Snowpocalypse and RV WiFi

I was more than a little surprised that Apple consider "snowpocalypse" to be a real enough word that it didn't try and autocorrect to something else. I guess if it's on Wikipedia it must be a real word. There have been predictions of doom and gloom going around Alaska from the Bering Sea into the interior. Blizzard conditions. The snow is easy to deal with but if it gets really windy, a lot of the shallow rooted trees may topple and take out power lines (and Internet cable!). The plastic straight edge on the deck rail, in the cat tree view, is about 16" long and they are predicting another 8" or so for this afternoon and evening. The plow on the truck made pretty quick work of our driveway but I kind of wish that I had put tire chains on yesterday. The subdivision road hasn't been plowed yet but we are probably pretty far down the list.

As you can see in this map from the Alaska Dispatch, Fairbanks is really on the edge of the storm. It hasn't really snowed much around here since this morning. Some places near the Bering Sea got really hit pretty hard with freezing rain on top of snow. This combined with strong winds. So far, we haven't seen the strong winds that everyone was afraid of around here.

7:15pm: The NWS is reporting that the "main event" will show up tonight by 8pm.

8:02pm: Now revised to 9pm.

1:40am: 25 mph winds. No snow on the trees anymore. Hopefully the wind will die down soon...

5:30am: Still some occasional gusts.

Lots of power outages overnight. 

Wi-Fi Repeater

So what do you do when sitting inside on a snowy day. I chose to revisit the configuration of the Ubiquity devices that I had picked up from Amazon a few months ago. These devices will be used to extend campground or other "free Wifi" into the RV. The "Router" configuration option was missing from the NanoStation LocoM2. I downloaded and installed the newest v6.0 firmware and the missing option is now magically available. I configured the NanoStation as a router (not SohoRouter which was there before) and I could now select the wireless side as the WAN interface which is what faces the Internet. I then started the DHCP server service which supplies IP addresses to the wired side. The "2" in the name refers to the frequency that the radio operates. I.e. 2.4 GHz only so it is 8.2.11B/G only. But that is sort of the lowest common denominator as far as open WiFi.

From the antenna sensitivity plot off of the Ubiquity website, you can see that the antenna is nominally directional so the front just needs to be roughly aimed towards the base station antenna. A common mounting point is on the fold down TV antenna that most RVs seem to have. When the previous owner replaced the roof, he didn't bother reinstalling the antenna since it was for the old analog frequencies. Since the folding antenna also rotates, it would've been a convenient place to install the NanoStation. Maybe I'll attach it to the rear roof ladder with some sort of easy way to rotate it. Or maybe just reinstall the base and fold down mechanism of the old TV antenna.

The next piece to be setup is the wireless bridge, the Ubiquity AirGateway. I had never even heard of this option until Dom mentioned it. There is also a model with an small antenna attached for more range for your internal WiFi. This device snaps onto the NanoStation PoE (Power over Ethernet) power supply and is essentially a tiny WiFi router. On the picture, it is attached to the power supply and makes up the right third with the Ethernet cables attached. Before I had set up the AirGateway as a router and the NanoStation could only be set up as a bridge which, to me, was not optimal. The AirGateway is now set up as a bridge and the IP address of both devices are on the same subnet. The NanoStation will be placed on the roof of the RV somewhere with an outdoor rated Ethernet cable run into the rig to the AirGateway. When inside the RV, your devices (phones, tablets, laptops, etc.) would always be configured to access the SSID of the AirGateway and not the campground WiFi.

Upon arrival at a campground, you connect to the NanoStation management interface and select the "Wireless" tab. Click on the "Select" button and a window will open showing all of the 2.4 GHz networks that it can see along with the signal level. If the campground has multiple access points, you just select the one with the most signal.

If there is a WiFi password, you enter it in in the Wireless Security portion of the same page. You then click the Change button which is the same as save/commit/restart. The NanoStation will then restart and should be ready to go in about a minute or so. This is not as plug-and-play as some of the commercial products such as a Wifi Ranger which have a lot of additional features but this is about ⅛ the cost. I'll deal with the additional hassle. Plus, I have a lot of experience with Ubiquity products from the Barrow project. Also note that this is for WiFi only and not cellular data. Different equipment would be needed to boost cellular data. I haven't decided whether I need access to cellular data

It's Back...

The weather in Barrow is always changing. Last night at 10pm, the sun was shining brightly without a cloud in the sky. This morning, it was snowing. Oh well, not the best day to be out and about working outdoors. I am testing a replacement outdoor point-to-multipoint wireless network for interconnecting buildings that house research. This includes some that are several miles away.

The first step was to install the base station and a panel antenna (90° horizontal, 4° vertical, 20db gain) on the roof of the Barrow Arctic Science Center (BARC). The diamond shaped antenna right above it is the eight year old system that I'm looking at replacing. I roughly aimed the antenna horizontally and used a bit more care for the vertical axis. There was a 20+ mph wind and it felt pretty cold in the time it took to install and adjust the antenna. I then drove around the NARL campus to measure signal level and throughput. I was pleasantly surprised that it worked just about everywhere I tried it taking very little care with antenna location. I even used it last night from my "hut" with the antenna hanging on the curtain rod in the kitchen (no line of sight to the base station).

After that successful test, I reoriented the base station antenna due south towards the Barrow Environmental Observatory (BEO). I drove south as far as the road was open and reran my tests. This picture shows how much care I put into antenna positioning. With this setup 5.6km from the BARC, the system was still reporting 60 mbps of throughput.

This is the wonderful view from my test location looking due north with the BARC around ⅓ of the way from the left edge of the photo. Out here, the wind was really blowing so I didn't spend too much time outdoors. I was able to run the radio off of a small UPS and could have easily converted it to run off of the truck 12v outlet. Hmmm, new afternoon project.

For the true geek types, the radios even have a spectrum analyzer function so you can see what other radios are out there. Here, the upper section of the band is lightly used so that is what the system selected for its own use. Pretty cool!