[Noisebridge-discuss] Solar-power radios popping up around the Mission

[Dr. Jesus]

On Tue, Mar 1, 2011 at 12:54 PM, Jonathan Lassoff <jof at thejof.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 1, 2011 at 12:04 PM, Christie Dudley <longobord at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Well, obviously it's a mesh as it's JUST the antenna and the panel. There
>> are a number of reasons that come to mind that they would use the solar
>> panels on a pole that has power (mostly having to do with inter-departmental
>> politics and relations with PG&E) but the best reason I can think of to do
>> that is for emergency services. Or alternately, non-city "services".
>
> This absolutely makes sense. If it's low enough power, I see no reason
> not to go this route, as it'll work even when PG&E doesn't.
>
>> Another thing that this reminds me of is the truck signalling on the
>> highways. (It's a national consortium for weigh stations, mostly.) It'd be a
>> stretch to see how they might want to expand it into the cities. However, it
>> looks like it's a 90 deg. polarization from those. It looks like the FasTrak
>> antennas are similarly polarized.
>
> I suspect it is indeed an omni, as all the ones that I've noticed have
> been pointed directly downwards. The antenna for Fastrak and for
> Caltrans' traffic/congestion monitoring look like UHF or SHF Yagi Uda
> antennas pointing at people's dashes.
> I see no reason this couldn't be that, but it seems like the antenna
> design would have changed dramatically.
>
> At least in the mission, their installation seems well timed with the
> rollout of new parking meter heads.

I just went up the construction scaffolding at 16th/mission and read
the labels on the devices.  The big ones seem to be 4.9 GHz to 5.8 GHz
repeaters for the public safety cameras.  The little ones are made by
a firm named novalab and are labelled with FCC ID XMPNL72742.  I don't
know what they are, but searching around it looks like streetline, the
parking meter people, use a 900 MHz mesh network which is probably
compatible with that hardware.