Hi all
I've been thinking a bit about Disaster radio in contexts where there
isn't much in the way of existing infrastructure.
In particular, I've been looking at the pay-as-you-go solar model, and
how that's been effective in an African context at getting hundreds of
thousands of people connected to solar energy:
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/2018/01/29/when-mobile-meets-modular-pay…
I'm wondering if this approach could be applied to comms? If you/ we
were to fund an initial deployment of say a hundred nodes into a
medium-sized African city.
One or two Disaster radio nodes in that city network are connected to
the Mobile phone network. If $X per day has been received in mobile
micro-payments, then it removes the network-wide obnoxious banner-ad
soliciting mobile payment? Or maybe it removes the annoying two
minutes forced a timeout on the wifi networks?
It seems a bit counter-intuitive to look at ways to annoy users, and
just to be clear I'm not looking to 'monetize' this in a way that
extracts value.
But if city-wide networks could self-fund further rollout, then you
could be looking at something that could scale in really interesting,
potentially transformative ways.
After the capital costs of the network had been paid, and enough
income raised to roll out to the next city, the ads/ timeout/
annoyance could be permanently removed, and the residents would
collectively own their own infrastructure.
Thanks
Sam
Hi all
I've been thinking a bit about Disaster radio in contexts where there
isn't much in the way of existing infrastructure.
In particular, I've been looking at the pay-as-you-go solar model, and
how that's been effective in an African context at getting hundreds of
thousands of people connected to solar energy:
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/2018/01/29/when-mobile-meets-modular-pay…
I'm wondering if this approach could be applied to comms? If you/ we
were to fund an initial deployment of say a hundred nodes into a
medium-sized African city.
One or two Disaster radio nodes in that city network are connected to
the Mobile phone network. If $X per day has been received in mobile
micro-payments, then it removes the network-wide obnoxious banner-ad
soliciting mobile payment? Or maybe it removes the annoying two
minutes forced a timeout on the wifi networks?
It seems a bit counter-intuitive to look at ways to annoy users, and
just to be clear I'm not looking to 'monetize' this in a way that
extracts value.
But if city-wide networks could self-fund further rollout, then you
could be looking at something that could scale in really interesting,
potentially transformative ways.
After the capital costs of the network had been paid, and enough
income raised to roll out to the next city, the ads/ timeout/
annoyance could be permanently removed, and the residents would
collectively own their own infrastructure.
Thanks
Sam
I created a page on the wiki with some learning resources for getting up to
speed on the work we're starting to do on antenna design and impedance
matching networks:
https://github.com/sudomesh/disaster-radio/wiki/Antennas-and-impedance-matc…
Since we'll need a VNA for this work I included a comparison of different
affordable VNAs.
Tomorrow evening we'll probably spend some time building a simple test
setup with two computers displaying the RSSI from the RFM95 modules.
--
marc/juul
Hi all
I stumbled upon the disaster.radio a few days ago while researching mesh
networks, community owned networks and off grid communication systems.
Without being asked: I love the concept of disaster.radio, but I think
disaster.radio should go beyond the "disaster" use case. It will be easier
to gain more attention for this interesting project in the long run by
having the recreational activities (like hiking, outdoor activities,
traveling, sailing, ...) in mind. Or in other words: the term disaster is
so negatively affected.
>From my (limited, external) point of view the disaster.radio is like a
stationary Gotenna relay station with an endless solar powered power
supply. Everybody should install one on the office, the garden or at home.
I started going through the hardware part list and checked out where I can
find the parts.
I did a lot of Raspberry and Arduino projects before so this is not
completely unfamiliar to me, but pardon me, but this is absolutely for
hardware "nerds" – ahm, I meant experts. ;-) Further more – one must master
the soldering iron.
A starter kit or a simple kit with less parts, would be great. The question
was asked on Github, here:
https://github.com/sudomesh/disaster-radio/issues/12, as well.
It seems others would love the get their foot into this without investing
too much time and effort to building the hardware in the first place. Not
all of us are into hardware and considering such a network as an
infrastructure and are willing to build on top of it.
After digging a bit deeper a saw the "portable node" presented on YouTube
in this video: https://youtu.be/0dosXMXaU94?t=3m52s . A tutorial to get
this small portable nodes up and running would be awesome. I'm interested
to contribute in this area. Everybody should be able to have a little node
attached to there van, the backpack or where they want.
What parts are used for this "portable node"? And where can I order the
parts?
My second question is: What is the goal of this project? Is this an
experiment or the next "big thing"? Is there an open roadmap?
A reaction on filed Github issues would be great to get this project
going...
Cheers,
Xavier
