In my previous residence, I had what’s called a WiFi Mesh Network. This is when there are multiple access points but unlike most “extenders”, they present as one unified network. Furthermore, they will automatically configure themselves for maximum performance – all I have to do is make sure any given device is within range of just one other device and they’ll work it out amongst themselves to give me the most coverage and performance possible under those constraints. These things are great and I’m a big fan, even though they can be pricey.
I wanted to deploy my mesh network here in TINBIDIA (the official name of the homestead – you know what what’s an acronym for by now, right?). The thing is, my internet access right now comes through a 5G hotspot. Okay, no problem, the hotspot says it can tether via USB – great, I’ll turn off the hotspot’s hotspot, get a USB-to-Ethernet dongle, and run that Ethernet cable to my mesh router and presto, done.
But no. No meaning no matter what I tried, including connecting the hotspot’s USB directly to my laptop, I couldn’t get it to provide internet service over that USB port. Crap. So why am I using this particular hotspot device anyway? The short answer is only one carrier had a hotspot plan big enough to actually serve as primary internet service. My voice line is with a carrier that has strong signal here, but they only offer a 15GB/mo hotspot plan and when you use up the 15, they slow it to a tiny trickle, essentially making it unusable. I’d be happy to just pay more and have good speeds and lots of data, but that wasn’t an option. There was one carrier with a 100GB/mo hotspot plan (perfect) and at a great price (yay) but I had to buy their hardware (okay…) which didn’t have a cellular antenna port (not so good) and while they technically have coverage here, I’m often at 1 bar of 4G signal. Sometimes two, if it’s a clear day. Every now and then I get 5G signal and my internet can be called “good”. Sometimes it’s very spotty indeed. Not so great. I have pre-ordered a satellite solution but they won’t have coverage here for several more months at least. So why not a wired solution? Well, for starters, my address doesn’t exist, according to most things that care. That makes things complicated, to say the least. Secondly, I’d want the service wired to the W.O.G. which doesn’t even have power yet (soon, though!) so doing anything before now wouldn’t make any sense at all. Lastly, given the heavily wooded nature of the location, I am very concerned that a hard line would be fairly often damaged by tree limbs and given the remoteness, that getting a service tech to fix it promptly would be difficult. This may be unfounded, but it’s what I believe. That’s why I went with a cellular provider with the expectation of migrating over to a low-earth-orbit satellite solution as soon as they added coverage to this area later this year. Total independence from the slings and arrows of remoteness and treeness. The cellular performance hasn’t been great, though. I’m eager for the satellite as soon as it’s ready.
I did come up with a solution to my mesh network, though. It’s not elegant but it is effective. I got a WiFi-to-Ethernet bridge widget. So I have the hotspot create what is effectively a private network between it and the bridge. The bridge presents an Ethernet internet connection to the mesh router, which then can implement the wide coverage WiFi using its multiple nodes. One in the HomeBox. One in a window of the W.O.G. that has line-of-sight to the HomeBox to then present WiFi in the W.O.G. That building being essentially a big metal box means WiFi signal is going to be pretty iffy inside – no good for my office. Having the mesh node in the window, though, means it can pick up the signal from the HomeBox from across the way and then there’s strong WiFi inside the W.O.G. It’s a bit convoluted, I agree, but it should work. I don’t have the W.O.G. node installed yet (still no power there) but I’m using the mesh network in the HomeBox (via the bridge, via the hotspot) and it’s working fine, as long as the hotspot itself has signal, which it only mostly usually does.
Ya know, it’s a good thing I know a thing or two about networking hardware or I’d be up a creek trying to get things working and broadly covered here! I actually had a cellular-to-mesh gateway device but of course I could only get the 100GB hotspot plan using that particular hardware from the carrier, not my own hardware (which is furthermore too bad since my hardware has an antenna connection so it works better in remote areas). I have very low confidence that the carrier would be able to transfer my service from the antennaless, untetherable hotspot they sold me to my cellular-to-mesh device (which is too bad, since that was originally my plan!), given their overall tech support is so weak. Maybe if I brought both devices into a retail store and tried to do it all right there I’d stand a chance — especially since I already have the plan I want in place and it would just be transferring service to a different physical device — though the last time I was in one of their retail stores, I waited well over 30 minutes — as first in line! — and the two people already being helped by the two associates in the store did not have their problems resolved while I waited. I left after half an hour of standing and being ignored. I do not have high confidence in them, though I think they’d be better than the call center, which was a bit of a trial to deal with, too. Maybe I’ll try it again next time I’m in town. I know my device is compatible with this carrier’s network. I don’t even care that I’d still have to pay off the hotspot device itself. I just want better signal, which I’m sure I can get with the antenna-capable device I already own.
