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What are the white antennas on this pole (lemmy.world)
submitted 4 months ago by Wxfisch@lemmy.world to c/whatisthisthing@lemmy.world
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They started installing poles along a main road near where we live and I’m not sure what the white antennas on them are for. Some of the poles have traffic cameras like the one in the picture but others don’t. They are spaced every half to one mile and have antennas on opposite sides, with what looks like a radio cabinet near the base. The antennas are all aligned along the road, pointing parallel to traffic. This is in southwest Pennsylvania.

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[-] azdle@news.idlestate.org 61 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Point to point wireless network link: https://store.ui.com/us/en/category/all-wireless/products/af-24

As for what it's for, it could be anything. Possibly just for the camera that's also on that pole?

[-] ShepherdPie@midwest.social 39 points 4 months ago

As for what it's for, it could be anything.

I'm pretty sure that's what Bill Gates will be using to activate the 5G nanobots that we all received in the COVID vaccine.

[-] Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 8 points 4 months ago

We were all supposed to die by late 2020. What’s taking so long?

[-] SARGE@startrek.website 5 points 4 months ago

~~6 months~~

~~1 year~~

~~2~~ ~~3~~ ~~4~~ SOON!

[-] Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 2 points 4 months ago

Aah, the classic Soon™. The gaming industry has taught you well.

[-] ShepherdPie@midwest.social 4 points 4 months ago

They forgot to put out all the antennas, and you know how slow big infrastructure projects can be.

[-] Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 2 points 3 months ago

They said that people would start dying like flies in no time. Why do I care? You see, currently houses and cars are so expensive, because there are many people who also want to buy those things. If the population was cut to a fraction, as was promised, the prices would crash accordingly due to massive oversupply of everything. I’m still waiting for the day when I can buy a house with 1000 €.

[-] Annoyed_Crabby@monyet.cc 3 points 4 months ago

Nanomachine, son.

[-] CM400@lemmy.world 3 points 4 months ago

Source: military.

[-] Wxfisch@lemmy.world 10 points 4 months ago

That indeed looks like exactly what they are, which I should have known since I have a bunch of UniFi gear at home. I wonder what PennDOT is using them for.

[-] borari@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 4 months ago

Those airfibers are massive fucking overkill for a single camera. I’ve aligned pairs of these that feed entire like 10-25 unit MDUs.

[-] jake_jake_jake_@lemmy.world 3 points 4 months ago

if they are chaining them bandwidth will add up, and depending on the switching equipment they could be doing a large ring of some sort. it would be pretty easy to calculate since cameras are a pretty even throughput.

Looks like a air fiber 24 which is only 1.5Gbps throughput, 8-24mbps per camera would mean between 60-200 cameras, which for a state transportation department wouldn't be unreasonable, especially they are using these for something else, like interconnects between buildings for a metro-lan scenario.

[-] Mellow12@lemmy.world 16 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

It looks like a point-to-point relay. There appears to be two different sized dish antennas on each antenna “pod” which would indicate two different frequencies are in use. I’m sure it’s the method they’re using to transmit the camera feed back to a landline connection. The poles without a camera are probably just a relay to get the signal down the next hop in the chain, or maybe there is some other sort of sensor data being collected at those points.

Looking at the UniFi stats azdle posted the dishes in the pod are separate send and receive dishes. The size denotes the dbi gain.

[-] originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com 14 points 4 months ago

big ol ubiquiti mesh network. many towns are covered in them. iirc ubiquiti made a name for themselves doing wireless in stadiums.. had some solid firewalls/routers

the new stuff is pretty at least

[-] borari@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 4 months ago

Point to point and point to multipoint are not the same as a mesh network.

[-] originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com 1 points 4 months ago

right, one is just a small piece of the others infrastructure.

[-] borari@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 4 months ago

No bro. A mesh network is a bunch of access points that repeat each others signals. This is like a single cable, but using RF. It is not an access point.

[-] Tylerdurdon@lemmy.world -3 points 4 months ago

Could be that tracking technology for gun shots.

this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2024
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