Just wondering what the new bbhn-3.1.0 offers over the bbhn-3.0.1 version? The 3.0.1 version worked with the vtun tunneling method described at http://www.a********/content/tunnel-install-instructions-0 , does the new 3.1.0 also work with this tunneling method? Currently those of us in our club experimenting with BBHN are using 3.0.1 in our nodes which are nearly all Linksys WRT54GS v3.

I there - maybe someone can point me in the right direction. I lack experience with vtun, so looking for help.

I have a BBHN 3.0.1 node running with the vtun server configured and successfully working with multiple clients.

Now I'd like to have an hsmm-pi node with a vtun client connect to it. It's failing with the following error:

   Connecting to xxx.xxx.xxx
   Use SSL-aware challenge/response
   Connection denied by xxx.xxx.xxx

I've tried changing the vtund.conf settings in different ways, but can't move beyond this.

Thoughts? 

Only 2 weeks to go, see you there.

I answered my own question by writing some quick and dirty html/php.

I just need to figure out how to post code to the forum

The code is just an html form that writes the messages to a text file on the node using php. I am going to do some scripting to manage the message file and maybe send emails etc.

As my main node is a raspberry pi this might be a little easier for me to do. I am going to try and do something one my wrt54gl to see if it would also work.

I will TRY to answer your questions, but there are much more knowledgeable people than I on here...

1. DNS is all handled by the mesh routers and you really don't need to do anything other than setup your advertised services, attach them to an IP or name and you will be up and running. I have web servers and other things hanging off of my nodes. People from New Zealand to Paris find my stuff... :)

2. Once you have one setup, you will figure it out...  It starts making sense after a while, I swear!
   

3. This is why a lot of us are pretty adamant about anyone connecting via our tunnels to have UNIQUE names on their services and nodes, like prefaced with their call sign or something. Because, over time, as things grow, there will inevitably be 137 “Towercam” entries and we need to keep them all straight! It falls into the category of good operating practices. Peer pressure comes in many forms! :)

4. Yep, you setup your services attached to a name and possibly an IP address and they show up.

If you want to take a peek at a node and see what you can see check this out...

http://n5mbm.net:8084/cgi-bin/status

Hope that helps!

Bill – N5MBM

www.n5mbm.net

Hi Folks,

I was thinking that it would be nice to have a facility on a node to leave the sysadmin a message.  I have seen the hamchat software but thought something along the lines of the packet pms system would be cool.

Anyone know of anything that would work?

My main gateway node is a raspberry pi so I guess I could install something on there and publish it on the mesh

Thanks

Jon

Have you tried Radio Mobile Online?

http://www.cplus.org/rmw/rmonline.html

It is what I use to see if 2 (or more) sites could work. Roger has done an excellent job with it, and it is pretty accurate.

You have to create an (free) account, but thats so you can save all your sites, plots and coverages.

Although right now, it appears that something is broken on his end. When I try to log in, it takes the User/Pass, then times out. Hopefully its something simple and he will have it back up shortly.

73

KTF

This has been pretty high on my google search agenda since getting into HSMM-mesh. Since line of sight is critical for node placement as I attempt to find locations allowing me access to surrounding towns, having some kind of map available that will show blind areas in a sort of Google Earth representation would be fantastic.

Does anyone know of such a resource? I'm aware that using Google Earth you can get a terrain plot from point to point, but a bigger picture would allow for optimal placement.

Some other possible ideas.

Host an offline mirror of Wikipedia.  A full text-only dump of the English Wikipedia is about 40GB.  

Keep a blog.

Keep a map of known nodes and their approximate locations and strengths.  

Put your club's website on the meshnet.  

Go portable with a portable node with an attached camera, and stream your adventures

I have a couple questions I haven't seen directly answered

1)  How does DNS work on a peer to peer setup like this?  I see that you can access a node by http://nodename:8080, but let's say I run another web server on that machine, is it still the same nomenclature, or can I set up another DNS entry somehow and broadcast that to the network?  Or would I just set up another node with that name?

2) Related to #1, as BBHN becomes more and more popular and the effective size of networks increase, what are the implications of node name collision?  Is that already handled somehow?  

3) I hear people talking "advertised services".  Is there something special to that other than to just set it up for network sharing on the configuration of the node it is connected to?

I'm really excited to try and get started with this soon, I'd like to run some basic cloud services on the meshnet as an off-grid alternative.

