On Jul 7, 2004, at 16:02, Bill Pitz wrote:
>> But as I recall, getting more than a bar or two of digital cell signal
>> in the barn is tough enough, and I'm sure there's nothing at all down
>> in the stream.
>
> That problem could be solved pretty easily. I probably have enough
> wireless gear sitting around the office to make that work. With
> enough creativity (and amplifiers.. hehehe) you could set up a series
> of 802.11 relays that would at least suffice to bring 1mbit
> connectivity wherever you were. Given that it wouldn't have to be a
> permanent setup, you could run the individual relays on batteries.
>
> You could also mount a fairly high gain antenna in one of the
> vehicles, get that linked up, and then provide access to all of the
> other vehicles through that.
>
I had thought about using base stations in the field, and I had thought
about using amps and cantennas, but I'd only thought of the cantennae
in the trucks, where it would be tough (impossible) to keep them
aligned, and there is also the line-of-sight issue since the terrain is
far from flat. However, if you had a fixed network of repeaters, using
unidirectional antennae would work well and be possible. That leaves
the only problem being powering them.
my netgear router doesn't tell me it's power draw, by my Apple airport
base station says it draws 1.25a at (conveniently) 12v. 1.25 amps for
a 12 hour day of use makes 15 amp-hours; for the entirety of
festivities, say noon thursday through noon sunday, that's 3 days/72
hours, that would make for 90 amp-hours.
An Exide 75DT has about 40 amp hours - it's one of their lower rated
starting batteries. an Exide ST8DDC400, one of their higher-end deep
cycle marine & RV batteries, is rated to 165 amp hours. The Optimia
red-top in my truck is rated to 50 ah, and the Optima yellow-top deep
cycle batteries are either 55 or 75 ah rated.
In short, power wouldn't be too tough to provide with just one good
battery per base. With that Exide deep cycle, if it was charged daily,
you could hold up a couple base stations and an amplifiers without any
trouble at all: it would take almost a 14 amp draw to kill it in 12
hours.
Of course this wouldn't be cheap to set up.... My vision of the
infrastructure would be repeaters with uni-antennae in trees, high
enough to "see" the barn or house (or another repeater), and a paired
repeater with a amplified omni-antenna to provide coverage for the
surrounding 6-800 feet. With as much land as we're dealing with,
that's quite formidable. I'd think one each for the mud pit area, the
longest 100, mud lane, slippery hill and the upper falls. The lower
falls would also be desirable, but may be too much to ask for
considering what I recall the topography to be between there and 'base
camp'.
It's pretty simple in a small scale, but remember that we're dealing
with a huge area. Going from my GPS tracks, the area is .5 miles wide,
.6 miles tall, has elevation extremes of 680 feet at the lower falls to
just over 1000 feet at the top of slippery hill, and the farthest point
from the barn is just over half a mile.
Definitely could be done, and pretty quickly. Just not quite as easily
as you first might think <g>
-- Michael Maskalans <http://mike.tepidcola.com/> mobile.612.618.4652 home.585.935.7129 fax.954.697.0487
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