No news

I've basically got WiFi on the backburner these days - lots of other things happening in my life.

I will get back to it - possibly - if/when I buy a house here and can make a more permanent setup.

Here's a decent page on building a parabolic dish: http://www.rootshell.be/~youtensi/

Dave

Slack

Believe it or not - I am still not connected
Yes I am the world's biggest slacker
In my defence I was overseas from May to July

At the moment I am looking at strapping a 19dBi grid to one of my palm trees

Dave

Wet Season Hiatus / Email Address Change

For those of you that are not aware; I live in the tropics of Australia. Darwin to be precise. It seems that the already slow and relaxed pace of Darwin comes to a virtual standstill during this time of year.

The same can be said for my current wifi-related activities.

All of the projects listed below are still happening, it's just that they're all on hold until it dries up a bit here.

By all means email me with any queries, my response time in that department has not suffered any seasonal slowdown!

Note that due to excessive spam to my old email address, it is now: 0305wifi at the domain name of this page.

Dave

Happy Hannukah

I have got as far as sourcing connectors and collecting prices.

EXCEPT for Lucent MC type connectors.
(For micro-coax connections into PCMCIA cards)

Does anyone have any info on Australian sources for these?
Or any decent pages on modifying the cards to accept other RF connector types?

No progress on other stuff due to work, beer and girl commitments.

One good thing is that I ended up finding a mast...buried in my front yard.
This is really a MAST though...really, as in it came from a boat of some kind.

But I am not fussy, it's 6-7 metres long, aluminium, and will lash nicely to a pole at the front of my house.

May end up being a lot easier than a freestanding 12 metre monstrosity...IF it is high enough to suit my needs.

Anyway, forget about reading any amazing new stuff here in the next 2 weeks or so..will be working/beering/skirt-chasing for a while longer.

For those of you not in Darwin, it may interest you to know that the wet season has arrived....
In hopefully unrelated news, the relay we built recently has just stopped working (today). I am praying it's just a breaker issue related to the shockingly bad power we seem to have in Darwin....won't know until we go topside, hopefully tomorrow.

Fingers crossed the Linksys WRT54GS and the Minitar APs are not water-damaged or cooked in some way..

See you in 2005

Dave

Almost there

Recent purchases:

2 * 802.11a and a/b ORiNOCO PCMCIA cards.
1 * New LCD screen for the wardiving laptop (Thanks Dad!)
2 * Cushcraft unity gain (2dBi) omnidirectionals

Soon to be purchased:

Assorted connectors and adaptors to allow me to connect any AP/card to any antenna under test.

Soon to be built:

Reference rig using 2 tripods and one of the above omnis.
This will be utilised for testing homebrew antennas for gain and radiation patterns.
It will have degree-adjustable azimuth, a scope and laser for alignment.

Mobile setup using second Cushcraft antenna. Used for mobile site-surveying of various relays around the traps.

If you are in Darwin or it's surrounds, drop me a line. There is a LOT of interest in WiFi connectivity here, you never know who may live close to you and be prepared to chip in towards setting up a relay.

As always, check DW for news, but if you don't get satisfaction there, contact me and I will see if I can help you out.

In other news....

No joy on a tower yet, I have one lined up but the owner has not gotten back to me yet. I don't want to push the issue; so it may be a while before I am properly on the air.

Have been playing with SNMP monitoring of our Linksys routers, also doing some PHP integration of retrieved SNMP stats into html pages.

Check out: this weird thing

They're trading on us!

Happy Holidays to you all..

Dave

Millner, Darwin, N.T, Australia

Here's a link to the project I have been working on for the last 3 or so weeks:

Millner Pics.

Hopefully I have enough pics to do up a small piece on the construction of the relay.

Basically it comprises of 1 * Linksys routing AP and one Minitar AP in client mode for the backbone link.

The Linksys will eventually be used to route between segments (on different directional antennas, each with their own Minitar). It also drives the omni for loacl client connections.

Next is to get my place up as a client, or alternatively as an additional (routing) backbone node.

The plan is to have redundant routes in a roughly triangular cell topology.

Hopefully we will be implementing OSPF and maybe ETX or similar intelligent routing protocols.

Dave.

Still here, still active

Hi fellow geeks.

I haven't disappeared off the face of the RF spectrum just yet...but have been skirting around the edges a bit.

Last month had the wok-style antennas in Silicon Chip magazine here in Oz, looked basically like a reprint of Stan-the-Man's NZ webpage (See link somewhere below, if you didn't already jump here from there)

Latest project is a repeater setup for Darwin Wireless. It's going to have 2 * Minitar APs, 1 * Linksys AP/router (running Linux). This setup will do away with the need for a dedicated router PC, as it all gets routed through the Linksys.

I am building a weatherproof enclosure (gets kinda wet up here) with a custom power-over-ethernet solution (PoE).

Basically it will go: 240VAC>>30VAC>>240VAC>>12VDC

Souund overly complicated and inefficient?

It probably is, but it will also be super-reliable and easily repaired with off-the shelf parts.

I thought about passive PoE, but it sounds too dodgy for my liking, especially when you consider stuff like line regulation under differing load conditions.

The general consensus amongst DW members is that PoE should be avoided, but I personally think that this is just a product of past experience with badly conceived homebrew setups, or one of the many cheap off-the-shelf solutions.

Hopefully I will be all finished and actually wirelessly connected with the next 2 weeks.

(The repeater is to be sited on the top floor of a 5-storey apartment building near to me)

I am documenting the build as I go...so I will post a summary here when it is finished.

If anyone has any questions, feel free to drop me a mail.

Dave