Category: Project News

2021 Annual General Meeting

Members of RemoteDX Inc that the Annual General Meeting will be held on 30th May 2021 from 2pm at the Waitohi Hive Makerspace Meeting Room (Ground floor, Johnsonville Library), 34 Moorefield Road, Johnsonville, Wellington 6037.

Proposed AGM Agenda

  1. Confirmation of a quorum
  2. Accept Apologies
  3. Receive, discuss and vote on:
    1. Draft minutes of the 2020 AGM meeting (20 September 2020)
    2. Report from the RemoteDX Chair, on the 2020-21 year
    3. Financial statements for the 2020-21 year (as reviewed)
  4. Elect:
    1. Chair
    2. Secretary-treasurer
    3. Committee members (at least two).
  5. Appoint:
    1. Financial Reviewer (may not be an Officer or member of the committee)
    2. Equipment trustee
    3. Callsign trustee 
  6. Decide:
    1. Annual subscription for 2021/22 year (Recommended $5).
  7. General business:
    1. Thanks to Financial Reviewer; proposal to offer a “koha”
    2. Presentation / discussion on Mesh development work
    3. Presentation / discussion on KiwiSDR project work
    4. Discussion on the future of RemoteDX – activity, direction, objectives.
  8. Any other business

Afternoon tea will be available from 3.00pm upstairs at the Common Ground Waitohi Cafe. 

The previous AGM minutes and the AGM Agenda, annual reports, and annual accounts for the year ending 31 March 2021 will be available on this website shortly.

ALL WELCOME. IF YOU ARE NOT YET A MEMBER YOU ARE STILL WELCOME

2020 Annual General Meeting

The RemoteDX Inc Annual General Meeting was held on 20th September 2020 at 2pm at the QTH of Bernard Zl2BD, 1 Winsley Tce, Churton Park, Wellington 6037.

Afternoon tea was available from 3.00pm. A special cake commemorated the establishment of Branch 74, fifty years ago.

The meeting followed the regular Branch 50 (Wellington) NZART meeting. Don Robertson., the AREC National Director spoke at this meeting about AREC future arrangements.

AGM Agenda

The Minutes from the 2020 AGM are included below. A summary of proceedings follows

  1. Confirmation of a quorum (10 RemoteDX members and 5 visitors were in attendance)
  2. Draft minutes of the 2019 AGM meeting (26 May 2019) were confirmed
  3. The Report from the RemoteDX Chair, for the 2019-20 year was received
  4. The Financial statements for the 2019-20 year (as audited by Hon Auditor) were received and confirmed
  5. The following were elected:
    1. Interim Chair (Bernard ZL2BD). The intention is that John Moriarty will take on the Chair at a meeting to be confirmed shortly.
    2. Secretary-treasurer (John ZL2XJ)
    3. Committee members (Mike ZL1AXG, Ted Zl2TB, Gordon ZL2ARN, and Malcom ZL2UDF). Frank ZL2TTS is an observer on the committee. It is intended that observers will be confirmed formally at a meeting shortly in line with the revised constitution (agreed to later in the meeting) since the committee at the time of the appointments was limited to 4 members only.
  6. Appoint:
    1. Honorary auditor – now Financial Reviewer (Glenn ZL2KZ)
    2. Equipment trustee (Bernard ZL2BD)
    3. Callsign trustee (David ZL4TAC)
  7. Decide:
    1. Annual subscription for 2020/21 year (Confirmed $5). Members are encouraged to make payment ASAP by direct credit to the bank account or in cash to John ZL2XJ. The bank account details: REMOTEDX INCORPORATED, ANZ Bank Johnsonville, 06-0225-0901934-00
    2. RemoteDX constitution changes were confirmed. See the constitution page to download.
  8. General business:
    1. It was agreed to provide a koha to Honorary auditor (Now Financial Reviewer)
    2. Presentation / discussion by Ted ZL2TB and Gordon ZL2ARN on Mesh development work was received by acclamation
    3. Discussion on the future of RemoteDX – activity, direction, objectives.
    4. Approval was granted by members to:
      1. purchase, assembly, and deploy a remote SDR for the wellington region and expenditure of up to $3000 was committed
      2. purchase mesh and backbone equipment for the regional broadband network and deploy and upgrade installation at Colonial Knob to a more professional standard and expenditure of up to $2000 was committed

Secretary-treasurer RemoteDX Inc.

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2019/5 AGM Minutes - approved 20 Sept 2020 at 2020 AGM

1 file(s) 79.62 KB
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AGM 2020 Agenda

1 file(s) 96.02 KB
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AGM 2020 Chairperson report

1 file(s) 35.57 KB
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AGM 2020 Financial Reviewer's Report

1 file(s) 538.17 KB
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AGM 2020 Financial Reports

1 file(s) 195.29 KB
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AGM 2020 - Proposed amendments to RemoteDX Constitution

1 file(s) 136.92 KB
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RemoteDX 2020 AGM Minutes 2020-9-20 (signed)

1 file(s) 1.29 MB
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Node upgrades on mesh

The mesh network is in the process of being upgraded in two ways:

  1.  All nodes need upgrading to the latest software AREDN v3.16.1.1
  2. A backbone needs to be developed to reduce mesh traffic, by isolating sub-nets.