Joe,

Its great to hear that there are other mesh's in OC. I saw several in south OC on the map but none in my area. I have two Ubiquiti Nano Loco M2's. One is mounted on the roof facing toward Fullerton awaiting me mounting the other one on a roof at Cal State Fullerton. Not quite sure it will reach CSUF because its not quite line of sight. The elevation is fine, but trees are not. If you get some up on Pleasants Peak that would give great coverage to OC. 

What equipment are you using?

Dylan
KK6NEI 

Written by David Rivenburg, AD5OO Revised by Tim Gelvin, K3TEG 03/11/15

Here's how to make your very own mesh node:

1. Go to the software download page and get the version of firmware suitable for your model of router. If you are upgrading from the stock Linksys firmware or using tftp (instructions further down this page) you will need the model-specific .bin file. If you are upgrading from a previous mesh firmware release then you can use the .trx file (regardless of the router model). routers with 2MB of flash (such as the wrt54g version 5 and above) are not supported this step can be skipped if you are upgrading from 0.3.2+ firmware and the node has an internet connection

2. Upload the firmware to the router
These instructions assume your computer is connected to the lan port of router. Routers with factory firmware in a browser go to http://192.168.1.1/ user = admin password = admin (or the password you set) click Administration click Firmware Upgrade click Browse, select the .bin file that you downloaded click Upgrade goto step 3 routers with hsmm-mesh-0.3.2 or later firmware that have an Internet connection in a browser go to http://localnode:8080/ click Setup user = root password = hsmm (or the password you set) click Administration next to Download Firmware click Refresh select which firmware image to download click Download, then wait for the firmware to download and install goto step 3 routers with mesh-0.3.0 or later firmware, or 0.3.2+ with no internet connection in a browser go to http://localnode:8080/ click Setup user = root password = hsmm (or the password you set) click Administration next to Upload Firmware click Browse, select the .trx that file you downloaded click Install goto step 3

3. Wait for the power LED to start blinking, then stop blinking, then for the DMZ LED to go out after that, replug your network cable or do whatever it takes to reset your computer network adapter the first time mesh firmware is installed on a router it will take about two minutes for the first reboot to complete DO NOT SKIP THIS STEP !!!

4. Configure the mesh node - this is required every time the firmware is installed in a browser go to http://localnode:8080/ at this point the node is acting as an access point, so you can either be connected by a cable to the LAN port or connected wirelessly to the SSID "MeshNode" this guarantees that after a full firmware install there is a wireless way back in to the node if it is located in a restricted access area when connecting to the LAN port is not practical click Setup user = root password = hsmm enter a Node Name node names can contain only numbers, letters, and dashes underscores, spaces, and other punctuation are not allowed it is a condition of your Amateur Radio license and of Broadband Hamnet that the node name must contain your callsign the node name is beaconed (via UDP port 4919) every five minutes to meet the identification requirements recommendation: (callsign)-(name) example: ad5oo-mobile or ad5oo-1 enter a Password (twice) click Save Changes, even if you didn't make any changes, and wait for the node to reboot Congratulations. You now have a mesh node, but only if you did step 4!. Here is what just happened to your router: it is now running a custom build of OpenWrt kamikaze 7.09 the wireless ssid is BroadbandHamnet-v1 and is broadcast the wireless mode is ad-hoc the wireless channel is 1 the wireless speed is automatic the wireless encryption is disabled the wireless and lan ports are no longer bridged - they are independent interfaces the wireless address is 10.X.Y.Z/8 X, Y, and Z are the last three bytes of the WiFi mac address the lan address has been automatically configured the lan port is running a dhcp server the wan port is running a dhcp client

Installing / Recovering Firmware with TFTP in Linux--Revised by K3TEG

Your router is a brick.  It does not come up normally and you are not able to log in by any method.  All is not lost, read on to see how to use the built in failsafe method of installing firmware.  If this method does not work, you will have to resort to a JTAG install.  Good luck with that.  See www.openwrt.org for information on the JTAG method.

The CFE (Common Firmware Environment - the bootloader) has the ability to receive a firmware image using tftp (the trivial file transfer protocol) and write it to flash. When the nvram variable boot_wait is set to on, (as it will be after the mesh firmware is installed at least once) there is a three second window where it listens for tftp packets. If it hears them, it will load the firmware into ram, write it to flash, then reboot. If the CFE detects some problem with the firmware already on the flash (such as an interrupted flash write) and is unable to boot, it should wait indefinitely for a tftp transfer. At this point I'm not sure what the CFE behavior is when boot_wait is set to off. I believe it still listens for tftp packets, but the window of opportunity is one second or less.

