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What weighs under 25 lbs and supports critical communications services on the emergency data network?

Friday, February 25, 2022 aredn

This kit :)

It's the upgraded version of the kit shown in a prior post, leveraging the consolidated services cluster described in another subsequent post. It incorporates all the services provided before, but includes a Winlink client and over 6.3 million articles from Wikipedia. It does more with less power - about half what the prior kit required. It still supports 24V PoE output for connection to a higher powered dish or sector node. 

With the space savings from using fewer SBCs, I was able to incorporate 2x 16 A/h LiFePo4 battery packs, providing about 400 Watts of usable power. A USB-C PD 20v trigger module is used in conjuction with a Victron solar charge controller to conveniently charge and monitor the batteries and the power load. The kit can be powered from pretty much any source, including portable and household commercially installed solar panels, car cigarette lighters, other 12V batteries or AC with any USB-C PD capable charger. The kit will run up to about 20 hours on battery power, depending on usage. 

The kit is designed to run "headless" and not to be actively monitored, but additional workstation capabilities can be accessed when needed. I'm putting together kits that would make this case a fully functional emergency coordination workstation with a display, keyboard, mouse, CD/DVD RW drive, scanner, VoIP phone and camera. Another module would incorporate a mobile radio, allowing Winlink to work over long distances without requiring access to Winlink's AWS servers and to allow for UHF, VHF and HF voice communications by authorized users.

This version relies mostly on ARM architecture, but an X86/AMD version is under development. Details will be added when available.

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