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Land Ops - The Off Road, Navigation and Amateur Radio Search Club
Tim:
As to feed line and connectors: It looks like the antenna has some length of feed line attached although it's hard to tell for sure. However, if it is long enough to reach the node you could use an RP-SMA to RP-TNC adaptor. (That's also assuming you are using a Linksys WRT54GL or G router for your node - other routers have different antenna connectors.) Whatever you use, keep in mind that the feed line (coax) should be a short as possible - the loss at 2.4 Ghz is substantial.
John
I have another router on the way. I always like to have a spare and I'm pretty much alone here on this project. Got this one for $24 delivered.
I ordered a couple RP-TNC to Type N adapters. I have a lot of Type N connectors and jumpers laying around, and several types of coax, so it seemed the likely place to jump in.
I was thinking an 8dBi omni for the Bronco. Pretty good pattern, only 20"... might make a good general purpose mobile.
I now have 2 nodes set up and ready to go, and they see each other.
The 2 Yagi antennas have arrived and I have ordered the adapters for the router antenna connection to the Yagi.
Now working on setting up the camera on one node and laptop on the other.
This is fun, educational and has a useful purpose.
Cameras / Cameras
Any reviews from anyone on cameras?
Do the Foscam cameras work well and are they easy to set up?
Anyone have luck with any other cameras they want to comment on?
Thank you all for your help,
Tim
I have a Foscam FI8910W camera. It's only SD but it works great and fairly easy to set up on a MESH node (as detailed in a previous post on this forum). It has remote tilt and pan, but no zoom. I got it on Amazon and it was $60.
Regarding cameras...just remember that the Foscams are indoor cameras. This is ok in nice weather perhaps. I am assembling two nodes with poor weather in mind.
I'm still looking for an HD camera that is outdoor rated. My linksys router is in a Pelican case and my battery boxes are also weather resistant.
Imagine we get all our gear set up and we get high winds or rain.
I have a camera that I am using for testing purposes that requires an IP address so this is good, I think.
Node 1 Lan address is 10.213.219.9 Node 2 Lan address is 10.213.221.81 Subnet is 255.255.255.248
My question is what do I set the camera IP, Subnet and Gateway to?
I have tried several times and get an IP conflict
Tim, Can your camera use DHCP? If so, configure it to use DHCP (the config screen might say "get an IP address automatically"). Then start it up. To find out what address it has been assigned, go to your node's setup screen, click the link to "Port Forwarding, DHCP and Services" and it will show what address your camera has been assigned.
If you have to configure your camera manually, go to the node's setup screen, click the link to "Port Forwarding, DHCP and Services", find an unused IP address and reserve it for your camera, then go to your camera and use that IP address. The subnet mask should be 255.255.255.248 and the gateway is the LAN address of your node.
Russ
Russ,
Your a genius!! This old camera hos no ability for DHCP, Static only, so I did exactly as you said. Hooking up the laptop to the node the camera the camera was going to be on (Node 2) and going into the node setup / Port Forwarding and setting up an IP lease then going back into the camera set up and using that IP address. Then I moved the laptop to Node 1 and presto I have the camera on Node 2 and the laptop on Node 1 in a different part of the house and I'm watching the video on the laptop. Now to work on getting a good camera.
One other question: I see some of the cameras have an antenna and are wireless. Will the wireless part on these routers still work for data as well as serving the MESH? I realize the wireless part of the router is no longer the same as the LAN.
Thank you,
Tim,
The wireless web cams don't use the same wireless protocols as the mesh nodes (they use the same wireless protocols as your PC). They cannot connect wirelessly to the mesh node; they can only connect to a mesh node via ethernet cable UNLESS you have setup a separate wireless access point that is connected to your node.
The separate wireless access point would be connected to your mesh node by ethernet cable (the LAN port on the mesh node connects to the WAN port on the access point) and then its wireless signals could be used by your PC and a wireless IP camera. It gets complicated because if you try to access the camera from across the mesh, you would have to connect across the mesh, through the host node to the wireless access point, then to the camera.
