This has come sooner then I was expecting, which is good news as this means that I have a fully functional testbed emulating the mesh architecture I will be using in Nepal. Woohoo!
I promised pictures, and although I wished a mesh testbed was a visually stunning piece of architecture, it unfortunately consists of grey boxes with the occasional green LED flickering to tell you something is happening (which doesn’t tell you a lot!).
But regardless it is an important step as the software which governs how information is distributed around the network is working correctly. I’ve also got SPUD (Simple Unified Dashboard) working on a Mesh Potato (seems to be a potato theme going here..) which visualises the links, and I’ve included a snapshot. I’m pleased with this as this graphical representation of the health of the network will be extremely useful for both maintenance reasons and community engagement.
Over £3000 has been spent on equipment so far, and this all has to be hand carried over with me to Nepal. Just some final packing to do, and some negotiation between the need to take warm clothes and the need to take network equipment and we’re good to go.
Matt