Powder Mountain, Utah is now fully Meshed!
We partnered with the mountain to place powered stationary relays at 14 locations throughout the resort. Mountain personnel joined me in testing goTenna Mesh throughout the resort. We found connectivity to very reliable throughout the resort.
In the coming months, we plan to work with the resort to integrate goTenna Mesh with the systems Ski Patrol uses to respond to emergencies (read USB SDK!). Ski Patrol is super excited about the location features goTenna Mesh offers - makes it very easy for Ski Patrol to pin point the location of a guest in distress.
We are trying to do something similar for our emergency communications plan between three cities. What did you use for equipment (solar panels, batteries, etc.) There is no sense in reinventing something if you have already done it.
MarkE.,
The panel pictured above looks like the same 5 W Biolite panel that was used in the Mammoth Mountain Ski Area installation. Ther’s a thread about it further down the list here.
Love seeing more of these installations at ski resorts. As someone (IT worker and ski patroller) interested in meshing a community, which includes a ski resort, I would be very interested to see how this holds up over time. My initial concerns would be
Panel security: The picture looks like it’s hanging from its kickstand. High winds (120km/h) are common for us above tree-line. Is this just MVP (minimum viable product) installation for for feasibility testing?
Riming: How resistant are the panels to riming as that stuff will cover just about anything and render the panel useless until it melts off (which could take days, or weeks). I’ve tried using super-hydro-phobic coatings on things before with limited success below freezing.
Operating temperatures. My own testing shows GTM to be almost inoperable at low temperatures around -10°C -15°C range, though this is off battery. Having a constant power supply may help, I’ve not tested this yet.
I was at Powder Mountain on 3/24/19 to shred some pow with my buds and tryout my new goTenna mesh units, but after an hour at the resort and having issues trying to get our messages between the two goTennas, I asked a mountain host and he tells me they removed the goTenna nodes and are using some other type of radio system. It was very disappointing to hear this as our two groups split up and were trying to contact each other which was an epic fail as we had more failed messages then received. I know the terrain at these places is a big issue, but after finding no other hops listed in the messages it was obvious that we were the only ones with goTennas.
The other issue is cell phone coverage from the big 4 sucks in most of the resort when you get into the valley’s. AT&T has a tower next to Hidden Lake Lodge and Sprints antenna are attached to the Hidden Valley lodge and makes the building look like crap with those big ugly antenna and all the coax going to the radio’s behind the antennas.
Great place to shred and ski, but if you get hurt you better hope someone will hear you and get Ski Patrol for you.
Also could someone from goTenna remove these repeater nodes from the Powder Mountain node map, so other goTenna users aren’t fooled into seeing all these nodes and think they will have great goTenna coverage here.
Still pending removal on the map? They’re still there. Also wondering if there’s any more info on why they’ve removed the goTennas? What did they replace this with?
These should be down! I’m not sure why they removed the nodes from the mountain. Currently the resort is closed for the season so we may not hear back for a while.
Bray, when I was at PowMow at the end of March I asked about the Gotenna Mesh coverage they only stated that they took them down and replaced them with another radio system. I wish I would have ask the mountain host for more details about the radio system. I did note at the bottom of the Paradise lift. There was this shiny looking omni antenna with a wireless P2P antenna or maybe this has been there for years all I know is my AT&T phone had no service along with my buddy’s Sprint & T-mobile phones at the bottom of this lift about about half the ski area, T-mobile guy roamed on AT&T. Not sure about Verizon as none us have them, but it was odd looking at these massive 8’ Sprint antennas mounted on the sides of Hidden Lake Lodge. AT&T has a tower just southwest of Hidden Lake Lodge, but it doesn’t provide service in those deep canyons. That’s why I brought along the Gotenna mesh units after looking at the Gotenna mesh map, I figured we would of had great mesh coverage.
It would be nice to have Gotenna mesh repeaters covering all these big ski area’s as most of them have poor or spotty cell phone coverage. If I’m going to a place with questionable phone coverage I take my Gotenna Mesh units with me I just wish more people used them as I only had a few responses to my shouts.
I just wish more people used them as I only had a few responses to my shouts.