Want to get started in Ham Radio Mesh Networking but don’t know where to start? This is the place for you! This article will walk you through what you need and how to set up your first couple of mesh nodes step by step. We’re going to be using the firmware developed by the AREDN team (Amateur Radio Emergency Data Network).
Solar Powered Mesh Node Project: Part 1
The goal of this project it to put together a self-contained solar powered node station that can operate indefinitely without external support. The design strategy will be to shoot low with a minimal configuration to see how short we fall, rather than throwing money at an overkill system to start. This is my first solar power project so it should be a good learning experience. Continue reading “Solar Powered Mesh Node Project: Part 1”
MikroTik hAP lite Review
AREDN has recently added support for the MikroTik hAP lite in the nightly build.
Deaf Node
A couple of weeks ago I upgraded our 83 Fire node to the AREDN firmware 3.18.9.0, the latest stable release. When I checked the mesh status about a day later from my QTH node, the firehouse node was showing up as an ip address instead of a node name and a LQ of 100% but a NLQ of 0%. Apparently the node was not receiving any packets. I drove over to Tech and checked from that direction with the same results.
POE Injector Grounding Mod
I’ve purchased several of these four port passive POE injectors.
They have a center-positive barrel jack as well as a pluggable terminal block for input power connections. They are pretty handy for testing and temporary field deployments.
However, there is one shortcoming you’ll want to fix if you plan to use this in a permanent installation. Out of the box, there’s no provisions for bonding the shielded Ethernet jacks to ground. In fact, the two sides are not even connected to each other.
Ham Radio Mesh Networking 