By Andy Moorwood-K3CAQ
Approximately 30 amateurs attended CVARC’s first Mesh Network Flashmob on Sunday, February 23, 2020 at the East County Sheriff’s Station. Ten operators brought their equipment and an additional three were configured “flashed” and / or debugged to get them functional.
During the event attendees accessed video streams from mesh nodes equipped with cameras.
The amateurs also made “phone calls” to each other, using the Linphone application.
They sent emails to each other using Winlink express in P2P (point to point) mode to emulate the kind of activities hams would utilize in emergency situations when access to application servers and infrastructure might be compromised. Everything could be done using the laptops, iPads and smartphones we had with us.
Bill Woods-AB6BW gave a short presentation describing the uplink he and Orv Beach-W6BI worked on to connect the event to South Mountain and from there the So Cal mesh. Unfortunately, the node on South Mountain was down preventing our connectivity to the larger mesh.
Consequently, we operated as a mesh “island” consistent with portable operations at events such as the Baker to Vegas run or emergency operations when local infrastructure is offline.
Tran Huynh-K6NHI, Oliver Dully-K6OLI, Tom Rosebrook-KN6BKT and Bill Woods-AB6BW answered many questions regarding the “how” and “why” of mesh network operating. We were pleased to be joined by amateurs who are members of Agoura Hills CERT who were interested to learn what mesh can bring to emergency communication and what equipment they would need.
A big thank you to mesh experts who made the event possible:
From ARES LAX-NE:
Tran Huynh-K6NHI
Oliver Dully-K6OLI
Tom Rosebrook-KN6BKT
From Simi Valley AREDN Mesh:
Bill Woods-AB6BW
Orv Beach-W6BI (in absentia due to back surgery)
OUTSTANDING – I am proud of all the progress you have made in implementing MESH. A special Thank You to Orv Beach, W6BI, in supporting this project as an ARRLSB Technical Coordinator.
Jim Fortney – K6IYK
ARRLSB Section Manager (2016-2018)
Enjoyed the event. Hit Amazon. I now have a Nanostation M5 operational. Can’t see anybody though. Where to from here? I’m going to download WinLink Express, and I have LinPhone on my mobile. What do folks do while waiting for the next field day or flash mod? I’m interested in EmComms, and participate in the Tuesday nets. Do you know of any plans to add AREDN to the mix?
Hi Pat,
are you able to connect to one of the mesh nodes and thence to the network ?
With regard to portable operations there is the “Ride for the Red” bike ride May 16th that ARES is supporting and has a mesh component. Email me at “k3caq@cvarc.org” if you are interested in this.