Using smartphone for align ePMP

Hi,

You have some situations for align ePMP

- The installer climb to the tower and bring with him the laptop

Pro: Simple

Cons: it's difficult to bring both laptop and climbing. It's not safe when align ePMP and using laptop in high colum, laptop maybe drop.

- The installer climb to the tower and the communicate to the man on the ground with laptop for alignment.

Pro:safe

Cons: Maybe alignment doesn't exactly, it make a long time to done.

- The installer climb to the tower with smartphone

Pro: Safe, aligment is quick and exactly

Cons: Need to buy somethings

I bought some devices for the third situation:

- Portable power  2600mAh

- Access point come with low power (1W), 5V, tiny

- smarphone, tablet

- App for IOS from Cambium Network from http://community.cambiumnetworks.com/t5/ePMP-1000/Mobile-Android-App-to-configure/td-p/42073 or Android from @newkirk

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With these part, battery life is around 8hr 

2 Likes

This is a neat solution for alignment, nicely done. Is the AP made by Vonets? If so I've used that model but I prefer these:

http://www.gevaelettronica.it/BatteryPoeRouter.html

This device combines the Wi-Fi AP with the battery to power the AP, and can also power the ePMP via PoE.

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On our network, we use 10.a.b.c IPs for gear: a=tower, b=tech, c=device.  So 10.12.12.x for instance are all ePMP gear on WJSG radio tower, 10.12.13.x are PMP450-365 same tower, 10.32.12.x is ePMP in Bennettsville, etc.  (and we reserve .2 for CMMs, .3-.9 for APs, .10 for temporary admin usage)

So we use a mikrotik RB751 $50ish router.  One wired port and wifi are bridged together, handing out 192.168.88.x DHCP.  The remaining wired ports are bridged together with 10.12.12.10/24, 10.11.12.10/24, etc all assigned to the network-side (vs admin-side) bridge.  Also, 10.1.1.10/24 and 169.254.1.10/24.  Then  in the firewall I use a Masquerade rule so any traffic from admin-side going to network-side gets NATted behind whatever IP is in the appropriate subnet.

End result is that we plug the POEs on each truck into the network-side ports on the router, connect with tablet/cell/laptop via wifi (or that one ethernet port bridged together with the wifi), and have ready working routes to the connected gear on the other side, including default IPs, with no time or effort spent setting up needed subnets to reach gear.

j

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The AP made by TP-Link. The portable battery and AP take me about 25$

Newkirk - I like your setup a lot, what do you do at the subscriber side?

Sorry, I don't follow the question.  I've set up with POE and router on our bucket trucks that they use installing and servicing subscribers.  What do you mean by "at the subscriber side"?

j

1 Like

Sorry, my mistake! I must have misread part of your post when I was replying.

How can I use it?

A cell phone with a usb C to ethernet, connected directly to the SM.