Beta Mesh Potatoes - ready to order
Steve Song
At last, I am happy to say that a hundred Mesh Potato beta units are
ready for order. Thanks to Jim Forster and his organisation
networktheworld.org who generously offered to underwrite the cost of
these hundred units, they are available at no charge to beta testers
with the exception of the cost of shipping. Let me say again how much
I appreciate the support of Jim Forster in the development of the Mesh
Potato. His support has been catalytic in reinforcing support from
the Foundation for this project.
If you are interested in being part of the early testing and debugging
process of the Mesh Potato, I invite you to place an order at David's
webstore (http://rowetel.com/ucasterisk/store.html - scroll all the
way to the bottom) and pay the USD 60 shipping fee to cover the
shipping of two Mesh Potatoes to wherever you happen to be in the
world. If you expressed an interested on this list or to me
personally prior to July 31, you will be given priority in ordering.
Initially we are going to accept 30 orders (of 2 Mesh Potatoes each)
and then see where we stand. If you are from Australia, you should
rather email a request to David Rowe (da...@rowetel.com). For South
Africans, you should send your requests to me
(steve...@shuttleworthfoundation.org).
There are a few special cases which will receive more than two Mesh
Potatoes. These include Rael Lissoos of Dabba, David Carman of the
Scarborough Mesh, and possibly some others. This is so that we can
stress test the Mesh Potatoes in larger configurations.
If you are very keen and want to ensure that you get some of the beta
Mesh Potatoes, you can order some at the price of USD 95 directly from
Atcom. Atcom have produced some additional beta Mesh Potatoes which
are available to anyone.
I hope that is reasonably clear. Please don't hesitate to contact me
if you have any questions.
Looking forward to this next critical stage in Mesh Potato development.
Regards to all,
Steve
--
Steve Song
Telecommunications Fellow, Shuttleworth Foundation
email: steve...@shuttleworthfoundation.org
work: +27 21 970 1220
mobile: +27 83 482 2088
skype: steve_l_song
blog: http://manypossibilities.net
twitter: stevesong
Muhammed Ismail
I have ordered one right now and payment made to David Rowe.
Looking forward to test it.
Dec 19, 2009 Payment To David Rowe Completed Details -$60.00 USD
Regards,
Muhammed Ismail
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Steve Song
the very first orders.
That reminds me of something I forgot to mention in my last email. We
will be asking each of the beta testers to run a series of tests on
their Mesh Potatoes and report back on their experience with them.
We're still finalising the testing protocol but we'll share that
before the Mesh Potatoes ship. We are counting on beta testers to be
an important source of feedback in the development of the final Mesh
Potato. By which I mean to say, if you're not serious about putting
the Mesh Potato through its paces and providing substantial feedback,
please don't order a beta unit. Rather wait for the commercial
version that will be available in March/April.
Cheers... Steve
2009/12/19 Muhammed Ismail <muhamme...@gmail.com>:
Alexander Chemeris
That's great news! And thanks to Jim Forster too!
I've ordered one testing kit. I can't promise to be a full day tester,
but I'm willing to do some speech quality tests. Problem is I don't
use wired phone much, so I will have to dedicate special time to
running tests.
PS What will be used for shipping - DHL, UPS, EMS or something
else? When could I expect delivery (to Moscow, Russia)?
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Regards,
Alexander Chemeris.
mgr...@mstvp.com
interested in this beta program. I'm located in Texas. I can undertake
whatever testing protocol you prescribe, limited only by my work
schedule.
David Rowe's page is very explicit about only paying the shipping if you
have been allocated hardware. So before I go about making the payment
I'd like some kind of approval.
Michael Graves
mgraves mstvp.com
o(713) 861-4005
c(713) 201-1262
sip:mjgr...@mstvp.onsip.com
skype mjgraves
FWD 54245
Steve Song
We've given priority to those who expressed an interest when the betas
were first announced earlier in the year. Anyone who spoke up prior
to July 31 is being given preference in ordering. Once we've given
those folk a reasonable chance to place an order then, assuming there
are some left, we'll open it up to everyone. The bottom line is that
if you aren't one of those people who expressed an interest before the
end of July, you shouldn't place an order just yet.
