Being able to operate from a 12VDC power supply and run in bridge mode the AirLive WN-5000R offers great flexibility to test them out in the field and over the coming months I’ll be going out-doors and across Adelaide testing them in a variety of situations.
As part of the process of testing the equipment in the field I have fully water proofed the AirLive WN-5000R mounting it on a fold-up stand for easy storage, transportation and installation out in all weathers, not that I expect any rain this January.
The units where very easy to re-house with only three screws holding the case together and then another four holding the pcb in place. The only issue is the need to solder the pigtails directly to the PCB as the AirLive WN-5000R has no external or internal connectors.
The next step is to have something to download and so I’ve pulled an old Ethernet NAS drive apart and striped out the PCB and made a plate to mount the PCB in the case.
Rather than use a conventional hard-drive which uses a lot of power, I’m using a Compact Flash Card as the unit will be used out in the field with batteries. However where mains power is available a suitable PC with hard disk will be used.
It should be noted though, that despite 802.11n being able to achieve a throughput of up to 300Mbs (in range), any wired 100Mb Ethernet device connected to the AP will limit the ability to do any faster than that wired network. This is further impacted by the media and CPU speed. So a NAS drive with a Flash Card will never do 802.11n justice as speeds are significantly reduced by the storage media’s ability to read/write data and in the case of a flash card this is poor to say the least, but nevertheless will help greatly in the field to test link quality and compare between different scenarios.
Following this, I also needed an easy way to setup the AP and Antenna when out in the field and so I’ve used a telescopic collapsible stand, that I found in the hard rubbish. I also Pot-riveted some antenna brackets to support the three high gain Omni and attached the AP enclosure in the usual way with aluminum angle and a U clamp.
I then attached 10 meters of Ethernet cable which is wired for POE, fortunately the NAS drive was also 12V, so this also has been a simple process.