Mesh users around Wellington have been asked to provide access to nodes to allow the upgrading to take place.  Most nodes are now operating on the latest AREDN release.

We have found that over the air upgrades are not always reliable, so it is best to do these in situ.  Note that if you wish to purchase a Ubiquiti node, most are no longer compatible with AREDN or BBHN (no longer under development).   The AREDN team will release a new version of the software in the new year that should be compatible with the newer Ubiquiti products.

The backbone links between Mt Field and Mt Climie, Mt Climie and Kaiwharawhara Hill (Ngaio), and Kaiwharawhara and Johnsonville (ZL2TBU) will be moved to 5.8GHz off-mesh links over the summer.  Colonial Knob backbone connections to Mt Climie, Mt Field and Johnsonville (ZL2TBU) will remain on 2.4Ghz due to restrictions on use of 5.8GHz at Colonial Knob.  However, it is planned to move these off mesh to reduce traffic loadings and improve throughput.

Working Bee 30 September

The committee had a working bee on Saturday 30 September and can now report that the temperature control system is complete (just the cowlings need to be painted and mounted and the filtration system installed).  In addition, the station is running off batteries with the solar charging system under test.

We spent most of the time upgrading Ubiquiti nodes to AREDN v3.16.1.  Further work to recover dead mesh nodes and to run out software upgrades on the Wellington mesh network is planned over the next fortnight.  There will be a further working bee over Labour Weekend to upgrade the network and begin to install a backbone (non-mesh) between significant nodes, so as to partition the network and reduce unnecessary hops.

Testing of RemoteRig over wireless broadband mesh

Mike Zl1AXG and Bernard ZL2BD getting setup for the RemoteRig test

On Queen’s Birthday Monday, a bleak and dreary day in winter, Bernard ZL2BD, Doug ZL2AOV and Mike ZL1AXG met at Bernard’s QTH to test the use of our RemoteRig units over the mesh network.

Bernard ZL2BD is seated at the Control Station end with the IC7100 control head. Mike ZL1AXG has thumbs up, because the control head is controlling the radio end via the mesh nodes. The mesh units are located on the elevated white boxes.

The Remote Rig devices (Radio and Control units) were configured with the radio end with a fixed IP in the address range of the mesh node.   The control device was configured to acquire an IP address using DHCP and connect to the fixed IP address.

The two mesh nodes can be seen on top of the white boxes with an air gap in between in the photo to the left. The RemoteDX Inc transceiver, an ICOM IC7100,  can be seen on the left hand side of the work bench.

No problems were encountered.  The test was concluded successfully as indicated by the power meter showing power out on TX (see photo). The IC7100 control head controlled the remote txcvr over the mesh in both TX and RX modes and there appeared to be no glitches with the audio feed.

The test was extended to see if the control head and RemoteRig control unit would work through Bernard’s own mesh nodes.  This further test was also successful. Further mesh tests will be conducted over the next week or so.

More work to be done!

Remaining tasks to be completed before the remote station build is complete and field deployment is possible include:

  • finalising construction of the environment control system (Doug ZL2AOV & Bernard ZL2BD)
  • finalising SCADA control software and testing (Frank ZL2TTS)
  • upgrading of the amateur broadband network to cope with bandwidth and security requirements i.e. backbone formation and upgrading of mesh node software on all nodes (Mike ZL1AXG to lead upgrade with a series of working bees)

QHUG HF Remote Station Design Report

Check out the Documents page from time to time for the latest Remote DX design documentation.  This includes all current documents from the full design report to “as built” reports.  The currently available documents are listed below:

QHUG committee to negotiate access to a site

The QHUG Committee is making good progress on the remote site equipment.  Recent activity has included:

  • Nearly complete fit out of the enclosure
  • Purchase of a transceiver (IC7100) specifically for the site
  • Approval to negotiate with a potential site owner
  • Testing of software for remote control equipment
  • Completion of base and remote control units
  • Planning for solar panel installation

The New Quartz Hill User Group Remote Site Project

Screen Shot 2015-10-24 at 5.36.43 PM
One gate has closed forever, but another one is about to open …

QHUG has been looking for a new site for some years without luck.

However, in the last 12 months considerable rethinking has gone on.

Firstly, it was realised that we did not need to necessarily pursue a large site with several hundred acres of antenna farm, but rather we could get by with more compact high-gain HF arrays (e.g. Four Square Arrays) for the lower bands.

Secondly we realised that we didn’t need to travel a long way out of town to operate in a contest or DX.  We could simply build a compact remote site and transport signals back to Wellington over a high speed data network.

This website is dedicated to describing the project build for the new remote site.

It will keep you informed about:

  1. Project purpose
  2. Project developments and the timetable of work
  3. Project teams and their activities (e.g antennas, off-grid power, mesh data network)

All the key events in the life of the project will be documented here, culminating in the return of ZL6QH to the major HF contests!

Once our build of a remote site has been completed we will set up a new website with a new name that is more focussed on our new core mission.  In the mean time, check out how the ZL6QH remote station is progressing here!