A short thread about Barbie, drills, and #LoRaWAN. This is our basic drill with an attachment to make standard size holes in plastic. Today we decided to put the second LoRaWAN gateway up – signals from some sensors didn't get through when the gataway and the antenna lied on the dogs' favorite couch in our tiny house.
In order to put the gateway high up we needed a couple of things. A mast – no problem, there were 6m (about 20ft) of aluminium lying around in the garden for some reason. The hermetic box was a problem though. When you live in the forest of Eastern Poland you just don't walk into a store and buy what you need. You buy what they have. We needed a hermetic box for the Raspberry Pi. Our store had Barbie raspberry ice cream. A perfect fit.
Our 1000 litre water tank holds water for gardening and power emergencies. It's also useful to put things on it. And its metal cage is often used for attaching things that go high up. That moose bone is very useful when you need something to jam the mast in a plastic pipe attached to the tank cage to keep the whole thing stable.
Duct tapes and zip ties hold the gateway and the antenna together on the mast, ready to go up. It's getting dark and it's hard to get focus. Will continue tomorrow.
A storm is coming, so I'll have to take the gateway down. We've had no rain for ten days straight. I wonder if there's any sense in monitoring our wetlands – they won't be wetlands pretty soon.