Cheers... Steve
2009/12/19 <mgr...@mstvp.com>:
Lew Pitcher
I have a (probably stupid) question about the availability of the beta units.
Have "beta testers" been selected from the volunteers who responded earlier?
Or, is this beta-test release a "first come, first served" distribution?
I ask because I don't want to order the beta units, and take away from someone
who already has some sort of offline approval or confirmation.
--
Lew Pitcher
Master Codewright & JOAT-in-training | Registered Linux User #112576
Me: http://pitcher.digitalfreehold.ca/ | Just Linux: http://justlinux.ca/
---------- Slackware - Because I know what I'm doing. ------
David Rowe
> Have "beta testers" been selected from the volunteers who responded earlier?
Yes it was from the group who responded before 31 July. However please
stand by for a few weeks, there will probably be a few extra available
for valuable contributors like your self.
Cheers,
David
David Rowe
I have received quite a few orders for Mesh Potato shipping, thanks.
Please just place Qty 1 $60 order, even if you are getting two Mesh
Potatoes. The single $60 shipping order covers a pack of two Mesh
Potatoes.
Cheers,
David
David Carman
<steve...@shuttleworthfoundation.org> wrote:
> There are a few special cases which will receive more than two Mesh
> Potatoes. These include Rael Lissoos of Dabba, David Carman of the
> Scarborough Mesh, and possibly some others. This is so that we can
> stress test the Mesh Potatoes in larger configurations.
Thank you Steve & David, and well done on the Xmas delivery.
As stated on 30 Oct at
http://groups.google.com/group/village-telco-dev/browse_thread/thread/ba3c42b7e92d078d/49e9863bd9436b3e?hl=en&lnk=gst&q=mesh+network+bandwidth+versus+hops#49e9863bd9436b3e
I am planning to deploy two potatoes in a 6 hop link from Red Hill to
Scarborough.
Granting us a third potato will allow me to have one at home for both
experimentation and test calling to the other two (+/- 4 hops and 10
hops away).
There are two other businesses in Red Hill whose owners live in
Scarborough and would appreciate a voice link between work and home.
However I would prefer to work on only one link until I am sure that
I'm not overextending myself with tech support.
Once we have 6 stable devices, I would like to hook them up to the
abovementioned 5.8GHz link across False bay to Dabba so that we can
start calling out. Once billing is sorted on these connections, I can
then offer further devices to residents of the Red Hill shack
settlement.
As stated, the potatoes will be running OLSR and relaying data too. So
most of the useful data for village-telco will be to do with the
performance of the Asterisk component and voice codec in the presence
of high CPU load and multihop links. The potatoes will be deployed
close to other WRTs/Nanos so signal strength won't be tested
significantly. However my home test potato will be able to give you a
good idea of potato in vivo WiFi performance compared to WRTs/Nanos.
So initially I would like 3 of the beta-potatoes, with another 4 in a
few months if available. SWUG has a small surplus in the bandwidth
account that can help pay for the shipping costs and we expect to be
able to sponsor potatoes for the shack settlement in the future.
Steve, when and where should I drive through to pick up?
David C
Gustavo González
Thank you for your efforts. I've ordered our beta-tester kit today.
Sincerely,
Gustavo.
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David Rowe
Jeff and I have just spent a day testing a variety of etched PCB and
wire antennas. We have blogged on our adventures here:
http://www.villagetelco.org/2009/12/antenna-testing/
The next step is to make a decision on the actual MP antenna.
BTW there has been a lot of activity on the blog lately, many good
posts.
Cheers,
David
edwin
To save the shipping cost and time, we may ship the potatoes to you instead of shipping to Australia then to you. we can use DHL, UPS or EMS whichever you prefer. If there is any instruction for shipping a to Moscow, please send me a offline mail so I can follow up exactly.
