LAN port on the TP-LINK's PoE unit, then a cable from the PoE port to the Ethernet jack on your TP-LINK.
2. You could eliminate the TP-LINK's PoE unit by turning on "PoE Power Passthrough" in the hAP ac lite, but you can probably power only one node that way.  It sounds like you may want several nodes at your site, all DtD linked together.  One easy way to do that is to be sure "PoE Power Passthrough" is disabled on the hAP ac lite and connect an Ethernet cable from port 5 to a separate "dumb" switch.  Then use Ethernet cables to connect the LAN port of your nodes to that switch, which in turn is connected to port 5 on the hAP ac lite.  They will all see each other and DtD link automatically.
        One thing to be aware of is that collocated nodes should not be on the same band and channel.  You should probably consider getting 5.8 GHz nodes, since there are many more channels to choose from.  That would minimize any RF contention between the nodes at your location.  The AREDN documentation has some helpful information in the Network Design Guide section.
3. Nodes with more memory (at least 64 mb) could probably run MeshChat, and each MeshChat node will automatically discover other nodes using the same "Zone Name" in their service definition.  You and your nearby neighbor nodes will all be able to chat with each other.  You don't actually need to install MeshChat on every node in order to chat across the mesh network, though.  At a minimum you can have MeshChat on your hAP ac lite (for example) and still be able to chat from different computers connected to the LAN on other nodes between sites.

Hope this helps.  Once you get your first two nodes DtD linked through hAP ac lite port 5 and eventually get an RF link to a nearby ham buddy you will begin to think of all kinds of possibilities.  Have fun!

Hi, Paul:

N300 is the wireless speed.
https://www.tp-link.com/us/business-networking/outdoor-radio/?filterby=4827
The model is the CPE210.
But why choose 2.4 GHz? !
There are more channels available in the 5.8 GHz devices.

Chuck

adding three more TP-Links and have them pointing in all four directions?
Collocated nodes should (must) be on non-overlapping channels.
In this scenario, it is likely that there may only be one 2.4 GHz node on an unshared channel.
In theory, you could use channels '-2', '1', '6', and '11'.
(Ooopps, channel '11' is not within part 97 allocation.)
In practice, I do not recommend this.
I recommend 5.8 GHz devices.
Initially, I do not recommend that a typical 'home ham' build 360 degree coverage.
Initially, I recommend point-to-point to existing and imminent neighbor hams.
Use point-to-multi-point when applicable.

(Pause and wait for more responses.
 There are many very knowledgeable and experienced folks on this forum.)

Chuck