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