Well, my enclosure came in today. The only issue is the measurements that were posted are for the outside of the box, not the inside. So I will have to find a bigger box to put the node in.I have not got the antenna yet, so hopefully that will turn out better than the enclosure did. I am glad to hear that there is a plan in place for a well placed node. I would love to pick up something other than my neighbors wifi. Jake KD7VEA

Here's an update for those who have been wondering. We're currently making plans to put mesh nodes up on the repeater sites on Lake Mountain and West mountain. Trips are being planned in the next month or so and I'm awaiting approval for the West Mountain site but haven't heard back from the site owner yet. We're hoping these two nodes will be able to link the valley together since most areas should have line-of-sight to one of these two locations. Based on calculated coverage maps, it's anticipated a third site will be needed somewhere in the Squaw Peak area but we'll need to determine that after we validate the true coverage of those two sites.

On a side note, my node has been moved to 30 ft and has a clear view of both mountain sites and most of the valley. The cable run's aren't complete yet, but should be done in the next day or two and I'll let you all know when it's active again.

Well, it won't have 20 dBi now, you let the magic smoke out when you opened the sealed cover.

Thanks for the picture.  I don't think I've seen a 2.4 GHz antenna in the raw like that before.

Well I received my antennas, and they look pretty cheap.  What do you expect for $6 and change.

I don't know enough to comment particularly authoritatively, but I thought some of you might have an opinion or insight into what is going on with this antenna.

The antenna is made from hard plastic like ABS or something rather than the hard rubber one would expect.  The gray cover snaps into place with plastic connectors.  There is a simple dab of glue at the tip to connect it there.  The detents in the joint engage nicely, and should hold reasonably securely at vertical, 45 or 90.  The only label on the whole thing is a small sticker that says 2.4g inside the joint.

From there I will let the photography speak.

Here are some photos:

I have some 9dbi Linksys antennas, and this is about the same length.  My guess is it is probably closer in performance to those, though you never know.  Perhaps there is some magic sprinkled in there I have missed :)

KE7YKP

Quite a few people take the covers off the router anyway when they mount them in an enclosure.

There is work in progress to put a node on Lake Mountain.

Got a link, model number, etc.?

I was wondering if anyone has tried something like packing a node up to the top of west mountain, and seeing if anyone can link up to it down in the valley?  I know for most of us, we would be line of sight, but would the distance bee too much?  it doesn't seem like it would be to hard, or expensive to setup a node somewhere like that. a high gain omni, a small battery, and a solar panel,  after that, its just a matter of getting permission to place it on the hill (I have not messed with repeater sites, so I don't know but maybe that's the hardest part.  It just seems like with a good directional antenna here in the valley, that a good number of us could link up to the same network.  I would love to hear some thoughts on this subject.

Jake

KD7VEA

I think the CQ article mentioned that the encryption scheme would have to be documented, but we wouldn't have to publish they key.  Then again, it would need to be published somewhere if we want people to actually get on the network, so whether or not it's right about that doesn't really matter.

I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that a self-signed SSL certificate would work.  The first time you went to the SSL-protected page your browser would complain about the cert not being from a trusted authority, but if you accept the cert anyway you won't get that error again until it expires, or if someone tries to do a man-in-the-middle attack in which case you can simply choose to not accept it.  The initial accepting of the certificate could be done by the user right after flashing the firmware, presumably while plugged in with a cable.  This wouldn't quite be as streamlined as having a CA, but I think it would get the job done.

As for connecting, the nodes use OLSR to negotiate routes and addresses, but other than that it's basically a normal ad-hoc network.  You can still connect and either sit there with no IP and watch the traffic, or just pick a random IP.  All you need then is a packet sniffer - I just tried connecting to the mesh with my laptop, and was able to sniff a root password being send from one of my WRT54Gs to the other. 

I agree that under most cases, the mesh wouldn't really be much of a target, especially since it despite what I said earlier if someone blindly tries to connect they won't get very far without OLSR.  Regardless, getting on and listening around isn't the most difficult thing, and doesn't necessarily take a lot of skill.  If someone was really intent on disrupting things it would not be that far out of reach.  I do like the openness of the network, in that it is easy for anyone to join in, so I would not really agree with using something like WPA or WEP.  But we should probably be careful of critical parts of the mesh infrastructure, like the configuration page.

Today I succeded in install TeamTalk 4 Server onto a Raspberry Pi and make it available through the HSMM-Mesh network.  More details later, must attend a meeting now.

What I took from the CQ article is that it depends on why you're encrypting the traffic.  They mentioned network security and access control, and also repeater control codes.  This sticks  out to me because not only is a mesh node basically a repeater, but the admin pages for each one are unencrypted.  When you log in, the root password for that node is going over the air in plain text.  (Of course, something like WPA would prevent the casual listener from seeing this, but if the key could be obtained or cracked somehow, this would be moot.)

I think that using SSL for the admin page (ie, giving it an https:// url) would be a wise idea.  It would require some work on the firmware, which I am looking into, but I think it could be done technically.  Without it, there is the possibility of a casual WiFi sniffer to lift the password and tamper with a node.  If the mesh is being used for something like emergency communications a measure like this would be very important for the stability of the network.  Of course, the workaround is to just access the admin page only through a wired connection and never through the mesh, but this could be impractical for a remote site.