Burn My Time

Chuck Fields provided all the hardware & knowhow to help set up a wireless bridge between my house and my immediate neighbors to the East. Jeff, my neighbor to the East, is a little over a quarter mile away. At the moment we haven’t mounted the antenna correctly on my end so we are actually blasting right through the trees. I can’t see his antenna if I’m standing in front of mine but it is working great at the moment. I can see the color of his house and the edge of his roof but that’s about it. We are going to go through and build line of site which is why my antenna is mounted to a pole but the pole is not attached to the house yet. I need to get one of those nice little 5mw laser pointers with a ‘lock on’ switch to help us point the antennas at each other & then it would be extremely easy to see what tree branches we should cut to create a 100% solid connection.

I had previously thought setting up a Point to Point wireless network was a bit complicated. It seems daunting because of all the disorganized information about it out there.

Here is the hardware we used:

1. Two Linksys WRT54G Wireless Routers - Model 5 (the kind where you can unscrew the antennas)
2. Two 2.4 GHz 15 dBi Grid Wireless LAN Antennas.
3. One 50′ 400-Series Antenna Cable with N-Male adapters on both ends. (N-Male attaches to the Antennas)
4. Two RP-TNC crimp connectors. (RP-TNC attaches to the Linksys WRT54G)
5. ~40′ of Cat5 Ethernet Cable.

This list excludes networking equipment I already had in place. I already have a wireless network setup in my home connected to our satellite internet. This network consists of a 3Com OfficeConnect Wireless Router, satellite modem & satellite with all appropriate cables. Jeff also had a wireless network setup at his house with a Linksys WRT54G router.

Mounting Antennas
The Antennas come ready to mount on a 2″ pipe which happens to be the same size mounting gear used for satellite TV dishes. Jeff had an extra one of those elbow mounts from a previous satellite setup so we relocated it to the West side of his House for the wireless Antenna. I had a bunch of 2″x4″x8′ boards lying around so I cut a notch in the top of one to mount my antenna on which will be later attached to the top of my house.

After mounting the antennas and guesstimating where they should point we attached the 400-Series antenna cable to his antenna & cut it as short as we could yet leaving us room to move his router if we had to. Then we attached the RP-TNC cable ends and connected his router. We took the remaining section of the antenna cable & did the same thing at my house which resulted in both of us using roughly 25′ of 400-Series antenna cable.

Configuring My Linksys WRT54G.
Upgraded to hacked firmware DD-WRT *
Set to AP mode
Set SSID to HaqNet (same as my home network SSID just for the heck of it)
Set the TX power to 150
Set to only use the right antenna
Turned DHCP off
Assigned IP 10.0.0.1 (completely off my network & out of the way)
Connected it to my 3Com router via Cat5 ethernet cable.

Configuring Jeffs Linksys WRT54G
Upgraded to hacked firmware DD-WRT *
Set TX power to 150
Set to Bridge mode
Set to bridge wireless network HaqNet
Connected it to his in-home wireless routers WAN port via Cat5 ethernet cable.

That’s all it took. At this point we could connect to the wireless network in his home and it bridged to my house. Now we can share security cameras, videos, music, internet, chat, etc. With the help of my buddy Fields the setup went flawlessly. It was like a walk in the park. We did all of this work in the dark over the past two days. If you haven’t seen the news it’s been icy as all heck here so mounting the antennas consumed the first night. The second night we connected & configured the routers. I will post pictures as soon as I find the chance to get home before dark.

Always a work horse. Now it’s time for me to level some of our property and clear the rest of our driveway.

The Truck covered in hay…
The Truck over loaded with Gravel…
The Truck stuck deep in clay…

First, the story…

Our neighbor was letting a friend hunt on some of his property within a few hundred yards of where I live. The hunter came back saying he was spooked. I’m not sure what exactly he saw but it was explained to me as “he saw a deer in a tree”. At first, I thought they meant a deer was running through the forest & tried to jump through a locust tree for some reason or another and fell short, got impaled, and thus - a deer in a tree. After further explination I’m told the deer was drug into the tree by a Cougar and my neighbors friend at some point saw a Couger and the Deer in a tree.

I was too busy joking about seeing a deer in a tree to get the full story. I have to talk to my neighbor tomorrow about something unrelated so I’m going to go get the full story and see if I can get a picture of this deer in a tree. Our dogs have been making noise at strange hours lately yet I haven’t been able to see what they are barking at. I’m interested in finding out if we have a Cougar around here. My camera doesn’t zoom well so I doubt I manage a picture of a Cougar but we’ll see. I need to get a bunch of those motion activated cameras hunters use and set them up in different spots in hopes of getting a picture of a Cougar. I’m excited to find out we have those awesome big cats around here.

We’ve got deer, turkey, coyote, bobcats, all kinds of other wild animals and now maybe a Cougar? That’s just awesome. I can’t wait to hunt for evidence tomorrow. What kind of wild life runs across your driveway?

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Quick note: I’ve run around the woods here quite a bit in the last 5 years. I’ve never heard any noises I could associated to large cats nor have I ever seen any trees that looked like scratching posts. To top it off, you’d think that one big cat would kill a deer every week or so and I definiately haven’t see that many deer carcasses around here. I’ll cross my fingers before I head out tomorrow in search of evidence.

Got-er-done. I suppose I could have got a few more bales on there.

Two trips stacked like that and I got most all of our hay relocated to it’s new spot. I bought a hay bale hook to use and it does help when you need to grab the bales when they are out of reach but short of that the hay bale hooks don’t seem to do much good. They just let you carry the bale differently.

There is nothing better than updating RSS Feeds next to a camp fire.