[Mesh] Solar Wi-fi Repeater?

[Valent Turkovic]

@Gallo, I haven't bought these devices yet because I saw on Mikrotik
forums lots of people having trouble with these devices even at 50m
LOS. But I'm still curious and will get them sometime in the future an
test them.

On Tue, Apr 3, 2018 at 8:53 PM, G Gallo <ggallo102 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Super awesome proposal Max, I'm happy to help facilitate the development of
> these prototypes as involves People's Open. I can help make sure the sudowrt
> firmware works with whatever antennas you end up settling on (I have a
> Nanostation Loco M2 I've been meaning to test).
>
> Also something that may be of interest to you is the Mikrotik Wireless Wire,
> https://mikrotik.com/product/wireless_wire
>
> They are supposed to be very easy to setup, come in pairs, are relatively
> cheap ($200 for a pair). While they are meant for short throws (~100m LOS)
> and operate in the 60GHz spectrum, they do provide a full duplex gigabit
> wireless link. Might be something to consider depending on how you plan on
> deploying these repeaters. I've been meaning to order a few to see how
> People's Open could use them.
>
> -grant
>
> On Mon, Apr 2, 2018 at 6:28 PM, Max Schwartz <maxschwartziv at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> Ok, here's what I'm thinking.  The solar repeater would be more of a
>> temporary (months?) solution for people outside of the mesh's radius that
>> want in.  It would be a link that mostly works during the day and sunny ones
>> at that.  The people in the repeater chain would receive mesh internet for
>> some period if they want a permanent solution they can contact peoplesopen
>> and integrate with a home node.  If not, we can always move the repeater
>> chain and try a new mesh tendril.
>>
>> A solar repeater would be much quicker to set up, could be done with a 2
>> person team, and you wouldn't need to interact with the homeowner or go
>> inside their house.  Possibly as short a setup as 30min vs 2hrs to to
>> integrate a home node.
>>
>> Nanostation Loco M2 averages 3-4W? That's great news!  The panel probably
>> needs to stay fixed at the 20W size, anything larger than that seems too
>> expensive and cumbersome to carry and mount without additional hardware.
>>
>> Definitely need remote voltage and current monitoring Valent, good call.
>> Are we sure that MPPT is the way to go over PWM?  Cost reasons number 1, but
>> I was worried that the additional micro-controller would eat the power that
>> was gained in increased efficiency for a low power application like this.
>>
>> Jenny, I'm putting 2 of these together as a proof of concept, if the mesh
>> wants to cover expenses I won't say no :)
>>
>> On Mon, Apr 2, 2018 at 11:58 AM, Valent Turkovic
>> <valent at otvorenamreza.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> Max consider also adding INA219 voltage and current monitor. You can
>>> connect it via i2c bus to most OpenWrt devices, or add additional ESP8266
>>> that will use INA219 chip to monitor current and voltage.
>>> If you don't have some kind of remote monitoring you will regret it
>>> later, I talk from experience :)
>>>
>>> Also using Grafana is great for this, you can see one of our latest
>>> setups:
>>> https://imgur.com/a/Z9qhk
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> Valent.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Max Schwartz
>> maxschwartziv at gmail.com
>> 314-578-4503
>>
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>
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