Month: August 2023

The main image shows the installed station – but still in the garden. The top shelf has the Flex 6400 on it, the middle shelf the control system and the bottom has the UPS and power supplies. Hopefully, this will cut down on noise induction.

This image shows the control board before being installed in the cabinet.

Top left is the ancillaries board with an input jack from the ancillary 12V PSU, a couple of Power Poles to feed other 12V devices, the ESP8266 running ESPHome and code for the environmental sensors – an on-board Temp/Humidity sensor for the internal cabinet, and two 1-wire temperature sensors that will be placed in the space between the two cabinets and outside. On the far right is the Teltonika RUT951 router. In the picture it has its internal aerials on, but in the field it will have the 4G antennas and one of the wi-fi antennas connected to external antennas.

Below that is:

• The Sonoff 4ch switch which controls the Remote On/Off and PTT on the Flex, and the 12V power to the remote auto ATU (not shown)
• The Geekom Mini IT8 Windows PC
• The Netgear Ethernet switch, and
• The Raspberry Pi4 in its smart Argon One case.

Not shown in this image are any power leads. Also not shown in this image, but visible in the main one, are the two Tapo wi-fi switches that control the mains input to the main 12V PSU and the PC’s PSU. The switches are on the middle shelf in case the wi-fi doesn’t penetrate to the bottom shelf. I’m going to try them in the bottom today.

The station is now built, but I’m going to leave it in the garden for a week or so to accumulate sensor readings so I can decide if I need to add forced cooling. It will be located against a north facing wall, so won’t get any direct sun. It’s in a similar north-facing position in the garden, but will get a bit of early morning and late afternoon sun for the next week or so.

I now have the cabinet in which the station will be housed at the remote site. I looked at “designed” solutions for environmentally controlled, waterproof, secure external housings, but we’re talking loads-a-money. Luckily, my wife suggested the above: a “secure” metal office cabinet inside a plastic wheely bin cabinet.

The latter is mainly for protection against the elements. We have something similar for general storage in the garden and we’ve never had a problem with rain penetration. In any case, the equipment will be sealed in the inner cabinet, so a little bit of seepage shouldn’t be a problem.

The next task is to build it up to be, as far as possible, a self-contained and self-managing remote station that needs as little attention as possible whilst being fully accessible and controllable from home.