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NodeGMR
Dan's Melbourne Wireless Node
Current status: Operational
Member of Southern Regional Group
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Locfinder page: http://melbournewireless.org.au/nodes/view.php?id=gmr
NodeDB page: http://www.nodedb.com/australia/vic/melbourne/view.php?nodeid=36416 September
I've been updating my wiki page. The entries written below with "retrospective" after them were written today. It's been an interesting few months now that I look back at them. I've now got a Pentium 166 box given to me by my Dad and I've installed Debian on it. With Glenn NodeGES and Steve's NodeGEZ help it'll be routing and webserving to my wireless interfaces. I've gotten a 1 watt Longreach amp that I've connected to my Omni. I've done some netstumbling around the neighborhood and I can pick up my own signal using an Enterasys card with the built-in antenna from almost 1 kilometre away - at ground level! My main aim now is to get a link to Peter NodeGUR - 4.5 km away. I've used the amp to do some testing to him and we got a very good link - pity the power levels we were testing with are considered illegal.
So now the challege is to get a link with legal power levels. I think this whole area will really start to come together if we can get that link.27 August - retrospective
I now have my mast up at 12 metres. I hope to leave it at that height if at all possible.
Thank you to my TV industry buddies, who like me work on weekends but have many weekdays off. And also a big thanks to housemate Marta for holding the ropes for so long. The weather was good but there were some slightly hairy moments putting it up. I kept having flashbacks to that fateful day of the first mast falling. I'd like to say I kept cool and calm but that just isn't quite true. But we got there. On top of the mast is the antenna rotator which rotates the horizontal 25dB Hills parabolic antenna. There is an 8dB Superpass Omni above it at the very top of the mast. Just below the rotator is the vertical 25dB Hills.Present were: Bruce S, V8 Dave, Timmy P, Marta and myself. Peter B turned up after the mast had been raised and the BBQ had begun.
Circa 12 August - retrospective
Have been connected to Glenn NodeGES by various methods since we put the mast up. I can connect to his waveguide and AP with my horizontal hills and he can connect my my omni with his vertical galaxy. Have been doing some transfers - I've set up an Apache webserver on my little Windows 95 laptop for Glenn to transfer from. We've been getting transfers at about 160KB/s. But the ethernet card in it is pretty flaky so I can't reliably use it as a router, even temporarily.
Also my AP has sort-of died. I think there's something wrong with the voltage regulator. The USB cable can't fix this problem. Gonna have to bring the mast down. I've decided to just stick a Superpass up there and have an amp down at ground level. So no more AP-in-a-box-up-a-mast for me. It's just not reliable enough given that it's so hard to get the mast up. It's a bit much to be asking people around to put up my mast every month becase the AP has some problem or other.
27 July 2003 - retrospective
Had a mast raising BBQ at my place today. Bought a new BBQ.
Lots of people showed up, thanks everyone! Unfortunately the wind picked up a bit and it made it not possible to put the mast up to 15m as I'd planned. But we got it up to 9m. Peter B bought around a mast rotator making it possible for me to rotate my two Hills 25dB parabolic antennas independantly of each other.Present were: Troy (txrx), Rick, Vak, Peter B (Melb_AP), Glenn (Graybeard) who took the photos, Dave (my Dad), the mysterious Mr E and myself.
Glenn's pics are
here21 July 2003 - retrospective
My newest creation is complete - my second SVEC Access Point in a box. It's smaller and lighter than my previous effort - this time I took the circuit board out of the SVEC casing and put it into a wateright PVC jiffy box. Also I soldered a chassis-mount female N-Connector straight onto the board and poked it through a hole in the jiffy box and siliconed the hell out of it. One other thing - I put a USB socket in the jiffy box and ran a short usb cable to the connector on the board. I got some shielded Belden cable and made a 12 metre USB cable. Yes, it works. You can run USB 12 metres if you use the right cable. I've done this so I can reset the box if it decides to go belly up at the top of the mast and needs factory defaults reset. SVECs tend to do this.
Pics of the old and the new AP boxes
here15 July 2003 - retrospective
The mast went up, the mast fell down. Overexuberance, under-preparation and under-estimation of the physics involved on my part is entirely to blame.
Present were: Rick, Andrew G, Jason (Midway) and myself.
Pictures of the aftermath
here17 June 2003
Bought a big ass mast yesterday - a 15m Hills Telomast. Can't wait to see the neighbour's reactions when I put it up.
Thanks to rik for helping me get it. Now to put it up.I put my AP on the roof last week for two nights... I had to take it down as it had no guys and it was swaying a bit. And I wanted to take it to show and tell at the MW meeting of the 13th June.
It was a popular little box.Here's the photos of it, as promised...
The SVEC AP, in it's box.
A close-up of the voltage regulator, which is a $9 kit from Jaycar.
The assembled product, ready to go up.
It's brief stint on top to the TV antenna.
Other News:
I've added myself to the RGSouthern page and the mailing list.8 June 2003
Did some stumbling on the roof last week, saw NodeGHO! Unfortunately didn't see rik's node NodeAFH which is what I was hoping to do. Very seriously considering putting up a big mother of a mast in the backyard.
My waterproof box for my SVECWLAP FD-1811-A AP is done, I've tested it and now it's ready to be sealed up and put on the roof. Pics of the innards to follow. I'm going to put my Hyperlink 8dB omni on it to start with.
30 April 2003
I've picked up my two Hills 25dB grid parabolas from Simon Butcher. Damn these mothers is big! I've got marginal LOS to Mt Dandenong so when I get some more cabling I'm gonna get up on the roof and do some stumbling. rik of NodeAFH is keen to do some testing to my node too.
Here's the view from my roof
Panorama Low Res
Panorama Hi Res28 April 2003
This is Dan's Node.
I'm still building really, but I've got pretty much all the bits and pieces to get going. Ultimately I hope to have a couple of directional links to people in my area and an omni on the roof for the use of mobile users.
Version 11 (current) modified Mon, 26 Jul 2021 12:49:29 +0000
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