What's the broadband hamnet activity like in Austin, TX right now?  These forums are dead, I reflashed a router several months ago, of course I'm too far away, (close to Manchaca, TX) to connect to anyone, but would invest in a directional antenna if I know I could connect.

Just wondering....

Thanks

Johnny

A beautiful Easter Saturday allowed me to finally get an omnidirectional antenna installed for 2.4 GHz.  This antenna is now connected to a WRT54GL.  This node, VA5LD-01, is the first formal node of the new Saskatoon Broadband-Hamnet.

Planning is now continuing to have other local hams stand up their own nodes -- hopefully, as spring arrives, we will see other nodes appear.  Arrangements are progressing to have nodes on two taller buildings to 'anchor' the mesh as we grow.

Plans are to use Broadband-Hamnet to link the logging computers during our planned 4A field day station hosted by the partnership of the Meewasin Amateur Radio Society (http://www.meewasin-ars.ca/) and the Saskatoon Amateur Radio Club (http://ve5aa.dyndns.org/).

73 de VA5LD

Lawrence

Bob W8ERD, and everyone else.     As luck your post came up the first time I logged into this board. Your comment "Is there any thought to having mesh software for cell phones?" was not the original question I was going to ask. I have several old unused cell phones and wondered if it was possible to install a VOIP program on them, so I can access the MESH network (using my friends raspberry Pi Asterisk server? So basically what I am asking, is can I use one of my old WiFi connectable cell phones on the mesh network and how. My ideas on this is is a cell phone running an VOIP app (what app that is the question?) to a Access Point, that being connected to the MESH router (somehow?). We have had his system up and running with 2 of his Cisco internet phones. I was able to run an FTP server on my computer also, but was unable to advertize it. I am new at this game, I have 2 (WRT54's)nodes that work nicely with my friends nodes and one I have managed to brick! Any help would be appreciated; Steve Morse KI6HGH

I retraced all my steps on the RPi and found an error in the dnsmasq settings.  Corrected that and restarted/reconnected everything and had one phone to register. Pointed the phone to tftp on RPi and once phone rebooted all files downloaded correctly and registered on Asterisk.  Brought second phone online and it registered as well. So tfpt problem solved too.   Thanks for the advice.

Could the Mesh Status be set to link to computer.local.mesh not just computer? That way, people doing iptables forwards to websites can set whatever.local.mesh as an addon domain and it will work.

Looks like you followed the instructions and have already done some problem solving. TFTP can be tricky. For one thing the older Cisco phones don't run the network interface quickly. A DHCP request isn't always granted and you should check to see if the phone has an IP assigned to it if you fail to connect to Asterisk. Telnet is helpful in getting a view of the phone remotely, or you can punch up the network page from the phone itself.

One thing I didn't see is if the Asterisk server shows you as registered. You can also call your own VM acct to check if the server replies.

A helpful test is to ask for the time, or run an echo test from the diagnostics in the Asterisk setup. In general, there are several steps to get a number working.

Assign an extension and password from asterisk for that phone

Assign a server address and password within the phone to join Asterisk

Test for basic functions like calling your own number or the time/echo services on Asterisk

Depending on what version of Asterisk manager you have, a status screen might have to be refreshed to see if a phone is currently registered. Asterisk usually has a time out and will expire a phone after a period of time if not in use.

Check these out and see if that resolves it.

I've installed the latest raspbx image on my Pi 3 and have some issues and questions.

All the documentation refers to adding a 'Generic SIP' but the latest version 11.21.0 doesn't list generic as a choice. So is there an alternate such as is Chan_SIP synonymous with Generic SIP?

If I use the raspbx as tftp server the files seem to download but after 'verifying load' the phone shows 'downgrading application', etc and eventually shows tftp failure. Once this occurs it essentially bricks the phone as I cannot access settings afterwards.  I have been able to restore the phone by using a guide I found online, thankfully.

If i put a separate tftp server on the node, TFTPD32, and point the phone to it, the files download, upgrade appplication, and appear to come up as the should showing BBHN across the top of the display and SIP showing in the top right corner. So far this has worked on two phones, a 7940 and a 7940G.

Bottom line issue is the files crashing out when using the raspbx as tftp server. When using separate tftp server phones seem to load correctly but do not dial out. Or at least when I dial from one phone to another it immediately goes to a fast busy.

7940 is connected directly to same node as raspbx, 7940G is on second node. I can ping each phone IP from PC connected to the raspx node.  Each phone is listed as service on its respective node.

I am using the KF5JIM and NG5V Cisco files as posted on the site.

Thanks for any input.

George     K4RQ

Well, my mistake then, apologies.

It just appeared to be an essentially dead project as I see very little activity. Questions go unanswered, no posts in the development forum since December, the last news item related to development is almost a year old.

Paul's (KF5JIM) last post was over a month ago and before this, your last post appears to have been mid November.

Great that everyone is working, and sure, this is a hobby, volunteer project, you just might want to toss up some updated info every once in a while to keep people abreast of what's happening.

Cheers.

If you go to the link at the end of the notice on the front page, you can see that you CAN work around the issue by flashing any new UBNT FW back to a previous version of UBNT firmware, and then BBHN will load just fine.

There are plans in the works for a complete revamp of the firmware (modularization), its just taking longer than preferred, so we can get it right the first time (we will never have a 1.1x fiasco again!).

For the first time in HSMM-Mesh/BBHN history, ALL the BBHN developers (yes, they are still here and not defected like some lies being spread) have full time jobs/classes (good for our bank accounts, not so good for pumping out volunteer firmware...)

BBHN3 works as is, so why mess with greatness? :-)

One of our core values is to NOT to release firmware too often, because to many it is a headache having to update firmware on many nodes all the time. If it aint broke, dont fix it :-)

73 & Happy Meshing

Jim

It's almost 6 months since the notice was put on the website about the problems with the new Ubiquiti bootloader. 

I took a look though the website and forums and did not see an update.  If it's there and I missed it, I apologize.  Is the bootloader still a problem?  If so, is there any documentation or instructions on a work-around?

73,

Harry Bloomberg W3YJ