I posted earlier about buying a Meraki Pro Wireless Repeater. So far it’s been doing pretty well sitting in the window. This last week I’ve had over 100 people access it and most of them were not in my cafe. I’d say that’s pretty good for the first router.
Because it’s doing well I decided to order 20 of the Open-Mesh routers. At that number I get them for $39.99 each. The plan is to cover my street in wireless and then go and sell ads to the businesses that operate in the area.
The reason I’m switching to Open-Mesh from Meraki is pretty clear cut. First the price of a Meraki router is like three times more than an Open-Mesh one. The gain isn’t that much smaller and I can easily stick a bigger antenna on them.
Open-Mesh also comes pre-flashed with RO.B.IN which is an open source mesh network. Meraki has proprietary, locked down, restricted software that doesn’t let me properly implement a good splash page, which is essentially my goal.
At a municipal WiFi focus group a month ago I learned about the proposal of having an Edmonton WiFi portal of sorts that shows you information about the area you are in. I think some sort of Wiki would be perfect for this and I’m going to look into it for my project.
My friend, Mack, suggested that I demo the mesh network stuff at the next DemoCampEdmonton. While it would be interesting to show, it’s not my technology, I’m just doing an implementation.
May 26th, 2008 at 3:47 am
What you have said is very true. I also was excited at merakis idea, even bought meraki routers and tested a network. Now im totally into open-mesh
May 26th, 2008 at 8:16 am
I would love to see a demo!
May 26th, 2008 at 10:08 am
You got scammed. I ordered a few of the Open Mesh routers, as did some business associates of mine. They don’t work well, at all. In my case, they don’t work at all. I have a six node Meraki mesh that performs flawlessly. I fooled around with the ROBIN stuff for the better part of a day.
Send them back if you can get your money back would be my suggestion! I’d go with a Meraki Pro any day of the week, even at 3x the cost.
May 26th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
Great stuff, let us know how it works out with the Open-Mesh devices. We’re waiting for them to get certified for Australia.
For a captive portal you could look at WifiDog http://dev.wifidog.org/
and mapping app WNMap http://wnmap.seattlewireless.net/
June 7th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Hey “Me”
They work fine for me! I was impatient at first and that was frustrating until I realized that things take a few minutes to update. Now it’s peachy keen 
June 7th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
Hey halans, Open-Mesh has a built in captive portal.
Btw, I really like the free wifi thing you’re doing in Sydney. I just started up http://wirelessedmonton.ca to attempt the same thing up here