elafargue / aprs-box

All the parts you need to put together an advanced APRS base station
GNU General Public License v2.0
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Add wifi access point docs #3

Open bnordgren opened 7 years ago

bnordgren commented 7 years ago

The documentation hints at a future section on turning the device into a wifi access point. The time may be ripe to develop these docs.

I kind of took a different approach and connected mine via ethernet to an old retired home router. My next cut at this will be to use a Ubiquiti Nanostation M2. My use case is biased towards public service events as practice for emergency response, so standing outside as the marathon runners go by, instrumenting an ICP, etc. I wanted a good radio and antenna designed for outdoor use.

In any case, this topic implies a whole new section, where the person either configures DHCP and DNS using the router itself or something like dnsmasq on one (only one) device on the network. In environments such as a marathon where there are multiple aid stations and people moving between them, the document could point out the advantages of configuring all the wifi network islands the same (same IP or hostname of Polaric server, same SSID, same authentication or lack thereof): cell phones and tablets wandering between aid stations don't have to do anything different or care about specific configuration useful only at a single aid station.

There is probably room to address how to do this at different scales:

elafargue commented 7 years ago

Thank you very much for these contributions ! I will review all this today and merge.

Ed

On Fri, Jan 6, 2017 at 8:30 AM, bnordgren notifications@github.com wrote:

The documentation hints at a future section on turning the device into a wifi access point. The time may be ripe to develop these docs.

I kind of took a different approach and connected mine via ethernet to an old retired home router. My next cut at this will be to use a Ubiquiti Nanostation M2. My use case is biased towards public service events as practice for emergency response, so standing outside as the marathon runners go by, instrumenting an ICP, etc. I wanted a good radio and antenna designed for outdoor use.

In any case, this topic implies a whole new section, where the person either configures DHCP and DNS using the router itself or something like dnsmasq on one (only one) device on the network. In environments such as a marathon where there are multiple aid stations and people moving between them, the document could point out the advantages of configuring all the wifi network islands the same (same IP or hostname of Polaric server, same SSID, same authentication or lack thereof): cell phones and tablets wandering between aid stations don't have to do anything different or care about specific configuration useful only at a single aid station.

There is probably room to address how to do this at different scales:

  • turn the device itself into a wifi access point (with extremely reduced effective range.)
  • use a home router or commercial access point appropriate for the environment
  • use multiple access points to provide coverage in a large building, EOC or ICP

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bnordgren commented 7 years ago

No rush. I'm intending to put together one or more of these this year (blog here).

I did open one other ticket as part of this ( PolaricServer/webapp#18 ), having to do with packaging up polaric in a docker container. Maybe it's interesting to you, maybe not.

Hope you find it useful, and thanks again for blazing the trail! :)

Bryce