In other news, although I used heavy duty (doody?) slides for the T.H.R.O.N.E. bucket drawer, they failed. I don’t think I overloaded them – these were rated for nearly 100 pounds a pair, if I recall correctly — they used to live in a desk I built some years ago and were handling big heavy drawers of paper, no problem. But they failed. One even came apart to the point of losing some of its ball bearings. And they weren’t round any more. Hmf. So much for drawer slides! I bought some furniture slidey feet that I will install on the bottom of the carriage instead, after having removed the drawer slides which were now just in the way.
I kinda need to rework the T.H.R.O.N.E. bench itself, honestly – the seat is a bit too high and a bit too far back for comfort. It works ok, but even for a big person like me, it’s not nearly as a-commode-ating as it could be. That’s a project for another day – probably another year. There’s much to do besides this and it works well enough for now.
Meanwhile, my #2 battery module arrived for the W.O.G. The delivery driver didn’t think he wanted to back this truck down this road, though. It was only like 2″ of snow. I was disappointed that he didn’t think it was safe to do — my moving company had no trouble with similar-sized vehicles, but then, there was no snow and they used a spotter. I’d have been happy to spot for this guy but he wasn’t having any of it.
And speaking of 300# crates – how does one manage moving around what are now a pair of seriously massive battery modules? The answer begins with some old roofing screws!
…which are used to attach some casters… 
Hello, dolly!
The dolly will actually support BOTH battery modules – the second one hadn’t arrived at the time of this photo. Dolly does let me access the wiring, then neatly push the whole thing close to the wall without breaking a considerable sweat, which would otherwise be the case given the mass of these things.
I built this simple block to hold the bus bars – though I have since decided that it would be safer to have them side-by-side so I can actually use their covers, so I will be re-doing this soon, before I hook up battery module #2.
For this block, as well as the power supply for the heater, I needed to use some hollow-wall anchors. There’s a particular kind I really like, that look like this:
What’s cool about them is (a) that little plastic tab by the metal part helps to encourage it to flatten out against the inside of the wall, rather than pull back out and (b) the collar cinches up such that the whole thing makes a tight sandwich on the wall (the tail snaps off so it’s flush), holding the metal toggle nicely in place even if one removes the screw! This is super-useful if one needs to make changes after mounting the thing. You know, like “I didn’t like the bus bar board, so I’m going to take it off, re-make it, then mount the new one exactly where the old one was, using the same screws and hollow wall anchors already in place”. That kind of thing. Because it happens 🙂
In other other news… I got a notice from Amazon that the propane regulator/auto-switch devices I bought are subject to a safety recall. Marvelous! What Amazon didn’t do was tell me what was going to be done about it nor what I should do about it! I took the initiative and contacted the manufacturer directly who got back to me with instructions, including a shipping label to send them the recalled units that they would then send replacements for. The thing is, I can’t be without my regulators! One provides backup/night/away heat and hot water to the HomeBox and the other I need for the office in the W.O.G. So I can’t just send them my regulators and wait however long for them to send me replacements. What to do? Just buy some new ones — not subject to recall — install those, then do the recall process. When the replacements come, just set them aside and keep them as spares. Not a bad idea to have some spares, considering their vital role here. So that’s what I did. However, I’m obviously not the only one who thought of this, as even the replacement units (from a different manufacturer) were hard to get. I waited a couple of weeks for one (arrived today) and will need to wait several more days for the second one.
Still, today happened to be relatively temperate weather (just above freezing, even!) for doing outside plumbing work, so I went for the most critical of the two — the one for the W.O.G. — since the one for the HomeBox actually doesn’t get much use because I’m heating primarily with wood and don’t use hot water that often. There no other heat source for the office, so getting that one set up first made sense.
Of course the new unit had the wrong length hoses (so I just swapped them out with the ones I already had) and a mounting bracket that was in the way (so I just removed it). Presto, new regulator in place.
The second one of these will go on HomeBox’s Propane Porch, which has a different mounting scheme (and needs to). I’ll have to do some fabrication to make that all add up okay, but by then the workshop should have power, so it should be much easier to accomplish.
And finally, a few odd words from our vendors.
I have found that some brand names of things just don’t make sense. Or maybe they’re some non-native speaker’s idea of a clever name that just didn’t quite translate. I don’t have a picture of the best one, which is “CARESOUR” brand alcohol sanitizing wipes. I can only imagine that this is some corruption of “we care” or “our care” or something like that. Care sour, though – they missed.
I have a power supply from “mean well” — and I’m sure they mean well (it’s a pretty nice unit, actually) — but that’s just an idiomatically strange name in English.
And DYWHISKEY? Maybe sorta related to “DIY”, just gone way, way, way off the deep end?
I mean, it’s a box of screws, nuts, and washers – not exactly having anything at all to do with whiskey in any way, shape or form. I just don’t know what to make of the name. I know exactly what to do with the parts, though.