The second data project on the block was a group effort of geeky friends. We wanted some data up at the house for calls and messaging. We had gotten to know the neighbors who were happy to share their Starlink connection, so we built two point-to-point WiFi links to get the signal up to the top of a ridge and then over the valley to the neighbors. It goes through a lot of foliage and is pretty slow, but it's way better than the windmill.

I didn't choose the hardware; I would have gone for 2.4 GHz over 5 GHz as it would cope with the foliage better. As it is, it does tend to drop out when there is a lot of water on the foliage after a big rain.

On the top of the ridge, the two point-to-point radios are mounted on a tree and powered by a solar panel and a battery. This is why the system is often called The Internet Tree.

The kit is all Ubiquiti, and Ubiquiti has a remote monitoring tool that used to be called UNMS, now UISP. I have an instance of it running on a VM in the cloud for monitoring; it's pretty handy.

When the windmill died, I moved the solar and tank monitoring over to The Internet Tree, so it's our only data connection these days.

It's had its ups and downs. It's required a fair bit of maintenance over the years and is a great reminder of how things fail and break; nature continues.

On the other hand, it was invaluable when we all got stuck there in the floods, as it meant we could communicate with the outside world, telling work and family we were okay but couldn't get out.

The Internet Tree recently got taken out by a bushfire. The fire was very low, and only the battery and solar on the ground got burnt. The radios up on the tree were sooty but fine. We had enough spare kit on site to build out The Internet Tree version 5.

Which brings me to...

A short history:

• v1 Initial install January 2021
• v2 The cabletie incident part 1, Discovery 29 October 2022, Fix December 2022, New Radio
• v3 The cabletie incident part 2, 22 April 2023, New Radio, hose clamps, full re-cable
• v4 New battery, 17th December 2023
• v5 Post bushfire, 05 October 2024, New battery, regulator, solar
• v5.1 Hole in battery box lid, January 2025, Switch the battery box and add some tin.

As I compile this text, it's out again with an unknown failure. Earth Abides.