AI supported prototyping of a Solar Powered Emergency Comms “Base Station” Unit

AI supported prototyping of a Solar Powered
Emergency Comms HAM Radio “Base Station” Unit
The design of such a very flexible unit does imply multiple technical questions and challenges to be solved.
ChatGPT had been used here to address and retrieve qualified answers for specific technical questions.
I will outline here two examples on technical design topics addressed to ChatGPT and the very useful and time saving responses below.
Images of the prototype outdoor off-grid test setup are included here.

Example a) Portable Emergency Comms Unit – electrical components selection
Example b) Asterisk VoIP PBX - design and setup

a) Portable Emergency Comms Unit – electrical components selection
Electrical design of a portable (HAM Radio) Emergency Comms Unit.
How AI support can be utilized to speed up the technical design by providing qualified answers to key technical questions?
A brief overview of the key elements and key requirements is outlined below to provide an idea on the implied challenges about the systems design and systems interworking.

• Portable Emergency Comms “Base Station” Unit – Key elements
  • Wireless IP and Comms Radio support
  • VoIP / PBX support
  • 24/7 Off-Grid battery operation, solar power recharge
    
  • Portable Antenna Mount Pole
    
  • Internet independent IP Comms auto-routing support
  • “Hill Top” Auto config network node
  • IP Microwave Links / Integrated IP router (OpenWRT) –
  • HF/VHF/UHF remote operation IP interworking support
  • Outdoor Operation IP64 / IP65 (DIN EN 60529)
• Key requirements
  • Local and quick relocatable / portable “Hill Top” operation
  • Communication protocol standards and services support: IPVPN/L3-VPN, OLSR Meshnet-Routing, VLAN, VoIP, DMR, Web, WLAN/ISM local access
  • Off-grid, sustainable operation (no use of fuel supply dependent diesels)
  • 230V AC, 24V and 12V DC flexible and parallel power provisioning
  • PoE support for Microwave / Routers and VoIP Phones
  • Electrical standards compliance (VDE, IEEE, IEC, RFC,…)
  • Low RFI for Radio Comms equipment DC and AC power provisioning
  • Remote monitoring

• Meshnet Auto-Routing IP Communications Unit
  • Routing:  OLSR and BGP4
  • VoIP PBX – Low power multi VoIP PBX support
  • Emergency phones support
  • Web SDR support for remote access IP traffic load tests
  • DMR/YSF/P25/NXDN (digital voice) HotSpot supporting local digital handheld radios WAN access
• Solar Charge Control and Power Provisioning Unit
  • 230V AC (500/1000W), 24V (50A) and 12V (30A) DC provisioning (Opt. 12V-48V DC)
  • Rechargeable Battery support
  • Portable Battery Packs (24V or 2 x 12V)
  • Portable Solar Panels for battery recharge (2 x 130W)
  • Overvoltage / Surge protection (Solar generator input, IP/RF inputs)

Technical question to ChatGPT:
The following design related question did come up on the appropriate selection and use of the appropriate Circuit Breaker components for the DC and AC parts versus the available supply chains.
The usual quick search via Google had not provided clear and trustworthy answers (lots of different “opinions”), thus I did give ChatGPT a try.

Based on the following short question, ChatGPT did provide instantly this very comprehensive answer, as shown in the chat with ChatGPT below.
(I had been then easier afterwords to dig into more details on the topic, related standards and to order the required appropriate components).

ChatGPT design support example:

---

Example b) Asterisk VoIP PBX – Voice Mail design and setup

Configuration and coding of a Voice Mail server for an Asterisk PBX within the Emergency Comms Base Station.
Key challenges here are to create the configuration for the recent open source Asterisk project for the new pjsip.config based configuration and the relatively complex task to identify the right Voice Mail Server setup, as many, many older and newer and inconsistent setup descriptions are on the web.

ChatGPT did provide instantly an comprehensive answer and a directly working example (copy and paste!), together with the list of the other related configuration files to be adapted in case.

As PBX and SDR Server I had first used an existing MiniPC (Ubuntu) and then replaced it by a higher performing RasberryPI 5 (Debian).
ChatGPT was also used to quickly generate other Asterisk PBX SIP server configurations, e.g. as the commonly used FreePBX software package had not available yet for the Rasberry PI 5 OS.
The VoIP phones were connected via local meshnet routers and Router/Microwave Links and meshnet IP / OLSR to the PBX on the portable "base station".

---

Conclusion

Even that an AI like ChatGPT does not relieve yourself on utilizing or building up your own expertise, utilizing an AI had saved me again hours, days and weeks of time on the solution design, configuration and test.
Best Regards
Peter

Author

Peter Moessbauer
Management Solutions Consulting
TeleExcellence / Moessbauer-Kupferberg
Key focus and expertise on:
- Network and Services Management
- System, data and radio communications solution design, reviews and test
- Best practices operations
- Solution requirements, analysis, review and optimization support