Hello, My comments are inline below... At 12:31 AM 11/14/2003 -0600, you wrote: >>>> The November meeting was smaller than usual, but we had some new faces and interesting talk. To recap: Loring Park At this point, we have assembled all the equipment for two repeater antennas, and are only waiting on the go-ahead to install them. Weve been in contact with MCTC, and the Facilities people over there are working on getting us back on the roof. Keep your fingers crossed, but we should have a signal in the park just in time to get a serious case of frostbite while testing! Seriously, we hope to finish testing over the winter, and have enough of the bugs worked out to be able to go public in the spring. Next steps for the park: Andrew Z. is working on the capture page that people will see when they access the network. (forgive me if Im mangling technical phrases, Im a non-engineer), Neal K. is (among other things) pulling together a materials list so we have a record of what goes into these sites, and Hadi is looking into a method to reset the repeater sites remotely if they lock-up. <<<< Just as an FYI I have found some commercial remote-reset boxes. They tend to go by the name of dead-man switches or watchdog timers. One commercial unit I found had an ethernet interface with an embedded web server to let you power cycle an AC power outlet. That unit cost a little over $200. The nice thing about it is it only needed an ethernet cable to connect to the controlling network. I'm pretty sure I can come up with something else for much cheaper, although it'll probably need a 9-pin serial or parallel port to get the watchdog signal from, and it won't have a built in web server. How much power does this reset switch need to handle? It'd be pretty easy to handle a 600 watt load with the TRIAC based design I'm thinking of. It looks to me as if right now we only will have 2 radios and a hub drawing power up there, for a total of say 60 watts (max)...so even if we added a Soekris/standard PC/old laptop/etc. I don't see it overloading anything. (Are we putting a PC up there or not? I think one will be needed to create watchdog signals and to interface my design with, and it may also be needed to handle the captive portal system (Nocat/Wirewall/etc.). The commercial unit I mentioned above wouldn't need a PC, but $$$.) How quickly should the reset command be acted upon? Is a 10 second delay from issuing a reset command reasonable? 15 seconds? 1 minute? Greater delay times give us more time to cancel a command, and give a larger cushion before reset if the periodic watchdog signal is missed due to an intermittant connection fault. >>>> Press Attention We seem to be getting more press attention lately see the recent Skyway News article posted to the list, and both KMSP and KSTC have expressed interest in doing a wireless story. Most of the interest has been about wireless in general, not the group in particular, but we seem to be seen as a good source of information; as the Twin Cities Wireless Users Group was founded to promote wireless use for the greater Metro Area I think we can all give ourselves a big pat on the back for making some progress on that part of the mission! Ive asked Rick Tanner (our resident webmaster) about setting up a general email address (info at tcwug.org) that we can refer any press or general public questions to. Watch this space for more info about that. <<<< Indeed...lets do our best to ensure wireless isn't given a bad rap or made into a scary thing. The idea that wardriving does not equate to hacking or cracking is important. Wardriving is much closer to simply using your car radio to see who the local broadcasting stations are. An alternative analogy is walking through a neighborhood and listening for people who are shouting in their apartments and can be heard from the sidewalks. People who don't want to be heard can talk more quietly (use lower transmitter power settings) or use a language that makes it hard to understand (WEP). As WEP is 'weak' and kinda easy to crack, it's kinda like speaking in pig-latin or carny or maybe Martian. >>>> City Council actions Hopefully, youve heard that the Minneapolis City Council is looking into putting a fee-based wireless network in Loring Park. [http://www.skywaynews.net/archives/index.inn?loc=detail&doc=/2003/October/2 7-966-news10.txt] Im sending a letter to Councilmember Schiff introducing him to our group, explaining our goals and mission, perhaps inviting him to a meeting? Ill cc the list when I send the letter. Thats about all we covered at the meeting. Attendees, if I missed anything, please post and correct. Next meeting: December 9th, same time same place. Note: apparently, the mapquest directions are incorrect. The Dunn Bros location is at the north end of 3rd Ave, near the river. Ill try to find better directions to send out with the reminder. <<<< We could put a map image and driving directions from major local roads (I-94, etc.) on the website showing the location. Then there'd be no need to for folks to use the faulty MapQuest info. >>>> Please reply with questions or comments, Ben -- Ben Nelson 612.685.9116 cell benmgroup at earthlink.net _______________________________________________ Twin Cities Wireless Users Group Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota http://www.tcwug.org tcwug-list at tcwug.org https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tcwug-list <<<< "If you're reading this, read it again." _______________________________________________ Twin Cities Wireless Users Group Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota http://www.tcwug.org tcwug-list at tcwug.org https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tcwug-list