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:

1. 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.
2. Open Google Earth https://earth.google.com
3. Select Projects from the left menu bar.
4. From Projects select New Project.
5. From that menu select the bottom option Import KML file from computer.
6. 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.

Update from KJ6WEG

Love the maps.  Unfortunately the Google Earth map (KML Layer) is still under development, and was not really ready to be shared broadly.  (Sorry Tim, tried to reach you this evening to straighten this out, but didn't hear back).

If you do want to see the network in Google Earth, for now I strongly recommend that you use Google Earth Pro, and NOT the web/browser based version of Earth.  The KML layer is currently optimized only for Earth Pro, and many things don't work correctly or at all in the web & mobile versions of Earth. I'm planning future updates specifically for web & mobile, but for now Earth Pro instructions are here:

1.) Install Google Earth Pro

- If you don't already have it, install the latest version of Earth Pro (currently v 7.3.6 for Windows, Mac and Linux).

- To get the installer, go to: https://www.google.com/earth/about/versions/, scroll to the bottom of the page and click the button: "Download Earth Pro on desktop".

- Alternatively, find all the stand-alone installer files here (those won't auto-update for you).

2.) Load the KML NetworkLink file

- Download: https://sfmap.xojs.org/earth/SFWEM-BAM-Mesh-Map.kml and then open it with Google Earth Pro.  

- On most machines, you can open a downloaded KML file simply by double-clicking it. If that doesn't work, go into Earth Pro and use the Open option (in the File menu on Windows).  

- It will open in your "Temporary Places" folder.  If you want to have it available next time you start Earth Pro, then move it to your "My Places" folder.  

As noted in the newsletter, this KML file is a "NetworkLink" that pulls in the latest "data KML" each time you load Earth, and refreshes it every 5 minutes. Be aware that occasionally the refreshes may re-set your visibility selections within the layer.  Also, the server re-crawls the network and updates the data KML about once per hour, so the network info you see will be on average an hour old.  

3.) Explore the Path visualization options

- In the "Paths" folder, choose to view either Paths by Type (RF, DTD, BackBone, Tunnel, Other), or Paths by RF Band (2, 3, or 5 GHz), by clicking the round "radio button" for one of the sub-folders.

- You can also expand those sub-folders to reveal folders for each Type and RF Band individually, and toggle on just the one(s) you want.  

There are still a bunch of things that are incomplete in the Google Earth map (KML layer), especially the data shown in the info-balloons.  I'll send an update when that is more polished, and hopefully when we have a version that works in Earth for web & mobile too.  

In the meantime, send any questions or feedback about the KML and its use in Google Earth to me at: kj6weg@arrl.net.

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