As discussed in the Getting Started guide, your initial configuration should use the Simple Configuration menu. This guide discusses how to tweak settings after applying your initial configuration. By default, the Simple Configuration only presents a small subset of all the possible configuration options of the Mesh Rider Radio. For further configuration in the GUI, click the Advanced Settings button at the bottom left hand corner of the page.
The radio's Mesh Rider wireless settings can be found by navigating to Network -> Wireless in the GUI. This is where you can configure the Mesh Rider wireless interface. The Wearable (and OEM) variants have an additional WiFi radio which is also configured here, and the Helix variant's band switching is also configured here. These are discussed in the next section.
To modify the wireless settings of the Mesh Rider radio, click Edit next to the relevant radio interface. You should see a page similar to the one below. We recommend the following updates.
With the new GUI, network interface settings can now be adjusted directly from the Simple Configuration page. You can enable the DHCP client on BR-WAN by setting DHCP on BR-WAN to Client Enabled under the Network Configuration section. For more advanced changes such as custom static IPs or traffic prioritization, go to the Traffic Prioritization page under Link Optimization. Here, you can define application-specific QoS rules.
Note: The firewall is now open for all ports by default, so no additional firewall changes are required.
The default radio network configuration is mesh, and its settings can now be accessed directly by clicking Mesh Configuration from the left-hand sidebar. This section includes parameters like OGM Interval, Bridge Loop Avoidance, and Broadcast Settings. Fig. 3 shows the Mesh Configuration page in the new interface.
We can tell a particular node not to send packets directly to another node. This could be used for force a mesh hop. This can be done in the GUI under Network Configuration → Mesh Configuration → Peer Filter Configuration . Input the MAC address of the node that you want to directly block.
This can also be done over the CLI. For a temporary change use:
root@smartradio:~# batctl pr <MAC address>
Different types of traffic can be prioritized in the Traffic Prioritization menu. This is useful when operating in a crowded wireless medium. There are four different queues - Voice, Video, Best Effort, and Background. The Voice queue optimizes latency and may also be used for command and control, the Video queue optimizes throughput, the Best Effort Queue is essentially unoptimized, and the Background queue is for low-priority data.
To use these QoS features, open up the web GUI and navigate to Network -> Traffic Prioritization. The Mesh Rider Radio includes software to map different network protocols or ports to the various QoS queues. To do so, click Enable Differentiated Services, and add a classification rule to suit the application's needs. For example, you can send all UDP traffic to the Video queue which is beneficial for video transmission.
The Mesh Rider Radio includes built-in optimizations for URLLC (Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communication) and video streaming. URLLC is typically used for command and control (C&C) traffic but can also be applied to any latency-sensitive application. For example, if your C&C application uses UDP port 7000, go to Link Optimization → Traffic Prioritization.
First, enable Optimize Command & Control and Voice for URLLC by toggling the setting. Then, click Add Rule under the Classification Rules section. In the new rule, set the Protocol to UDP, the Port to 7000, and the DSCP value to Voice, Command & Control (CS6). Optionally, fill in the Comment field for clarity. Once configured, click Save Configuration to apply the changes.
Keep in mind that if the URLLC rule is applied to high-bandwidth telemetry or multiple streams, it may negatively impact performance due to limited prioritization resources.
If Optimize Video Streaming is enabled, the radio will
Video bad link threshold, then the radio will drop Video bad link (percentage) packets. This is an optional feature, and you should adjust the RSSI to a reasonable value for your application.The RSSI bad-link threshold is an additional protection against network overload when the link quality is bad, but even without setting the RSSI bad-link threshold, the C&C queue is prioritized over the VI queue.
The Sept 2023 Sense release firmware includes two new checkboxes. The Optimize for Robustness checkbox replaces the Diversity Rates Only checkbox in older firmware. This forces the radio to send the same data over both antennas redundantly which leads to smoother performance in highly dynamically changing conditions (e.g. UAVs, UGVs). Note that it also reduces the maximum achievable throughput by 50%.
The Optimize for Latency over Throughput does what the name implies. It results in improved latency, but the maximum achievable throughput is reduced by approximately half for high MCS rates.
Both of these settings are recommended for mobile robotics applications where low latency, smooth realtime video and C&C are required.
Further Link Optimization is discussed in our RF Link Optimization document.