Hello Roger,
I'm in Oakland & I'd be happy to send you a disaster radio node module/board (we don't have cases) though I'm not sure how much shipping will be...probably not too much.
Is your LoRa drone project on github or publicly available by any chance? It sounds very interesting.
Perhaps we could setup a jitsi meet & discuss possible collaboration.
Cheers,
robb benson

On Tue, May 14, 2019 at 11:18 AM grant <ggallo102@gmail.com> wrote:
Hey Roger!

Awesome stuff, flying drones with LoRa sounds like a great idea, we always talked about drone deployments, but never considered controlling the drones using a LoRa radio.

For your chat device, you might be interested in checking out the Grey Cat collective, https://greycat.co , they have a hardware kit that sounds similar to what you are describing. Unfortunately, I think their code is still closed source and last time I played with it (August 2018), it was only demo and the keyboard was not yet implemented.

Alternatively, you could build your own box around a Disaster Radio. While it wasn't designed to have a screen, I'm sure you could adapt its code to print messages to a built-in screen (probably an SPI OLED is your best best) and take input from a physical keyboard (or a push button matrix?). I'd recommend getting in touch with sudomeshers in Oakland who could send you a Disaster Radio prototype to play around with. If you are able to get a prototype, I'd be happy to walk you through the code, since I'm the one mostly responsible for it's current state.

You can find the code and other resources here https://github.com/sudomesh/disaster-radio , there are also schematics and board designs in there, if you are up for printing your own circuit board.

Good luck!!!
-grant (@paidforby)

On Tue, May 14, 2019 at 1:46 AM moonlit fpv <mlit83@gmail.com> wrote:
Good day!
I've recently been very captivated by the LoRa movement, and I started out last year using the LoRa chipset to fly drones kilometer after kilometer with telemetry. Then yesterday I had a plan to order some hardware to build two terminals for my kids so that they can chat! (or IM if u will..) Haven't quite landed on screen size yet, but I'm thinking a 4" should be more than enough. Then for input I'm thinking oldskool texting like I did when I was a kid, a numpad with three letters on each number. Or just a few buttons would work too scrolling through. I am building this! If anyone has any ideas or tips, please find me!

Then I found your project! Disaster Radio! And I luv it!! So I want to build a node! Here, in Norway!

Best regards, Roger

_______________________________________________
DisasterRadio mailing list
DisasterRadio@lists.sudoroom.org
https://sudoroom.org/lists/listinfo/disasterradio
_______________________________________________
DisasterRadio mailing list
DisasterRadio@lists.sudoroom.org
https://sudoroom.org/lists/listinfo/disasterradio