flight4
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- Jan 21, 2009
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Well, I'm stoked. I spent some of the long weekend building the four field boxes and attending to other details such as fabricating RP-SMA extension cables. I was able to get all the circuits configured and it's all working!
Tonight I had to program the wireless radios. That was interesting because the newer radios I bought had firmware two releases ahead of what I have been using. So I had to back level the radios first, and then load the configurations for the net controller and the router nodes.
Since these are two side by side 8 pad wireless networks I had to vary the parameters a little bit. The good news is everything is working great. I previously tested all the hardware using the radios from my testbed. So I knew that all worked.
The new radios establish two all new AES encrypted mesh networks. Of course some work did go into developing those original configurations. Minor tweaks is all that was needed to create the new networks. The photos show everything up and working side by side. Though it's hard to tell. I did light a few home made ignitors to try it out.
The field boxes are not in their "boxes" yet. and they have some temporary stubby antennas attached to the radios vs the higher gain external antennas. Great for testing. Two of the field boxes have battery harnesses for the internal 14.8v LiPo batteries, or they can use external batteries. The other two are set up for external batteries.
So still some more work to do. Adding mounting brackets to the field boxes to hold it all together is yet another challenge to overcome.
Tonight I had to program the wireless radios. That was interesting because the newer radios I bought had firmware two releases ahead of what I have been using. So I had to back level the radios first, and then load the configurations for the net controller and the router nodes.
Since these are two side by side 8 pad wireless networks I had to vary the parameters a little bit. The good news is everything is working great. I previously tested all the hardware using the radios from my testbed. So I knew that all worked.
The new radios establish two all new AES encrypted mesh networks. Of course some work did go into developing those original configurations. Minor tweaks is all that was needed to create the new networks. The photos show everything up and working side by side. Though it's hard to tell. I did light a few home made ignitors to try it out.
The field boxes are not in their "boxes" yet. and they have some temporary stubby antennas attached to the radios vs the higher gain external antennas. Great for testing. Two of the field boxes have battery harnesses for the internal 14.8v LiPo batteries, or they can use external batteries. The other two are set up for external batteries.
So still some more work to do. Adding mounting brackets to the field boxes to hold it all together is yet another challenge to overcome.