We have started to create a mesh in our city. Some significant
issues. The terrain (especially with tall buildings) means we need lots
of nodes for infrastructure. I am getting a strong 'have you build it
yet' from the local ham population.
How have other areas financed (or convinced the local hams) to be involved (AKA donate kit) ?
Unlike
a repeater which only needs 2 or 3 guys to do EVERYTHING, a mesh needs
to be a community project. What if the community is not ready? Do we
cancel and use the existing kit for other purposes or keep pushing
slowwwwwly forward? Even when we setup the packet nodes & PBBS 25
years ago, it was only a few hams that really got involved.
Any
words of wisdom are welcomed. Even doom and gloom are welcomed. Will
the mesh catch on with the general ham population or is this going to be
the pet project of a select few?
I can say I am seeing a bit of the same out where I am, though at the same time I am lucky in I'm seeing a selection of local operators whom are supporting the project as well.
ReplyDeleteOut here in San Diego where we have a significant terrain problem we are going with trying to get a backbone built first that we can feed off of to provide more localized access. This makes it s lot more like a typical repeater build in theory if you can find a high site that can feed out to lower level feeder nodes whom than provide acess out to users.
We still have to proceed and see how well this works out, but that is our concept right now out here. Once we have the backbone than it becomes s bit more of a build out and areas that want/need the network can invest.
The other item I see a lot of is explaining what can be done with the network, to many it is not obvious what benefit they have by moving to it, I think the key to this will be finding some unique content. I've been thinking of things like recording of meeting videos that may only be available via the mesh until they are a year old for those whom can't make club meetings, project documentation, etc.
I also suspect in our local case convincing the CERT (Community Emegrncy Response Team) and the other users of Winlink (send s 1mb file that should cause an issue) in our case will be where some of the build out will be.
Thought his is all speculation at this point we will have to wait and see how it actually plays out.
We have a similar situation here in New Zealand. Lots of hills and bumps etc. At the moment we have a map where we even list potential nodes. i.e. people that want to connect but have not committed. This seems to be drawing out hey I can connect to this person and we are almost at a point where we will get our first members all RF connected. Looking at VPN's between the more distant nodes until we can get some more momentum moving forward. We are also visiting clubs with a live demo and showing them the speed differences etc as well as a few examples of what the mesh can be used for. As for a backbone as soon as the M3 kit is supported we intend hopefully getting a few repeater sites licences and then run a 3Gig link as the backbone and downlink to 2.4G and 5.6G. Taken us two years to get to this point. The fact that we have worked out a deal with the local Ubiquity dealer has helped as we can supply the kit to HAM at a really good price. Perseverance and don't listen to the naysayers who say it is to hard etc... Nothing is too hard you just need to persevere on... All good things come with time.
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