[CUWiN] Node Architecture

[David Young]

On Thu, Jul 08, 2004 at 05:19:42PM +0100, 0023264 wrote:
> Hello,
>  
> My name is William Kent and I am a postgraduate student in the
> University of Limerick (www.ul.ie/wireless), Ireland. I am working in
> Wireless Telecommunications and I am researching and comparing various
> Wireless Communities with the view of establishing a similar community
> in my University. I was wondering if you had any documents relating to
> the construction of the nodes that are being utilised in the Urbana
> project. I'm looking for as much information as I can on the
> construction of the nodes and what led to choosing certain hardware
> (i.e. the Soekris boards).

William, if you are 0023264, then who is 0000001?

Sascha made some great photo documentation of node construction here,
http://www.cuwireless.net/node_setup.html.  We use a Metrix kit from
www.metrix.net.  We add an 8dBi omni antenna, attach everything to an
antenna mast, and strap the antenna mast to a chimney.

The Soekris boards are compact, uncomplicated, and exceptionally robust.
They have all of the I/O ports we need in our application, and then some:
ethernet, MiniPCI & Cardbus card slots, serial, and General Purpose I/O.
They draw very little power, and they can tap power off of an ethernet
port---we run power and data on the same cable up to the chimney.
The 100MHz 486 CPU is not very powerful , but we don't need for it to be.

Twice we have used the "ammo-can router" I built (a Soekris board inside
a surplus ammo can makes a cheap airtight enclosure for a Soekris board).
Here and there we have also made an old desktop computer into a node.
We just put in a bootable CD-ROM with our software on it.  We have put
desktop nodes into attics and closets.

Dave

-- 
David Young             OJC Technologies
dyoung at ojctech.com      Urbana, IL * (217) 278-3933