Getting ready to go…

G’Day All.. I am not sure how many people read this, but I write it anyway. I like to think of this as a slightly censored online diary – something that I write no matter who reads it (Not as I wrote during the first draft “Something that I read no matter who writes it”).

Two weeks from Today I will be preparing to leave for three weeks away. Three weeks from today I will be preparing to give the first of two talks in the TAPR/ARRL Digital Communications Conference in Des Moines, Iowa.

How well have I prepared? Well, fairly well. I have most of the server things set up on this end. I still need to write some procedures in case of power failure. Or more correctly I need to test to see if the UPS’ will work, and make sure that the firewall will re-start. I would love to be able to remotely power up and down the equipment. But that is not here yet since I have not had that PCB made up yet.

My eventual plan is to have a power distribution rack with two power busses internally – so that load can be shared. I have done the PCB, and I know that I had the capability to run two UPS’. What I cannot remember is if I had a UPS on each incoming supply, or if one supply came in and then went out. Each 1U rack case will supply about six devices. I woule like more but that is about all that will fit in the case. And I wanted to use a 1U case since it is sexier.

I will probably put a cellphone modem into the controller too. Maybe. Well, it is either that or build a micro so that I can control throgh the APRS system. That might be more useful – if I can work out how to send the right packets through a WWW interface

Darryl