Slashdot Mirror
Wide Area Wireless on a Shoestring Budget?
wkytechhead asks: "My father owns a greenhouse operation that covers a few dozen acres. He has a number of greenhouses some up to 1000' plus apart that he would like to network. Currently he is using a HomePNA based network via regular RJ12. He has decided that he would like to go at least partially wireless. Some consideration has been given to using the backbone with fiber convertors, but he would really like to do full wireless. I have checked into homemade and commercial 'Cantennas' but I am not sure if they are worth the money. How would my fellow geeks go about wirelessly networking a large outdoor area for as cheap as possible?"
don't fix it
Just buy a grip of WRT54G APs, get your choice of custom firmware, turn up the wattage a tad, and use WDS.
Then, spread them evenly. I'm sure it'd work famously.
Pretty Pictures!
Sometimes the opposite is true. For example, moving a cart on wheels is inexpensive and efficient. Building a six-legged hydraulic walker for the cart is expensive/complex and inefficent.
legal is not the same thing as right. illegal is not the same thing as wrong. please take a rudimentary-level ethics class before attempting to lecture people on morals and legality. thanks.
I grew up in a greenhouse as my parents own one. For the life of me I cannot imagine why you'd need fairly high speed 'net access across buildings, unless you have offices that are scattered about the property. Not sure why somebody would do that though.
:)
... and all that fits nicely over even a 9600 baud serial connection.
I also can't figure out why you'd have a 1000' foot gap between buildings... unless you're mostly doing nursery. If that's the case then all the chaps saying to go wired would probably re-think their stance. You don't want to bury wire in a field that's getting replanted with nursery on a regular basis. Of course, you've already got phone lines down there, so, like the title says: I'm missing something.
Something that I haven't seen addressed are the CONDITIONS that this equipment will have to operate and survive in. At best you're dealing with very humid. Depending on the setup you might also be dealing with very hot. When the stock is gone and its summer time a greenhouse gets HOT around here -- 110 degrees or so on some days. I think I've seen 120 once or twice while in there. Dust gets everywhere if you're using any sort of automated filling or soil mixing system which given your size I'd imagine you are. Although then again I go back to the "mostly nursery" idea and it changes.
For the non-greenhouse geeks in the house nursery (perennial plants) are typically grown in regular black-dirt top soil. The kind of dirt you'd find in your yard. Potted annual plants are grown in a mixture that largely consists of peat moss and that stuff flies FOREVER when its dry, which it is during mixing or filling of containers.
So.. 90% humidity, 75 degrees, dust flying everywhere... will a LinkSys WAP with an external antenae hold up to that? Don't ask me, I'm just a "farm boy"
I'm still VERY curious as to why you need/want more throughput then you already have. I'm not saying your crazy or anything, I'm just really wondering what I've missed in greenhouse technology. Seems to me if you're doing any sort of data collection with a roaming handheld you could just want until you cradled the device for a data download. I can't imagine anything that would need to be real time except for outside temp, a number of inside temp monitors, outside wind, sun conditions, etc.
And trying to do tech-work for family, on a tight budget, always means trouble. He's already getting the labor & consulting on the cheap, there's no nead to cut corners on the hardware - it'll end up being a support nightmare down the road for you.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.