1) Here is a linux script I use (I called it wrtftp) to send tftp attempts to 192.168.1.1 once every second for an hour or until the upload succeeds. It sets the tftp trace mode so that you can see every attempt and also see when the transfer has happened and whether or not it succeeded. Use your software/package manager to verify if TFTP is installed. If not, install it.

2) Here is a Linux script I use (I called it wrtftp) to send tftp attempts to 192.168.1.1 once every second for an hour or until the upload succeeds. It sets the tftp trace mode so that you can see every attempt and also see when the transfer has happened and whether or not it succeeded. Take the script below and copy to a new text file using a text file editor and paste it to the new file, then save the file as Ubiquiti_Firmware_Flash.sh

--------------------------------------------------------------------
#!/bin/sh
if [ -z "$1" ]; then
  echo "usage: wrtftp "
  exit 1
fi
cd `dirname $1`
tftp 192.168.1.20 << END
bin
rexmt 1
trace on
timeout 3600
put `basename $1` code.bin
END
–-------------------------------------------------------------------

3) Download the latest FACTORY bin from http://www.broadband-hamnet.org/software-download.html . Then rename the bin file to code.bin . Here's a YouTube link that shows the Windows method… this will give you an idea of what the next step will look like. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkZXPMZDd_k

4) Now unplug RG-45 cable from the Ubiquiti router. Use a paperclip or something small to press the reset button on the Ubiquiti router. Press the reset button then plug in the RG-45 cable. Keep the reset button pressed for 15-20 seconds. The Ubiquiti router will start flashing it's LEDs alternately, at this time you can stop pressing the reset button.

5) To reflash a device with this script, you will need to have your computer's ethernet port connected to the LAN port on the router, with the IP address statically set to 192.168.1.2, netmask 255.255.255.0. Run the script with the .bin image name as an argument. The .trx file will not work here, you need the .bin file specific to your model of router. This MUST be the factory image.

Once per second you will see messages like this:

sent WRQ

If the above messages continue, power cycle the router again starting from step #4 until you see messages like this:

sent DATA
received ACK
sent DATA
received ACK

After that the flash write begins, then the router will reboot. This process will literally take about an hour to flash the firmware.

During this process one thing that may get in the way is network management software that many modern operating systems use to automatically control your ethernet port. It becomes a problem when power cycling the router causes the network manager to enable and disable the ethernet port because it sees the connection disappearing and reappearing. One way around this is to disable the network manager and take manual control of your network interfaces if you are able to do that. Otherwise it can be avoided by using another ethernet switch which both your computer and the router receiving the firmware are connected to. You should be able to use the LAN switch on the back of another mesh node if a separate switch is not available.

I would be willing to give it a try. One thing though, I have no idea how to do vlans or things like that. Had offered n5mbm to link but found I don't have the correct equipment to do it that route plus lack of vlan knowledge currently.

I can do either hsmm-pi or a hacked hamserverpi card. The meaning about hacked is that I don't have the docs but have been able to sign in and rummage around the file system. Have not connected it to a network to update distro because I don't want to cause any issues if I need to have a login/password for the euro hamnet since I have not contacted them for things.

Let me know what you think.

James W8ISS

Anyone interested in having a go at using vtun with raspberry pi nodes?

Jon

I was out in the aquaponics greenhouse, cleaning up after winter and preparing to install yet another node, with a camera or two and some telemetry from the aquaponics greenhouse. Like water temp, greenhouse temp, maybe a fish tank cam in the 1100 gallon koi tank.

I had a thought... With all these nodes I have spread around... How can I measure the relative signal strength of all my nodes at like say the QTH node or maybe the Chappell Hill node? Other than some percentage of link status?

I live on a farm. I have nodes in different buildings, spread around 7 acres. I have questions about antennas and gain – do I really need a BIG antenna way over there on the aquaponics greenhouse? Can I lower the gain on the other greenhouse since it is closer to the QTH and the Chappell Hill node up at 50 ft. covering the country side? The only easy way to quickly compare alternatives (and I have stuff to swap out and around) would be some sort of constantly updating signal strength comparison between nodes since they are all on the same channel.

It's easy to compare various nodes on a wif fi scan – not so much for a bunch of nodes all on the same channel on BBHN!

I think this could be something useful for folks like me with multiple nodes to tinker with and need a quick and dirty diagnostic tool...

Just thinking out loud... Anyone have any ideas?

Bill – N5MBM