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AREDN Nodes in Austin

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kb5zvp
AREDN Nodes in Austin
I'm about ready to hand my AREDN outside - are there other AREDN nodes in Austin?

Scott
KB5ZVP
KG6JEI
Hello Scott,
Hello Scott,

First off welcome to the mesh!  I am not sure if you plan to visit Hamcom in Dallas this year but I will be giving a presentation there. In addition after my presentation is over several AREDN team members will be present as well and will be holding a workshop. If you happen to be there feel free to look me up.

What sort of deployment are you looking at putting up for your mesh station? NanoStation? Rocket? Bullet?

Austin has historically had a large amount of mesh activity as it is I would say where mainstream HAM mesh networking got started.  Its historically been a Linksys town however because of its very early adoption back in the day when Linksys hardware was the only gear that could easily be modified for HAM mesh purposes.  Since the early days Ubuiqit and TPLink support was added but as you can imagine it can sometimes be quite hard to phase out gear from all hams in an area, or to change network ID's.

Because of this early adoption I suspect you will find most the activity on Channel 1 at 20MHz width and likely under SSID "BroadBandHamnet-20-v3".  Due to being on Channel 1 instead of channel -2 however can limit the distance signals can be heard, especially if you happen to be in a well populated neighborhood. I am not sure of the Austin area plans to replace hardware as that will likely determine when they can adopt channel -2.  I would really like to see the Austin network adopt channel -2 or the other "Ham Only" channels as it would likely increase their network quality across the board.

I'm familiar with the maps of the area but not the terrain of Austin so I apologies if any of the following paths is non useable due to terrain.  Based on knowledge from the work I've done with the area (and assuming your FCC Address is correct) I would suggest either aiming South to the Renaissance Hotel Arboretum or try to the north to the Cedear Park Medal Center or to the North West (roughly 305 degrees true) to the outskirts of Cedar Park off Whitestone Blvd.

Its been a while since I worked directly with the group out there, they tend to keep to themselves lately, but last I knew the network was there.

Happy Meshing!
kb5zvp
Conrad,
Conrad,

Thanks for the welcome!  If I can make it up to the HammCom in Dallas, you'll be right on top of my list!  And if not, I may send my brother Paul, N5BKV, in my stead.

I've got a BulletM2 with an L-Comm hg2915lg-pro 15dbi omni that's ready to go outside, and two Linkys routers as well - and they're all talking on the AREDN SSID at the moment.  I've not worked out antenni for the linksys yet, though I'm highly leaning towards the Routena (sp?) directional boxes for those.

I'm really looking to get a node set up here, and then duplicated for my brother up there in Dallas, which will also include some sort of server with (hopefully) PeopleFinder (googles alternative to Red Cross "Safe and Well").  I've spawned a thread on here about that as well as a generic Raspberri Pi EMCOMM build.  We'll see how that goes.

I'm hoping to get on to the local digital meetings next week here, and spawn my semi working platform for them.  VideoChat which runs on me Raspberri Pi doesn't work when I hood it to the linksys - so I'm assuming it needs the extra bandwidth of the AREDN and bullet combination?  (To be honest I've not figured out what the exact differences are asside from the hardware).

Guidance, support, and copious glue (elmering) is much appreciated!

73 de KB5ZVP
Scott
PS forgive the spelling, it's bedtime :D
KG6JEI
Hello Scott,
Hello Scott,

I think you mean the HyperLink HG2415U​  available from LCOM, if I am wrong please correct me.   Most omni's (including the HG2415)  are vertically polarized, this means its going to pick up a good amount of noise from the 'neighbors' especially being on channel 1.  Its normally recommended to be Horizontally polarized instead of vertically polarized but OMNI's that do this are a fair bit expensive ($250 range) but are also dual polarized as well (H+V). So while the antenna in question will work you will notice a significant decrease in range from 360 degree noise and polarity.
 
When it comes to the Linksys devices and putting them in a rootena I may suggest you consider instead going for the NanoStation M2.
The NanoStation contains a sector panel (around 10dbi, refer to spec sheet for exact gain) that does both H+V polarity. Since its a Ubiquiti device all you do is run CAT5 to it with power just like the bullet, no need to run voltage lines and put a voltage converter inside the case. In addition this wills supports a feature known as 802.11n which allows for faster network speeds (less RF time to send the same amount of data which speeds the network up for everyone) that the LInksys hardware does not support.  Also the Receivers and Transmitters are better on the Ubiquiti hardware (up to 10db more sensitive receiver and 10db more transmit power for 20db gain)  this extra gain allows to compensate for a few DB you may loose from the Antenna Gain of a rootena (I think most are 15dbi IIRC but some went higher) and will provide you a much better experience in general.   The NanoStations go pretty cheap and being all in one they tend to be the recommend field device in many areas.
 
As for diffeences between Linksys and Ubiquiti:
The main difference is the hardware. 
 
The Ubiquiti hardware is much newer design and takes in a lot of microchip development over the years.  802.11n which means faster speeds is a hardware level feature that the Linksys devices don't support.  This is where we get the 10db more sensitive receiver. The hardware is also faster, which becomes important as the hardware has to handle moving around lots of data in a populated mesh, the faster it can move this data the larger the mesh can get and the faster the mesh will be.
 
The Ubiquiti hardware is also more open which allows us to do things like Channel -2 which Linksys to our knowledge has no way to force to happen because the hardware prohibits it or isn't capable of it to my knowledge.  Channel -2 has allowed links that couldn't happen before to now happen, 0% LQ links jumping to 100% LQ in some cases.
 
The next difference is how up to date the builds of the software are.  BBHN EOL'ed their Linksys devices a couple years ago but it sounds like they might of been retracting that statement.  The core software that runs on both is known as OpenWRT its an operating system that we use to build off of to make the mesh happen. From a user standpoint this doesn't matter much as most of the coding was done to work around quirks, but when it comes to applications and feature support being an older device the Linksys hardware just isn't capable of running newer versions of the operating system, this limits what it can be done with feature wise. The Operating System on the LInksys devices is from 2007, when trying to upgrade it to newer some reports have been heard of it being unstable so it was never taken past that 2007 version, while Ubiquiti devices are running 2014 versions of the core software (and work being done to move it to the newest 2015 version)
 
Lastly packaging, the Ubiquiti gear has been used in the commercial world for over a decade, its proven it can handle abuse and weather, the Linksys routers were never intended to be taken outside of the house, and while it can be done, they really don't like it as much and were never designed for the extremes of being outdoor.
kb5zvp
Thanks, that's great
Thanks, that's great information.

You're correct about the antenna's.  So I really should look at getting a horizontally polorizable directional antenna for the bullets.  I'd be grateful for suggestions about what works well and are relatively economical.

Scott

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