[Battlemesh] FCC Contacts about Wifi Regulations

[Paul Gardner-Stephen]

Hello David,

On Fri, Aug 5, 2016 at 10:24 AM, David Lang <david at lang.hm> wrote:

> On Fri, 5 Aug 2016, Paul Gardner-Stephen wrote:
>
> Hello,
>>
>> I'm thinking of putting something in from the perspective of the Serval
>> Project, but want to run our thoughts past the community first.
>>
>> For our next generation of Mesh Extenders (basically an Ath9k board +
>> 900MHz packet radio), we are hoping to get them FCC and EC certified, and
>> available for sale.  Lack of development funds necessitates that we have
>> only one version of the hardware for all target markets.  So what we are
>> planning to do is to have the power lead include several additional pins,
>> where the power cable indicates the regulatory regime that applies to the
>> unit, and also whether 3rd party firmware can be loaded.
>>
>> That is, to modify the regulatory regime, you either need the right cable
>> for that country, or alternatively, you wire up a "developer cable," that
>> allows you to install your own firmware.  In other words, we place a
>> hardware barrier to prevent abuse through trivial software
>> reconfiguration,
>> but still make it easy for the development community to load their own
>> firmware.
>>
>> What are people's thoughts on this approach?
>>
>
> rather than requiring special cables, just do jumpers (or an array of
> 0-ohm resisters). It's been good enough for commercial and ham radios for
> decades. same basic idea as your extra pins on the cable, but wihtout the
> expense of cables.


Understood. Our reasoning for using cables, is that we can have a single
stock of the Mesh Extender units, and just ship them with the right cable,
without having to open them up at all.  Since we are targeting the
humanitarian sector, it is also good for them to not have to open them.
Also, we don't want to have to open the seals unnecessarily, as the units
will (hopefully) be IP66 rated for outdoor use.  If you can think of ways
to work around those problems, without requiring per-region cables, I'd
certainly be interested to hear, as I agree having different cables is not
ideal, either.

But very good to hear that jumpers or other relatively simple hardware
measures have been (if I understand correctly) allowed in the past.

Paul.


>
>
> David Lang
> _______________________________________________
> Battlemesh mailing list
> Battlemesh at ml.ninux.org
> http://ml.ninux.org/mailman/listinfo/battlemesh
>
> _______________________________________________
> Battlemesh mailing list
> Battlemesh at ml.ninux.org
> http://ml.ninux.org/mailman/listinfo/battlemesh
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://ml.ninux.org/pipermail/battlemesh/attachments/20160805/0bda8f2d/attachment-0001.html>