Southwest Idaho
Amateur Radio Club
AREDN Network

AREDN (Amateur Radio Emergency Data Network) is a high-speed mesh network designed to support emergency communications and digital services.

Why AREDN?

People often ask, “Why use AREDN?” or “What’s it for?” The answer is simple:
it enables reliable, off-grid digital communication infrastructure.

We operate two fully solar-powered remote sites, each equipped with a dashboard to monitor battery levels, charging status, and site loads. Cameras can be deployed for still images, time-lapse sequences, or live video streaming. Some repeaters are remotely controllable using serial-to-TCP converters.

Beyond monitoring, AREDN supports a variety of services over TCP/IP—including VoIP phones for easy voice communication, text chat systems, file servers, and much more.

Treasure Valley Status

Our two repeater sites are linked together to provide coverage.

The sites are:

Lower Squaw Butte (Emmett and Meridian)
Hatt Butte (South Nampa)

View Dashboard

Project Goals

We’re excited to collaborate with other clubs or individuals to help build out wide-area AREDN sites that could cover the entire Treasure Valley.

Potential use cases include supporting events, enabling large file transfers, video streaming, and even telephone services
—all without relying on the internet.

Getting Connected

If you have line-of-sight (LoS) to one of our AREDN nodes, there’s a good chance you can connect! Below is a recommended starter setup. Both devices will need to be flashed with AREDN’s custom OpenWRT-based firmware—installation instructions are available here or here.

Even without LoS or RF coverage, you can still participate via built-in VPN tunneling support—setup instructions are available here.

You’ll also need an outdoor-rated, shielded Ethernet cable to connect the indoor hAP device to the outdoor-mounted SXTsq5. Feel free to contact the club if you need help getting started!