FINALLY  received my SF-245SPR-R mobile 2.4GHz antenna yesterday.  I come to find out the military has been using these for a while.  I can say this thing is very neat.  About 1" in diameter and about 18" long. SWEEEEEET.  

K2QY 

Just a thought, for any in the future who might try this same thing and run into the same problems, is when you fix something, list WHAT fixed it/what you had to do to get it working  :-)

I know how frustrating it can be when I am working a project, run into a problem, google it, and all I get are either "Me too", "I fixed it", "or the dreaded "Why would you want to do that?" posts, with no meat that helps solve it.

I also know how it feels when you have been working some evenings on something, and then it all comes together and works.Great job  !!

Jim

K5KTF

Why run a CAT5? On the tower I am planning to put my node on with a battery pack and solar panel. The in the house I will run another node which will link me to the higher node. I suppose if you will be running POE that would be the reason.

Edit: Sorry brain a bit foggy today you wanted to run POE... duh... I'll go back to my corner and keep quiet. ;-)

I did a little more equipment testing today, this time across a 20.3 mile span. This was out in the desert, so there was very little interference from wifi, microwave ovens, etc. We started with a Hyperlink 19dbi grid antenna at each end. We were barely able to connect. It was pretty windy, which made it hard to keep them pointed precisely at each other. We then added a 500 mW amplifier at one end. That made the connection much more stable. Then we added a 1000 mW amplifier at the other end. That made the connection very reliable despite the antennas bouncing around a little in the wind. Bandwidth was good enough for video chatting.

I then replaced one of the grid antennas with a MFJ-1800 Yagi. The connection strength was noticeably less than with the grid antenna, but it was much more stable in the wind. I then tried replacing the MFJ-1800 with a $9 Chinese Yagi and we were barely able to connect.

So the lessons I took away from today's experiments were:

1. The grid dish antennas are hard to beat, but you've got to mount them in a way that stabilizes them in the wind.

2. You get what you pay for (i.e. the cheap Chinese antenna).

3. 500 or 1000 mW amplifiers can make a big difference.

We also made a solid connection between a grid dish and a 37" omnidirectional antenna across a 7.5 mile span. I was pleased to see an omni work at that distance.

After successfully loading the HSMM firmware on the WRT54G v2 and v4 I bought off eBay, I moved on to a WRT54GL v1.1 I was given.   The other two had the stock Linksys GUI and were no problem, the GL has DD-WRT v24-sp2 (07/21/09) vpn.  After a 30-30-30 and changing the UN and PW to be able to get to Administration -> Firmware Upgrade and browsing to the .bin, my browser (Firefox 21) will give me a "Connection  Reset" page after about a second.  I can remove the /upgrade.cgi from the url (or close the page and enter 192.168.1.1 in a new one) and I'm back at the DD-WRT Control Panel/System Information.  I've tried installing the HSMM and Linksys .bin for the correct model/version using the DD-WRT interface with the same result.

I found these directions   http://infodepot.wikia.com/wiki/Linksys_WRT54GL_v1.1   and using the current Linksys firmware (since the one there is a dead link) but if a static ip and power-cycling is supposed to get me a Linksys web gui and not the DD-WRT page wanting me to change the default UN & PW, it's not happening.

Any guidance before I wear out the AC outlet unplugging and plugging the wall-wart?  Thanks!

David,

   Not sure what you mean that 'GPRMC data is only accurate to the minute (no seconds are provided)' because the standard is to provide the time to 1/100th of a second. At worst this might be off by a good portion of second which is basically "transmit time" via RS-232 at 4800-bps.

For example:

    $GPRMC,225446.33,A....(rest of sentence deleted)

This translates to 22:54:46.33 UTC (HHMMSS.ss). Your script should add a check of the gps_state and look for 'A' or 'D' to see if the GPS has a valid fix. If the state is either letter (probably only need 'A' unless you have the GPS config'd for a differential GPS input) then the time in the time field is valid and you can use it to set the system's time.

Let me know if I can help. I was working on one of the earliest GPS's receivers back in 1982-83 at Texas Instruments and the USAF only had 6 sat's in orbit to use and only four them worked reliably. :)

    -Rusty-

Jim, There are two serial ports but they are 3.3v levels, not RS-232, so depending on what you want to hook up you may need a TTL-to-RS232 converter. Keep in mind that one of the serial ports is the console and is pretty much useless for attaching anything to it because all the boot messages will be output to your attached device when the '54G boots up. This will probably confuse the heck out of that device

If you want to access both of your devices, repeater controller and a packet node, with the same mesh node, you can tie one of them to serial port 1 (port 0 is the console). If you need RS-232 for either of these devices then you will NEED the TTL-to-RS232 converter such as https://www.sparkfun.com/products/133. Sparkfun has a variety of these so look around their website.

Another possibility, although it tends to be a bit more pricey, is an Ethernet-to-RS232 adapter. A few of those around. I've used the one from Netmedia (http://netmedia.com/siteplayer/telnet/index.html) with great success. The neat thing about these units is that anything can come in through the net and connect to the attached RS-232 device with a simple telnet program! Still, these aren't very cheap so another WRT54G and its serial port might fit your budget better for a second device.

If your '54G model can handle the USB hardware mod that Jim/K5KTF likes to "go off" about... :) you can use USB-to-RS232 converters as well. This will require you to download a package or two from our repository but you'll hafta ask "The Other Jim" (K5KTF) how those work out.

Just some possibilities!

    -Rusty-

Success !

Chalk it up to operator error and 55 plus year old eyes. Yes, it was my typo.  No space between the equal sign and the node name in the server config file.  Been a lot of years since I dabbled around with Linux and the vi editor.  Had forgotten how unforgiving they can be. Typo? No problem, we'll just sit here and do nothing till you figure out your mistake... ha...

Anyway, thanks to those who took the time to offer suggestions while I was pulling out what hair I have left.  At least now the IRC Server is up and working across the MESH Network and both clients can connect and exchange information in the chat.

The "Take-away" from this; always double check your edits for typos ! They will drive you nuts !

David, guess we have a club meeting this Thursday.  You going to be able to make it?

Thanks again,