Ubiquiti Bullet and Powerbeam M2

Setup and troubleshooting for Bullet and Powerbeam M2 transmissions over TCP sockets.

Reference

I refer to this as the M2

I refer to this as the dish

INITIAL SETUP

First, power the M2 and Dish using PoE injectors. Generally, you want to use a battery-powered injector for the M2 and an AC powered injector for the Dish. The leftmost LED should be green. Wait for 30 seconds to see if the rest of the M2 & Dish LEDs light up. If they do, skip to the next section.

If nothing happens, it means the Bullet hasn’t connected to the Dish’s Access Point yet. First, you should check all available Wi-Fi connections. If something like TJ-AP or TJ-GS shows up, the Dish is doing its job. Otherwise, you want to access the Dish’s configuration page. On the computer that's connected to the Dish via ethernet, type 192.168.1.20 in a browser. If this doesn't work, you need to set a static IP for the Dish. On a linux computer, use the following command:

sudo ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.7 netmask 255.255.255.0

Click on Properties, then click Use the following IP Address.

Set the IP address to 192.168.1.7 or 192.168.1.x where x is any number except for 20.

You should now be able to access 192.168.1.20 in a browser. If you don’t know the login, ask around. If absolutely no one in the club knows the login, you must factory reset the M2 and repeat above steps. The default login is ubnt for both user and password. Click on the Systems tab and in the bottom right, click on “Upload Configuration”. Upload the Dish configuration file from our GCS repo.

Now access the Bullet M2’s configuration in a browser. Upload the Bullet M2 configuration file from our GCS repo.

ONCE ALL LEDS ARE LIT

You can now attempt python socket connections. Find the IP address you statically assigned to the Dish (most likely 192.168.1.7). On the Ground Station computer connected to the Dish, you must bind to yourself and wait for connections:

import socket

s=socket.socket(socket.AF_INET,socket.SOCK_STREAM)

s.bind((DISH_IP,PORT))

conn,addr=s.accept()

On the flight companion computer connected to the M2, connect to the GS’s open socket:

client_socket = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)

client_socket.connect((DISH_IP, PORT))

You can now transmit & receive data over the air.

Not working?

  • Try pinging the Dish’s IP from both computers

  • Make sure you are connecting over the same port

  • Don’t attempt multiple connections over the same socket; kill both scripts and try again.

  • Bullet randomly disconnecting from ethernet? Run this shell script in the background:

#!/bin/sh
while :
do
    sudo ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.7 netmask 255.255.255.0
    sleep 5
done

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