So Cal Free Net.org

Today volunteers from SoCalFreeNet got together and installed two new nodes at the Mercado Apartment complex. It was also a great training day, with three volunteers lending a hand for the first time. Many thanks to Ben, David, Doug, Drew, Jason, Marc and Pascal for providing their valuable time and expertise!

These two nodes are also a change for us. We had originally planned to simply repeat our node 1 and node 2 installations, but with new equipment coming onto the market all the time, and new software updates becoming available, we decided to try something new. Plus, we like experimenting! Go directly to the photos, or keep reading.

Marc and Justin installed the mounting plate which holds the satellite dish style mounting pole. Its important to get this level as when you add a mast and antenna any slight deviation is very obvious!

Doug climbs the ladder. Its one way to get exercise - there is lots of ladding climbing on most installs.

We bundled up the excess cable and fastened it to the wall. We probably could have cut this shorter, but you never know. The black box is the PoE injector that adds power to unused pins on the Cat-5 cable to power the rooftop box. There's no traffic on this cable, just power, so the other connector is unused.

A view of the completed Netgate 802.11a relay. From top to bottom is the base of the 802.11b downtilt omni, then an 802.11a panel antenna which terminate in the right and left site top N bulkhead connectors respectively. The silver box contains the WRAP 2C board with a 200mW Senao 802.11b radio card and a CM9 Atheros-based a/b/g card running in 802.11a mode. At the bottom, the white cable is an outdoor rated ethernet Cat-5 cable which provides power. It and the gold grounding wire go back through the grey conduit to a ground level utility cabinet.

Jason uses some spare ground wire to sense if the newly installed AP is now active and running ok. He had some trouble clicking through the captive portal page. Maybe a couple more turns of ground wire would have made that easier?

Safety note: This is meant to be funny! We certainly don't recommend sitting this close to an active radio (even though there are no known effects from the very low power that these radios emit - 200mW vs 600mW for cell phones).

David and Doug (left to right) were our ground crew for the Node 3 and Node 4 installations. They handled the messy details of routing the cable once it reached the ground and terminating the ground wire and routing the cat-5 into the utility cabinet where was connected to the PoE injector to power the rooftop radio.

This 12V plug pack goes to the PoE injector to provide power to the rooftop radio. True PoE uses 48v, but the WRAP boards need between 7-18VDC and 12V can easily travel the < 100ft required for this installation. The wiring was tidied up later.

In a wet climate you can't get away with this, but in San Diego we generally get so little rain that the downspouts are exposed at ground level. In this location we use this to route the ethernet and ground wire from the rooftop to ground level. This saves the eyesore of mounting it to the wall - as well as the time and effort!

Netgate / Mini-Box based 802.11a relay / 802.llb node.