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