Testing, testing and more testing
Packing meshO gear for the event
Here’s a wrap up after running meshO at the last two ACT League events (Broulee) and the last two NOL events (Wee Jasper & Awoonga).
Both Broulee events had remote starts which were over a kilometre away from the assembly area. Our aim for these events were to have a meshO Control on the Start and Finish so we could monitor which competitors were in the forest and immediately get their course times when they finish. Unfortunately the distance was just too great to receive the meshO Control at the Start. We tried various (makeshift) repeaters, but weren’t able to get the network working - the bush was very thick, we had houses and a caravan park in the direct radio line, and we didn’t have anything (apart from sticks and rope) to get the radios high enough. The big takeaway for us was that we needed a better way to lift the radios in the air, as well as at least a couple of repeaters to bridge the large distances.
In the leadup to the NOLs it was time to sort out these two main issues. We build two meshO Boost units, base plates for mounting the units, and some poles to get the units higher.
Wee Jasper
From a radio perspective, this was quite straight forward: one radio with clear line-of-sight about 100m away, and another radio with clear line-of-sight about 250m away, we had full signal to the meshO Prime. MeOS was set up with the NOL event info and meshO fed the punches in for Matt Crane to provide commentary throughout the event.
The timing tent at Awoonga - notice the “big-green-pole”
Awoonga
This was a great test for the new poles and repeaters. One control was about 120m away, so that provided full signal, but the other one was about 650m away through dense bush and up and over a hill and tucked in to a shallow gully.
Challenge accepted!
We set up the “big-green-pole” and attached it to the computer tent - this gives us 8m height and placed a meshO Boost on the top. On the top of the ridge we used another meshO Boost sitting on top of a 3m high portable pole. With both of these we were able to receive the punches from the meshO Control in the gully. David Stocks and Ryan Gray were then able to provide commentary for the NOL relay. It was great to hear them call out that someone had just punched the first radio control and then about a minute later we could see them run through the spectator control (and thanks for Paul de Jongh for providing such great entertainment in the run-through - hope the shoulder is ok!).
We do have some firmware issues to sort out, and also better diagnostics. The next task is to re-write the software for the new microprocessor now that the PCBs have arrived.
A frosty spectator control with meshO Control
meshO repeater on ridge
Formidable terrain for a radio