GHz Wireless

The popular Airmatrix meshbox from Defactowireless has been updated and now features an enhanced weatherproof casing. The same basic design now has a case made from extruded aluminium, featuring fins on the sides to provide enhanced cooling. The new case design also has stronger weather-proofing as the fastening screws are now all on the outside of the weather-seal gasket.

The Airmatrix is a very popular meshbox, and with ever increasing numbers Defacto have moved to a more sophisticated design, justified on the economies of scale of larger production runs.

Defacto have been working with the mesh for years now, starting as mesh pioneers, and now serving customers throughout the USA and in many international mesh locations too. A growing number of LocustWorld meshes are now using the Airmatrix as their standard mesh router.

The Airmatrix is a neat design incorporating the mesh router, antenna and power supply in one small unit that can be mounted outdoors. Using a single board embedded processor the Airmatrix can support one or two wireless interfaces. Power input is flexible, rated at 12-18 volts and the power consumption is around 5 watts.

With built in passive power-over-ethernet support, getting the machine powered up and online is easy. The Low power requirements let operators provide low cost power back-up. "We run these machines off a mini UPS that costs around $30", says Trevor Grove of Wi-Fi-Net. "The power consumption of the Airmatrix is so small that a mini-UPS gives us hours of uptime during a power cut."

The Airmatrix is available in a self-contained package, containing everything needed to get another node on the mesh up and running. The 8db antenna gives optimum performance for inter-node and client communication, and mounts directly onto the machine. Mounting brackets are provided to clamp the machine to a pole or other suitable mounting point. The power-over-ethernet injector allows the installer to run power up to the machine over cat-5 ethernet cable. The ethernet cable entering the machine is sealed using the weatherproof grommet which is also included in the package.

The Airmatrix is available from Defacto in the USA and from LocustWorld in Europe.