I am a big fan of home network security. As the father of three kids and the one in charge of the network at home, I am constantly worried about online safety. Over the years I have tried many different security solutions and am now running Sophos XG at home. Sophos is one piece of my home setup, and you can see more of my setup here. 

A few years back, I got tired of the constant reboots I was having to do to my consumer router. It seemed that if I didn’t reboot it every few days to a week, it would cause my network to become laggy. I had the problem in varying forms and severity across several routers. I decided to switch to Ubiquiti equipment, and ran that up until this year. I used an EdgeRouter Lite as my main router and a UniFi UAP-LR as my access point. This was a great combination for many years. I also used Open DNS as a content filter for many years to help the inside to outside security.

Although the EdgeRouter was a great router/firewall and OpenDNS a great filter, I really wanted the filter on the local network. The more network between my users and the equipment protecting them, the more vulnerable the protection is. With OpenDNS, there was a lot of network in between, most of which was out of my control. I read about hardware/software firewalls like pfSense, Sophos and Untangle and was really interested in using them as a solution. After looking into the available options, I wound up choosing Sophos XG as my firewall. There really isn’t a well defined reason I chose it, as all three options are really solid.

Having picked up an old Dell Poweredge 1950 III a few years back, I wanted to stay with rack mount type equipment for my network stuff. I wound up grabbing a Roswell brand 2U case and a Lenovo ThinkCentre with a core i5-2500 3.3GHz processor and 4GB of ram. I pulled the hardware out of the ThinkCentre and put it in the 2U case. 4GB is the Sophos home user (free for home users) RAM cap, so the ThinkCentre’s hardware worked out perfectly.

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So, it looks like DMR is really making the rounds and I found myself interested. After looking into it, one of the cool things I discovered was the ability to create your own DMR gateway using a DMR hotspot that can be purchased as a kit or fully assembled. The hotspot typically consist of a digital board with a built in low power UHF/VHF transceiver that connects to a small form factor board computer of some type, usually the Raspberry Pi. The computer provides the control of the board and the connection to the internet via (usually) wifi. There are quite a few types of hotspots out there, but they all fall into the two basic categories of simplex and duplex. I opted to go the simplex route (cheaper), but will probably wind up buying a duplex version down the line just to test it out. 

Within the simplex category of DMR hotspot, there are quite a few variations and manufacturers to choose from. The price range goes from sub-$100 to several hundred depending on whether it is a kit, prebuilt, built & configured…the list goes on. You have Jumbospot, ZUMspot, DVMega, several by SharkRF, DV4mini and Nano-DV just name name a few. I had a rather low amount budgeted so my main factor going into this was price. At the time of my purchase, the cheapest option was the Jumbospot purchased as a kit without the Raspberry Pi Zero that controls it. I purchased a kit with the Jumbospot board, case, antenna, OLED display and some hardware on eBay for about $45. The Raspberry Pi Zero, I picked up at 
Limor “Ladyada” Fried’s (AC2SN) website, adafruit.com. I chose the version of the Pi without the headers to save a few dollars as the Jumbospot kit comes with the needed headers for the board. The Pi cost $10, and I opted to add one of the quality 5V 2.5A micro USB switching power supplies that can be purchased there as well for $7.50. I already had the microSD card on hand, but if you don’t have one they can be picked up pretty cheap anymore. There is software needed to make this all run, and that can be found on the Pi-Star site. Pi-Star is a fantastic bit of work by Andy Taylor (MW0MWZ), who credits quite a few people for assisting in the great product we now have.

This article was a bit of an afterthought to the build and so I am missing some photos, such as everything still in its packaging. That said, here are the photos from the build. Pardon the mess, I built this at my computer desk instead of going out to my workbench as I probably should have.

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As part of my fox build, I needed a way to control the transmitter and also broadcast the proper ID to comply with FCC rules. There are a number of products out there, but I chose the Piccon from Byonics (Website link). Byonics has several very cool devices for amateur radio and most have the option to be purchased in kit form or pre-assembled. I admit, I am usually lazy with my free time and would rather jump right into using my new toy instead of having to build it first. This time however, due to the fact that I was spending money on other parts and pieces, I decided to save a few dollars and just order the kit. The kit arrived in a nice compact package as you can see below and had all of the parts and instructions.

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Well, I decided to do a semi-review of a shooting stand I picked up recently. I say semi-review, because I have not yet been able to take it out in the field and use it. Once I do that, I will likely update this article. My initial impressions have been good and I thought I would share this with a few people. I felt it was a pretty solid design and fairly inexpensive. The stand is manufactured under the name, The Last Stand (http://www.laststands.com/), and currently sells for $39.99.

It is a pretty simple idea really; take rebar and a pair of well-designed hardened rubber brackets and make a stand. Here is a picture of the packaging.

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NOTE: This project was never finish. A move interrupted and I wound up getting rid of the bulky parts. There is still a little bit of good info, but wanted to provide fair warning before you begin to read this.

I had a Dish Network dish that moved with me from Texas to Colorado. It turns out that the dish is not compatible with this area and they put in a new one. The installer did not want the old one and advised me to throw it away. So there I was; I could throw out a perfectly good parabolic dish or find a project to do with it. Being the pack rat I am, I opted to find a project. Google found me several good ideas, and I settled on a cubicle bi-quad antenna build that will then be fitted to the dish. I found several sources of information and am building mine based on bits and pieces of the following guides:

• http://www.skifactz.com/wifi/wifi_dish.htm
• https://www.engadget.com/2005/11/15/how-to-build-a-wifi-biquad-dish-antenna/
• http://martybugs.net/wireless/biquad/
• https://pe2er-nl.translate.goog/index.htm?_x_tr_sch=http&_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp (Click the 9th pic down on the right menu)

  I forgot to take some pictures of the dish before I started messing with it. Here is a pic I found of the exact dish I have just to give an idea of what I am starting with.

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