To everyone who involved in the first 100 beta test, the shipping may from China or from Australia depends on where you are. Please feel free to send an offline mail to David and me if you have any shipping instruction or any prefer shipping method.
Best Regards
Edwin Chen
Technical Sales Manager
ATCOM Technology Co., Limited | Open IPPBX community
A Certified ISO9001:2000 Company
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Direct: +86 755 83018806 |Fax: +86 755 83018319 |Mobile: +86 13632606147
Email:ed...@atcomemail.com |Skype:chenxiangyuan |MSN: chenxian...@hotmail.com
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-----Original Message-----
From: village-...@googlegroups.com [mailto:village-...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Alexander Chemeris
Sent: Sunday, December 20, 2009 3:12 AM
To: village-...@googlegroups.com
Cc: Jim Forster
BroadTel
I made payment of USD120. Am I going to be refunded of USD60?
Regards,
Vincent
David Rowe
1/ PCB monopole, i.e. a 17mm by 3mm PCB track with around 2dBi gain and
an omnidirectional pattern. Cost zero.
2/ A single wire loop with around 4dBi gain which has some edge on
nulls. Loops tend to be less affected by other metal objects. This
could be bent up in a simple jig and soldered to the MP01 motherboard.
Cost, about 30 seconds of labour.
With (1) and (2) we could include an option for an external antenna
connector (i.e. some solder pads) for those 1% of cases that need
another antenna.
Cheers,
David
David Carman
> 1/ PCB monopole, i.e. a 17mm by 3mm PCB track with around 2dBi gain and
> an omnidirectional pattern. Cost zero.
> 2/ A single wire loop with around 4dBi gain which has some edge on
> nulls. Loops tend to be less affected by other metal objects. This
> could be bent up in a simple jig and soldered to the MP01 motherboard.
> Cost, about 30 seconds of labour.
From your test results, I think the wire biquad is worth the extra
effort/cost. Other online results also show PCB antennae to be
deficient in signal propagation.
May I suggest a stick-on reflector that can be applied to the outside
of the MP for increased directionality.
I think that with a decent internal antenna such as your wire biquad,
the MP will be sufficient for the occasional inevitable long distance
links when used with additional external reflectors/directors. We
wouldn't have to access the solderpads or deploy other devices.
David Rowe
Thanks for your comments.
> >From your test results, I think the wire biquad is worth the extra
> effort/cost.
There is one small problem manufacturing with the wire biquad, we need
to somehow feed it at the centre of the antenna. As we don't want the
wire anywhere the MP01 motherboard we need either short price of coax or
some sort of parallel wire feed that would be bent up as part of the
antenna fabrication. Not sure how to do the latter but it's probably
possible.
> Other online results also show PCB antennae to be
> deficient in signal propagation.
Do you have a URL to some online results? I would be interesting to
read about other peoples experiences. I haven't tried the PCB monopole
antenna over a real-world Wifi link yet, but I can't see why it would be
any different to the standard router rubber antenna, which is a sleeve
dipole with (electrically) very similar construction. The 17mm and 20mm
PCB monopoles worked well when we tested them with the spec an.
> May I suggest a stick-on reflector that can be applied to the outside
> of the MP for increased directionality.
Yes also something worth looking into. In particular we would need to
consider a way to precisely position the reflector to driven element
spacing when designing the enclosure.
Cheers,
David R.
David Carman
>> Other online results also show PCB antennae to be
>> deficient in signal propagation.
>
> Do you have a URL to some online results? I would be interesting to
> read about other peoples experiences.
I don't have any specific URLs but it appears that nothing beats the
low permittivity of air. Most documented attempts at improvement of
PCB antennae involve introducing air cavities into the underlying
substrate.
David C
Ross Bennetts
We're still finalising the testing protocol but we'll share that
before the Mesh Potatoes ship.
I received my beta units yesterday...
:)
--
Ross M. W. Bennetts
http://rossbennetts.com/