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<p>Sorry, I just realized that the message I sent out earlier did
not go to the list (Sorry Greg for the duplicate on your end).
Here it is again to the list. <br>
</p>
<p>------------------</p>
<p>OK, I will speak up here. I definitely fall into this camp here.
I too wish there was more activity (and for quite a while after
joining the list I thought it had become a dead project) and I
wish I had more time work with and contribute to Disaster Radio. I
think it has a good view of what it is trying to achieve and could
be a really useful project that a lot of people could benefit
from. <br>
</p>
<p>[Now I am going to combine a response to several emails that have
been going through the list instead of creating response for each
one]</p>
<p>I have looked at a couple of other projects--Project Owl and a
few I don't remember right now--and most are targeting the same
basic idea/plan. A couple are commercial systems and those get
discounted immediately because the use case I have is for the
local ARES/RACES teams which have very little money and are 100%
volunteer based. The remaining ones, like Project Owl, seem to
want to put a lot of hardware behind all the nodes to make the
system work. To me that is unrealistic in a emergency
situation/disaster to maintain a number of servers that may or may
not have power, probably will not have cooling any more and oh, by
the way are there people around to make sure that the system is
functioning correctly. A solution like that might be find for a
large city that funds an emergency management division properly
but most do not. <br>
</p>
<p>When I looked at Disaster Radio, I like what I saw in the flashy
video and was slightly disappointed with what I saw in the
firmware image of the time (full disclosure, I have not loaded any
newer firmware so things may be vastly improved). Mostly it seemed
like Disaster Radio was behind on the app development especially
compared to the promotional video. Yet I understood that the video
was the vision vs. what work had been done. <br>
</p>
<p>I did want to get involved (and still do), but the basic problem
is that I just have too many projects and can not spread myself
any thinner. <br>
</p>
<p>There are a few things that I see (from my perspective of doing
EMCOMM work and living in a city that had a lot of emergency
management support) that Disaster Radio needed to develop to be a
more viable solution. The chat app (about the only real app in the
firmware I played with) was pretty minimal, but it worked
reasonably well. <br>
</p>
<p>One of the things that I identified pretty quickly from an
emergency management perspective is an app for community reporting
of incidents and needs. These are geographically specific so the
needs and responses would need to be customized for an
installation. In other words, the types of incidents and the types
of resources are different from what I need here in the Pacific
Northwest vs. say Oklahoma. The idea being is that when there is
an event, someone in the community could report that they need
food and water at a location or that there is a tree down that
needs to be cleared. These reports need to be structured so that
they can be correlated and processed efficiently at incident
command. Free form reporting does not work as it takes too much
time and energy to decode the request and work it through the
system.</p>
<p>There also needs to be a message board of sorts where the
controlling entity can post notices related to the incident. In my
use case it would be where the city could post where the open
shelters are located or maybe where one could find specific items
like food, water or emergency care. This can not be posted to by
everyone because otherwise it becomes a lot of noise and the
important messages are lost. <br>
</p>
<p>Another aspect I see is having some light weight management of
the nodes. I would like the network to be up all the time but not
be available to the general public. If the network is available
all the time then it becomes a medium to be abused and unreliable.
I want the ability for the controlling entity to be able to enable
and disable specific nodes (say to allow testing and drills to be
performed) and then when an event occurs a single command could be
sent to enable all nodes to make them available to the public at
large. Then disabled again once the event is over. <br>
</p>
<p>On the hardware side there needs to be a little bit of revision
to the circuit for cold weather climates. Using a lithium based
battery is fine (and mostly desirable) but this poses a problem
for an area that occasional and routinely reaches freezing
temperatures. Pulling energy from the battery in freezing
temperatures is fine (other than degraded performance) but
attempting to charge the battery in freezing temperatures renders
the battery useless and it will never accept a charge afterwards.
So there needs to be some control as to when to apply the charging
current to the battery depending upon the environment temperature.
<br>
</p>
OK, there is a lot here and I am sure that some of this will need to
be digested. I hope that someday I will have more time to where I
can spend time working on Disaster Radio and help improve what
others have produced already.
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Gerard Hickey / WTØF IRLP:3067/Echolink:529661
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:hickey@kinetic-compute.com">hickey@kinetic-compute.com</a> DMR: 3102272
425-395-4554 Allstar: 531920</pre>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 9/22/21 4:48 PM, Greg Troxel wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:rmiwnn8jho1.fsf@s1.lexort.com">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">
eM Grzegorz <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:emgrzegorz@interia.pl"><emgrzegorz@interia.pl></a> writes:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">Hi,active list?Grzegorz
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">
Sort of. When people ask, someone answers. But not much seems to be
happening. I do have the impression that those on the list wish there'd
be more activity, and that most of them sort of hope to contribute. I
of course do not speak for the coalition.
Perhaps you can tell us why you're interested and what you'd like to see
as highest priority.
</pre>
<br>
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<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">_______________________________________________
DisasterRadio mailing list
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:DisasterRadio@lists.sudoroom.org">DisasterRadio@lists.sudoroom.org</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://sudoroom.org/lists/listinfo/disasterradio">https://sudoroom.org/lists/listinfo/disasterradio</a>
</pre>
</blockquote>
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