Wireless Bridge with Two Ubiquiti NanoBridge M5

In order to broadcast long-range wireless signal from the submersible's float to a land based computer or station, we purchased two Ubiquiti wireless bridges. So far, we have set up these stations in order to achieve data transfer between two computers over a short distance. We have yet to test them over long ranges or optimize them.

One of the Units:

Important Note: When using these bridges, or any bridge for that manner, to connect two computers directly for data transfer, it is necessary to connect the devise to the computer with something called a switched, or crossover, Ethernet cable. These cables have different wiring patterns that allow them to communicate directly between machines. They are not required on Mac computers as Mac hardware handles the switching. The crossover cables can be made, but they can also be bought for a relatively low price. If you wish to switch multiple devices together, you will need something called a switch, which is a hub for multiple Ethernet devices.

To set up our bridges, we used, in addition to the units, 4 Ethernet cables, 2 switched and two not. The switched cable is run from the computers Ethernet port to the LAN port on the POE injector for the bridge. To access the setting for the bridges, we followed the directions listed in the instruction book that came with the bridges. The only problematic step was setting the static IP address of the computers Ethernet port. On PC, this can be done by going to the network and sharing center, click on the "change adapter settings" options, select the Ethernet adapter, open its properties, double click on Internet Protocol Version 4, and select a manual IP address. Set this to something in the domain of 192.168.1.x, where x is between 1 and 100 (to keep it simple). These settings can be found in wireless settings on Mac.

To set up the point to point link between the two devices, once you have gotten into the settings for the wireless bridge, follow the instructions in this video. The hardware is slightly different but the steps are almost the same.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__xzHnK6IVs

When you are done, your settings should look something like these:

Access Point:

Station:

If the two units show red status lights, then they are connected and the link is complete. Packets can be sent to the IP address of the opposite computers Ethernet port via the console command ping 192.168.1.x This should return data.

Our next post will show how we used this network connection to create a private network in order to communicate with the electronics on the submersible.