Monthly Update - November / December 2022
This month we look at maps, old and new, as well as AREDNs tentative steps towards new hardware. And the wiki goes global.
All the Maps
Maps play a crucial role when setting up your first node or just keeping tabs on how the Bay Area Mesh is growing. Over time we’ve added different kinds of maps, letting hams explore the mesh in different ways. Here are a few you may already use, and some others you may find helpful or interesting.
Basic Map
The basic node map is probably familiar to most people and is found at sfmap.xojs.org. This map shows the locations of all the nodes in SFWEM/BAM and the links between them. Selecting nodes tells you more about them; their frequency, description and bearings to their neighbors. Selecting a particular band icon in the top/right menu lets you limit which paths are displayed to just that type.
The map is rebuilt once an hour, and remembers nodes for 7 days. Just because a node might be unreachable for an hour or two, we didn’t want it to disappear immediately.
It’s a great starting point to explore the mesh and work out where to point your latest node.
Compass Map
When setting up a first node at a new location, it is obviously useful to know what other nodes are in the area which might offer a connection and what direction to point the new node. The compass map helps to make this easy. This map is for your iPhone or Android (not as useful on a laptop) and can be found at https://sfmap.xojs.org/compass/.
Using the phone’s GPS, this map shows a set of local node bearings from your current location. It also uses the phone's compass to orient the map to the direction you're pointing, making it easy to work out what nodes are in which direction. It’s not perfect of course - maybe there’s a tree in the way - but it still makes the setup process much easier.
Backbone Map
The Bay Area Mesh is gradually adding a backbone network; a connected, redundant set of nodes connected by high-bandwidth radios. You can see these connections marked as dotted green lines on the basic map, and red lines on the Google Earth map (more on that in a moment). Because we want to monitor not just the existence of the backbone connections but also their health, we created a separate map sfbackbone.xojs.org.
Google Earth
Our last map is also our latest. The Google Earth map was created by KJ6WEG and lets you view our nodes and the connections between them on the ubiquitous Google globe. This is super handy if you want to get a better idea of the terrain you might be dealing with when placing and sighting a node.
Unlike other maps, the Google Earth map is a little tricker to use. Hopefully these instructions will get you on your way:
- Download https://sfmap.xojs.org/earth/SFWEM-BAM-Mesh-Map.kml. This file isn't the actual map data, but automatically loads the latest map data when opened in Google Earth. You never need to download this again and your map will always be up to date.
- Open Google Earth https://earth.google.com
- Select Projects from the left menu bar.
- From Projects select New Project.
- From that menu select the bottom option Import KML file from computer.
- Select the SFWEM-BAM-Mesh-Map.kml file previously downloaded.
And, assuming everything went well, you should now be able to zoom in on the Bay Area and see the network.
Wiki Update
While the feedback on the wiki was somewhat divided on who should be able to edit, everyone made it clear that the wiki should be available from the internet. So you can now find the wiki from anywhere at bamwiki.xojs.org Anyone can read it and, if you’ve created an account from the mesh, you can login and edit it. Thanks to all those who took a moment to vote.
AREDN News
News from W6BI:
The AREDN devs are working on the software updates needed to support a new generation of hardware. That hardware, in addition to supporting the 802.11n protocol that the AREDN software currently uses, also now supports 802.11ac. To support that hardware the AREDN code needs (among other things) new drivers. That integration effort is now well underway.
However this new generation of code needs to be tested on all the currently supported equipment. If you have one of the devices listed in this Google Sheet not shown in green and would like to assist in the code testing, please consider sending it to KN6PLV. His info is good on qrz.com.
If you do donate one of the listed devices, please put your callsign in the "Contributed by" column, so he doesn't get inundated with multiple identical devices.
Happy Thanksgiving!
73,
Tim - KN6PLV - tim@sfwem.net