Returning to the Node status screen, let us look at all of the items that are visible on this screen.
Having looked at the first two buttons on the screen we need to look at the other items below the button line.
Mesh Address is the network facing address of the node.
Mesh Gateway not shown here, this is a mesh gateway
The following items will also be dealt with on the Setup screen.
Gateway Node again not shown, this is the GW node.
SSID of the 2Ghz radio. This device has two radios a 2Ghz radio and a 5Ghz radio
Channel is that of the 2Ghz radio it is -2, one of two frequencies BELOW the part 15 band.
Channel Width is set to 10Mhz.
Frequency Range is 2392 to 2402 Mhz
This next section also has additional parts on the Setup screen
LAN address is the LAN facing addresses in this case it has 13 addresses starting at 10.189.53.193.
LAN AP SSID kp4djt-AREDN This is the Access Point SSID it is entered on the Setup page.
This section is determined by the presence of a connection to the WAN port, it is only seen on devices that have a WAN port such as in this case the hAP-ac-lite.
WAN address, this is the IP address assigned by a public router (your home router).
Default Gateway, again obtained from any non-AREDN router connected to the WAN port if available.
The next column starts with Signal|noise|SNR it is showing a weak link, Signal is: -84 dB, Noise is: -90 dB. SNR: 6 dB. This is a very weak signal.
To the right is the [Charts] Button this allows a graphic view of the signal:
As you can see the signal is quite low, I will show another one where the link is quite strong.
At the moment of the capture the SNR was -1dB. The other items below it are:
Sound [on] [off] (in off state). This is used to align and antenna. The following items are part of it.
Pitch, to set the pitch of the sound generated by the test
Volumn sets the volumn of sound generated.
This is a test tool you can use to align antennas, you can connect a cell phone wifi to a device that is on a Part 15 channel, connect to the antenna radio that is being aligned and adjust the antenna for highest pitch. If the pitch goes too high you can adjust it down with the Pitch control, same for volumn.
This tool makes aligning antennas very easy.
Notice on this screen from a dedicated link we have a SNR of 41 dB. Also notice that there is a small box showing the signal quality. That is obtained when the “Selected Device” seen above Realtime Signal to Noise is selected.
firmware version: 20240323-b1c85fa Installed firmware revision
model: MikroTik RouterBOARD 952Ui-5ac2nD (hAP ac lite) Model type
These are always good to check prior to doing a firmware update
system time: Sun Mar 24 2024 18:52:44 CDT System time, more below
uptime: 1:01 Time since last reboot
System time is very important for certain applications that may be installed on the node. Meshchat is one of them, if the system time is off it will not synchronise with other Meshchat sites on the mesh.
Load average: 0.61, 0.66, 0.71 Shows load over 1,5 and 15 minute averages
available space: flash= 9528 KB Shows available flash memory
memory= 8692 KB shows available dynamic memory.
host entries: 64 nodes /165 total devices This is the total number of connected nodes on our mesh and there are a total of 165 connected devices, both nodes and hosted devices (computers, cameras, WinLink, and other servers and devices.)
Returning to the buttons above [WiFi Scan] allows the user to view any other devices on the RF channels the router is on:
It sees two, a very low signal of -84 dB, and it also sees it’s own transmitter.
Returning back to the Node Status screen we have the [Setup] button. This is where the fun begins, this screen is where you will set or change parameters on the node. We will pick this screen up in Part 4.
Remember that you can go to https://docs.arednmesh.org/en/latest/ and read all about the node setup in great depth.
Chuck, KP4DJT
