While the antenna may be vertical it's still possible to have electrical downtilt in the antenna (3 degrees negative electrical tilt is VERY common especially the higher in gain you go) This needs to be refered to the spec sheet of the antenna for more info.

The next obvious to look at is if your running vertically polarized if you are loosing the signal because of noise (horizontal plane should be quieter)

Some real world experiance has shown that the dual chain nodes (Rockets and NanoStations) have an advantage because as signals turn from bounces and reflections the dual polarity allows it to work better...  We have one case of a bullet into a 20dbi dish could be heard by a nano station 12 miles away, but the bulletm couldn't see the NanoStation at all.  Replace the bullet with a 10dbi nano and it's a stable link.

 Than we get to omni's in general.  They do make dual polarity and horizontal only polarity omni's ( Dual would be better choice IMHO). All omni's though will suffer from the 360degrees of noise they can receive so one needs to keep this in mind as well and look at the noise floor and the SNR. 

If it's going to be a serious hub point it may make sense to go with multiple nodes with sector panels to allow a large a tea of noise to be excluded and increase potential range. 

If you ask me for my "gut instincts" only seeing 1 mile sounds like either Noise Floor, obstruction or electrical downtilt 

Also what's the receive side setup with that your using to look for the signal?

I have a Ubiquiti Bullet with a 15db omni 250' up in the air. I'm only seeing the signal for about 1 mile on the ground. I expected much more range. Does anyone else have a similar configuration who could share their results?

Thanks,

Bernie

As of today our hub is also connected to AMPRnet making it possible for HSMM/BBHN nodes to reach AMPRnet. This was one of our goals when designing this solution and now we have implemented it.

Screenshots look good. I've had issues with advertised services not showing up as expected. Usually it self-corrects, and refreshing a page shows it properly. Thinking about it now, I wonder if that's a browser cache issue? The service you see on W4LLZ-N1's mesh status page should also be visible on W4LLZ-N6's mesh status page in the 'neighbours' section, just like the IRC link.

On field day I deployed a few nodes using this FTP server and advertised services, and everything worked as expected. I don't know what went right, but it was a good show and now a bunch of club members are interested. I had a few cameras and Writelog logging software running as well.

Now that you've learned the technique, and you're hooked on mesh, what's next?

Just to clarify, we have solved the incompatibility issues in OLSR between 0.4.3 and 1.0.0 version of nodes so now they can coexist in same network when connected to the hub.

Take a look at the attached picture. SM7MMJ-1 is 0.4.3 node and SM7I-1 is 1.0.0 node.

Attachments
 hsmm1.jpg [120 KB] ::

Well Ron, I made a lot of headway with your help.  Basically got it working and can share the ftp folder over the mesh.  It took me a while to figure out how to access it from another node (ie., W4LLZ-N6).  What i had to do, step by step see pictures attached, to connect to the ftp folder on W4LLZ-N1 was to:

1.  W4LLZ-N1 is where the ftp server is.  The mesh doesn't show on other nodes that W4LLZ-N1 is offering that service, like it does IRC Chat (see pic 1).  Instead, from W4LLZ-N6 "Mesh Status" page, I click on W4LLZ-N1 and open it, viewing W4LLZ-N1 status page on the W4LLZ-N6 computer.

2.  It is there that i can see the FTP server advertized, with a dot/bullet next to it.  See pic 2.

3.  Then i click on "File Server" and it opens the FTP folder and i can down load files from N1 to N6 perfectly.  See pic 3.

I would have thought that the service would be advertized like the IRC server, but it makes sense due to the way its set up.  Meaning, the node (W4LLZ-N1) is not offering the service but rather the computer (W4LLZ) is offering it through W4LLZ-N1. 

It works, and is really cool, just not as i expected it would; but its a keeper.  Thanks, and please comment.

Attachments
 3.jpg [165 KB] :: ftp folder accessed via N1
 1.jpg [98 KB] :: mesh status on W4LLZ-N6
 2.jpg [82 KB] :: Mesh status from W4LLZ-N1

Firefox is a web browser not a VoIP phone.

if you have a VoIP application installed it may work with sip://IPAddreas But that is not the browser doing anything other than executing the program that is associated with SIP calling.

It is not a Firefox feature to make SIP calls.

Direct mode -- the default  in latest release -- does not use port forwarding on the wifi.

You only forward ports on the wifi when in NAT mode.

Your camera has it's own up address you use that and not the node IP. No need to forward ports.

I have tested linphone for audio/viedo calls between two nodes in the mesh. It works quite well with appropriate S/N.

But I am unable to have Firefox call linphone passing my ip address as a parameter.

If you know how to do this, please share.

It would seem to me that this would be a great application of BBHN, certainly the one that calls the attention of PEMA officials at a recent conference in Johnstown PA

See   wpaares.org

73 de Juan, NA0B

Fellow MESHers,

We successfully operated a MESH FD logging using N3FJP software for FD this year.  We utilzed 4 nodes including a gateway node for storing the data and to provide internet timing, a node for public access to demonstrate FD information and two drop box nodes for the HF stations and contact logging.  All nodes were WRT54GL V1.1.  Our MESH reported 100% signal strength and worked flawlessly the entire 24 hour FD exercise.

Many thanks to Jeff WB8REI for his assistance and for providing an added benefit to our visitors who were able to listen to recorded information transmitted via the MESH to a low power FM transmitter.

We are currently working on a VOIP application we hope to place in service later this year during an ARES event and hope to provide video links as well.

Kudos to all who are actively supporting the MESH project here.  The effort is fantastic and is greatly appreciated.

Jim W8ERW  w8erw@arrl.net