Day 29, AREDN radio equipment
During COVID, I reclaimed about two hours each day that I normally would have spent commuting to my job, and had extra time to do some personal projects. One of them was to tinker with amateur radio (aka "ham radio") and one of the projects that I found most interesting was AREDN, or the Amateur Radio Emergency Data Network. It used essentially off the shelf wireless networking equipment with custom firmware to set up mesh networks. Unlike Meshtastic which is another project, AREDN has some distinct advantages:
- It requires the operator to be a licensed radio amateur. (I'm licensed as K6HX, Amateur Extra, but even the introductory Technician class will be sufficient.)
- It is a true mesh network which includes discovery and routing protocols.
- It uses conventional router hardware that operate on the 2.4Ghz and 5.0Ghz bands (as well as a few others), often in channels other than those allocated for common license-free operation.
- It allows the use of gain antennas and higher power.
- It creates a largely conventional wireless network based upon the TCP/IP networking standards, which allows you to use common servers and protocols like HTTP, SMTP and FTP.
It's pretty spiffy. Over the period of the 15 months or so I was working remotely, I slowly acquired a bunch of hardware and did some experimentation. A lot of this stuff has been sitting gathering dust for a while so I thought it might be fun to dust it off, inventory it, and make sure it was all still working.
Pardon my mess, but here is some of it. In the back are two gray ammunition boxes from Harbor freight that I have modified to serve as solar battery boxes. The one on the left is much lighter and portable because it carries a LiFEPO4 battery, which is much lighter than the equivalent (but cheaper) lead acid battery I have in the second box. Both are designed to be reasonably waterproof, and can be recharged by either using an ordinary 12V DC power supply, or by plugging into a solar panel. The one on the left provides a basic "power over ethernet" port that can be used to power some of the radios that I have. Both can also be used to power or recharge USB peripherals like phones. I've found them to be generally useful for the random times when power may go out at our house. Both contain solar battery charger units (cheap ones) and are diode protected on their inputs, making them pretty idiot proof, but they were tinkered together without much knowledge and even less planning, so they could be better. I may revisit the ideas again in the future.
To the left of the box is a small usb dongle, a GL-150USB microrouter which has been flashed with the AREDN firmware. At the time, it was probably the first device that I used on the AREDN network. It uses the 2.4Ghz spectrum, and is mostly useful to connect a laptop into the AREDN network if you are very close to an AREDN access point.
In the front of the box on the left is a Microtik SXTsq 5 ac, which is a unit that is mean to operate on the 5Ghz band and be mounted outside. It uses a rather sleek little patch antenna, and is the most modern and capable of the units I have. It can be powered over POE, and I currently have an injector powering it up in the picture.
To the right of the two ammo cans is a TPLINK CP-510, which is a unit of similar capability, similarly designed to operate outside and be powered by POE. I have a different power injector powering it.
Behind the power cables is a little GL.inet using, an AR300 M16. These are sold as travel routers and operate on the 2.4Ghz band. They are again useful for tinkering in the inside environment.
A closer look of the Microtik SXTsq 5 ac. The power box at the top has conventional solar panel jacks (M5s?) I forget what they are called and a covered ethernet port that can provide POE.
The right power box has a switch to turn it on, as well as a voltage indicator. Below is an ordinary cigarette style port, and a covered port that has USB connectivity.
One of the TP-LINK units I have (I have a CP-210 which provides 2.4Ghz connectivity, and one that has an identical form factor which is a CPE-510 which provides 5Ghz). The AR300-16m is made by GL.iNet.
Inside the box on the left, I have a a BougeRV solar power controller, which can take inputs from the solar panel and provide proper charging for the LiFEPO4 underneath. The heatsink-ed block on the right steps up the voltage for injection into the POE port.
Not pictured are some other bits of equipent. I have a second of the AR300 units, as well as another Microtik hAP ac lite, which is a small dual band router box with four ethernet ports, and which can provide a single port of POE power. It forms the back bone of my experiments with AREDN.
Anyway...
As it happens, my network configurations are kind of screwy. At one point I had all these items connected together, and an Internet tunnel to connect me to other bay area AREDN sites. But somehow I have reconfigured the network, and I don't have that configured properly anymore. I'll have to get back to tidying that up some time in the near future.
Hope you all have a pleasant weekend.