So Cal Free Net.org

One end of the AP uses an unmodified Proxim Harmony AP. Unmodified as in - you could return this under warranty. Accordingly, this is the simple end of the relay. The parts you need for this end are:

• Proxim Harmony AP
• double ethernet jack for PoE
• SMA to N-Female Adapter
• N-Male to N-Male Cable
• 5.x GHz panel antenna
• outdoor case
• misc hardware: wires, U bolt/threaded rod, nuts etc.

Putting everything in the case is a fun part. There's a few non-obvious details however. By taking some simple signal strength measurements, we found that the antenna connector furthest from the ethernet jack is the 'primary' antenna, so be sure to use that. Also, sometimes the AP won't boot if the other antenna is left disconnected. Sure enough, the manual even says this on page 44: For Model 8571, you must use two antennas. This was inconsistent - sometimes it would boot and not others, so we left the 2nd antenna connected.

We decided to use an SMA to N-Female adapter because we're standardizing all our radios to have N-Female connectors so our antenna cables can all be identical. However you could instead buy a custom cable to suit. Note that this is an SMA connector, not the Reverse Polarity SMA (RP-SMA) connector that many 802.11b/g Access Points use.

Connecting and mounting the antenna is simple enough. Note there's no up/downtilt on this antenna mount. You can fudge this by jamming something appropriate at the top or bottom fitting to tilt up or down as needed.

The final piece of the puzzle is to create a PoE adapter. The Proxim already has internal support to take up to 24V power from the ethernet cable, so we just need an 'injector' to add the power to the ethernet cable. I.e., this is half of the PoE project. We measured the voltage from the supplied plug pack at 13.7VDC under load which was far enough above the manual's specified 12VDC input that we thought we could use the standard plugpack. Our first installation is running succesfully at 105 feet, so it seems to work in practice ok.