Todays score was ITS 1, cows 0

Our ITS engineers returned to work on the WiFi and among other things we now have an 802.11b link to the barn. I arrived after the Silchester training day lunch to lend some moral support, here are some pictures of the new infrastructure.

One of the things which has been causing grief is the connectors used on some of the gear. This connector that Bob is reassembling goes between the cable off of the antenna and the long cable which comes back to the access point in the VERA cabin.

Originally the wireless access point (AP) for the site was going to go on the pole attached to HQ. This access point would have provided both the link to the barn and the local WiFi. As it turns out, the AP we had was %£$@$*ed. So we used another brand which did not fit in our weather proof box and had to go in the VERA cabin rather than out on the HQ pole. So a new pole was put up on the VERA cabin close enough for the antenna lead to reach.

While ITS were fighting the good fight I hooked up one of our wireless webcams to run some simple tests. The results from this will be shown in another blog post. The kit seems to work ok as long as you don't try and use them with too much of a metal porta cabin between the camera and the receiver.

This picture shows the antenna on top of the VERA cabin with the barn labelled in the distance. As you can see we have good line of sight. At the other end we are now using the WiFi built into the firewall we have in the barn rather than a separate AP. This setup provides a signal strong enough that my laptop could actually connect to the barn from the VERA cabin without the fancy antennas.

Because we binned the original AP which would have provided both the barn link and the local WiFi we now have a separate AP for the local WiFi. In order to get the best coverage for the trench the AP is now attached to a post half way down one side. We tested this AP with my Apple Mac and we got a strong signal all the way round the edge of the trench. This AP is in our weather proof box and requires and Ethernet cable to run all the way to the VERA cabin. The cable will need burying in some places and the AP needs some more configuring before it will provide Internet access (jobs for Monday).