Hello everyone,

I just thought I say hi from Houston,TX. Good to see some people interested in mesh networking ...

Personally, I think it's a great technology and my only wish is that there would be more people taking up this up this activity and set up more nodes around USA :) ...

I'm a fairly technical person, so the technology is far from scary (yes it has bugs, but nothing that you can't work around) ...

I've currently setup 2 nodes (K5DDE-001, K5DDE-002) here at my place, and I've placed K5DDE-001 which is a mesh-gateway on the net. If you're bored, feel free to take a look at it ( http://k5dde.wctek.com:8080 - K5DDE-002 will go up/down since this is the node where I test all the Amps/Antennas, so if it's there one day and gone the next, than it's only because I physically pulled it down to make mods to it).

I've also ordered some 1W and 8W 2.4Ghz amps which I will be testing next week and a few different aerials. My goal here is to create a turn-key nodes/repeaters self contained and easy to deploy. I intend to use a solar-panel and rechargeable battery with solar tracker (super-easy which I just finished building) so that it can be deployed to locations with and/or without power access. The target of this exercise is to have an easy to deploy 5-mile+ range repeater (we'll see how it goes once the amps are in) while keeping it affordable so that it can be replicated easily by everyone.

In order to expand the Houston mesh, I plan to contact various organizations (schools, fire departments etc) to introduce the technology with its benefits and help them to setup a node at their location. I will provide free training and value-added mesh content for both emergency and learning purposes (web/ftp/video/voice/aprs/remote control/etc).

The hope is that if it's well documented, easy to understand and easy to deploy and as turn-key as possible the technology will be adopted by more people. Especially if it's cheap and fast :)

Right now, for the mesh device itself, I have a mixture of 54GL with BBHN 1.0, but I am also working (just about finished) on a Raspberry-Pi MESH setup with embedded APRS capabilities. This unit is designed to go into a vehicle (or just be mobile since it has an lcd output option as well) providing both APRS and mesh capability in one. So far so good and all seems to work very well. For the Pi I am using basic software/hardware which were developed by others (all in the docs) with my own customization done to add friendliness and reliability to it all (I'm a soft.developer IRL).

So, for the ones just starting up with meshing and even for the "seasoned" ones which are not too technical, or got disinterested because of the lack of nodes, all I want to say is keep at it! This is the technology of the future - Its viable, its fast, its as secure as you want to make it  and it's definitely not dead -- mesh is the way to go!

I'll try to visit here and post milestones, but in any case you'll usually catch me on the Houston 145.430 repeater (drop me a call if you need urgent help and/or if want to participate/help with meshing in Houston).

All the best,

Alex
K5DDE

Thanks for your thoughts, Jim.

I'm only setting an access password on the AP, so I don't think any content (after authentication) would be encrypted.   And even if it was, it seems like the encryption would only be on the iPhone-to-AP wireless link, so everything going over the mesh would still be clear text, I would think.

  Paul

There are pro's and con's to both.

Pro for both being BBHN would be everything is the same firmware.

Pro for keeping virgin Linksys FW is ease of WEP/WPA (tougher to set in our firmware, since we are not supposed to use encryption under Part97...doable, just more difficult)

You can do what you suggest and it will work.

KTF

Dont forget Brian (and everyone) that while the new 1.0.0 version is not backwards compatible with 0.4.3, it IS compatible with hand-loads on other gear.

Stay tuned for info regarding loading 1.0.0-compatible firmware on other manufactured wifi and embedded hardware.

KTF

I have had hsmm-mesh loaded on a wrt-54, but since we seem to be just starting to get a group effort going here, lets settle on a compatible firmware load.  It is my understanding that the newer Broadband Hamnet v1.0.0 isn't backward compatible with hsmm-mesh firmware.

Would everyone be interested in starting out fresh with Broadband Hamnet v1.0.x?

73,

Brian/KO4FV

Hi, Peter;

Al, VE3RRD posted a great source in Toronto for WRT54-GS equivalents. I got lucky and got some while they were on sale for $12.99. Ordered from their web page, and had 'em delivered in a week. They take PayPal, which was good for me. At the moment, the price is up to $19.99, but that's still good for new units. See this thread:

http://hsmm-mesh.org/hsmm-mesh-forums/view-postlist/forum-21-ontario-canada/topic-526-hamilton.html

Check your local liquidators out west; you might find the same device a little closer to home. I've not done very well going the used/thrift shop route myself.

Sounds good. Happy Meshing! :-)

Under HSMM-MESH Info --> User Documentation --> How to use the web interface (Also under help on the mesh units too), it states:

Mesh Access Point considerations

When a device is configured in Mesh Access Point mode it is essentially 'transparent'. You are going through the device to reach a mesh node, and there is no need to get to the device unless you wish to change its configuration. When the time comes to reconfigure a device in this mode be aware that it is not running its own DHCP server because that is the job of the mesh node it is connected to. You will need some other way to configure your computer's network interface. There are two ways to do this:

1. Manual configuration
   Connect only your computer to the LAN port. Set your IP address to 172.27.0.100 and your netmask to 255.255.255.0. No other settings are needed.
2. Automatic configuration
   You will need another mesh node that is using NAT mode on its LAN, and using the default LAN IP address of 172.27.0.1. Both of these are required, otherwise this method will not work. Connect both your computer and the LAN of the Mesh Access Point to the LAN of the mesh node.

In this mode the default IP address on the LAN port is 172.27.0.2. After one of the above steps you should be able to send your browser to http://172.27.0.2:8080/. If you used automatic configuration you should also be able to go to http://localap:8080/. Like the name "localnode", an automatically generated name exists called "localap" which is set to the localnode address plus one, but only when the node LAN mode is set to NAT. If you changed the default IP address of a Mesh Access Point you will have to modify these instructions accordingly.

ok, done a really stupid thing.  successfully flashed the Linksys and created the mesh node....great! then I changed the mode to mesh access point and lost all connectivity to my Linksys.  I've read other posts where I need to establish a cat5 hard link to another mesh node before I can access the Linksys again.  I only have one Linksys and do not have access to another (yet).  is there a way I can do a hard reset back to defaults?? .....HELP!

thx!

Peter ve7ngp

I just use shutdown -h now. Those commands will work. PBX in a Flash is nothing more than FreePBX and Asterisk with a different user interface.