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AREDN Mesh at Solar Car Challenge

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KB5UGF
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AREDN Mesh at Solar Car Challenge

On July 16-22 the Shine Runners Club, a high school club in Mansfield, Texas, that designs, builds, and races solar powered race cars, participated in the Solar Car Challenge at Texas Motor Speedway. AREDN mesh nodes, provided by the Mansfield-Johnson Amateur Radio Service (https://www.mjars.org/), were used between the solar powered race car and the pit to monitor the various data generated by the car. A center-facing Nano Station M2 was attached to the side of the car, while a Bullet M2 with a 15 db omni antenna was used in the pit to collect the data. Results were excellent!





K5DLQ
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Awesome! 
Awesome! 
K5DLQ
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I'm also guessing the "Shine
I'm also guessing the "Shine Runners" has nothing to do with moonshine or bootlegging....   ;-)
AE6XE
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Wow!     Are they using voip
Wow!     Are they using voip and/or video to communicate between base and driver?   
 
KB5UGF
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This year it was all about
This year it was all about the data. The various sensors on the car connect to an IP addressable interface box which worked well with a mesh node. Plans are already in the works for next year to add a voip headset and small video camera. I'm not sure what medium the headset the driver is currently wearing uses.
AE6XE
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If the amount of data
If the amount of data increases with future use, a mimo base station configuration may help.    At present, the bullet is single polarity, vertical.  The Nanostation is a MIMO and splitting the power on horizontal and vertical (dual xmitter and PA).  Consequently, ~3dB or half the energy transmitted on the horizontal polarization is for most part never received by the bullet omni.    Nothing a little $$ won't solve, but a MIMO Rocket Omni combination may be helpful to increase the data top end including HD video.

Joe AE6XE

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