Wireless network between houses – three years and counting…
Jan0
We have had a wireless network operating between 7 houses for around 3 years. The savings on Internet charges have been large and worth the small amount of pain in setting it up and maintaining it.
I get asked a lot about how it works and what we use so here is a brief explanation.
We have a 2.4ghz standard wifi A/G network setup in a star configuration. The central house has a Linksys WRT54G wireless router attached to a standard ADSL 2+ modem, a very reliable unit which has external antenna connections unlike some other wireless routers, you can get these pretty cheap on Trademe. Attached to that and mounted on a small mast is an omni directional antenna from www.gowifi.co.nz something like this.
Each client house has a Linksys WAP54G wireless access point, these are again solid units and we used them because they can be used in reverse as a client instead of an access point. Note – there is a strange bug when configuring these, you need to use IE or Chrome when accessing the configuration panel as some editions of Firefox do not work with it. These have a directional antenna (similar to this) aimed at the hub. Most of these are inside houses and aimed through a window.
Almost all our failures have been at the modem, either it losing its session and not restoring it properly with the provider or it dying completely. We also have a troublesome shelter belt that has grown up and blocked two houses – the gear is true line of sight stuff.
This has enabled our house to lower its telecoms bill from $100+ to $20 by using a voip provider for the phone. Voip is getting better and better in this application but was inconsistant for the first year – still, we are early adopters and that is what you get.
Office Refit – Wanaka Wastebusters
Jan0
Mooted quite a few months ago I finally managed to find an accomplice, the extraordinary Gutter Man – Tony McCutheon aka Gromme, and get the office refit project for Wastebusters well underway last week.
The goal was to increase the productivity of the office space by providing storage for each work space and some division between them. I adopted a rule of 1m3 storage per 1m of desk space, which is a lot but reflects the fact that the office space is connected to the best second hand shop in ~ Wanaka? The world?
Storage is provided by the vertical cases which also split up the desk space. The traffic way around the central island is also now blocked to provide a private (Simon!) workspace. Walkways only work if there is enough room to transit without interrupting which there wasn’t in this case.
All construction is from seconds 15mm plwood from Trademe, some of which was… er… very second rate. To be expected I guess. It all screwed with superscrews so it can be re-configured or dismantled easily at a later date.
Below is the quick Sketchup representation I did to convince everybody it would work, and below that some pictures of it in progress.
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- New printer station with paper and toner storage above
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- Before - all deskspace is linked and storage is mostly under desks.
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- During refot - Storage towers are in place and extra shelving.
Welcome to Wholebody.co.nz
Jan0
We would like to welcome www.wholebody.co.nz as a new client to the rock solid Staple Webhosting service. The transfer was seamless and her site is now on our servers.
We recommend anybody looking to tune up their body to book in with Lori-Ellen when you are in Christchurch. You won’t regret it :-)
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