[mesh-talk] Idea: Talking nodes!

I was thinking about how to make the experience of operating a node really smooth and engaging, and I thought: What if there was a big button right on top of the node that you could press and the node would tell help you troubleshoot? *press* <node> I am connected to one other mesh node via my dish antenna on the roof. I am connected to the Internet via the Internet connection in this home. I count four clients currently connected to the mesh through me. --- another home --- *press* <node> I am not connected to the mesh. I am not connected to the Internet but I remember being connected to the Internet only four hours ago. Please check that a cable is connected to my port labeled "Internet" and that the other end of the cable is plugged into one of the ports labeled LAN on your Internet router. I checked prices on aliexpress and I predict that it would cost about $4 per node plus some work to do this: Components: * USB Sound card $1.25 - http://www.aliexpress.com/item/USB-Sound-Card-7-1-Channel-3D-Audio-Sound-Ca… * Amplifier: $1.21 - http://www.aliexpress.com/item/1-PCS-Mini-Digital-For-Audio-Amplifier-Board… * Speaker with case: $0.96 - http://www.aliexpress.com/item/3-5mm-Audio-Portable-Wired-Multimedia-Speake… * Button (ok not very big, but best I could find cheap): $0.30 - http://www.aliexpress.com/item/10pcs-Push-Button-with-Cap-12x12-mm/19150748… or instead of the speaker and amp, just cut one of these in half and super-glue it to the top of the node: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Mini-Portable-Hamburger-Speaker-Amplifier-Fo… For the My Net N600 there's likely a secondary unused USB inside of it where we can solder the sound card and tap power for the amplifier. I know this is kinda silly. We probably don't want to be doing this to a whole bunch of routers, but if we ever do a large enough custom order of mesh routers (e.g. crowdfunded) it might be cool to add this feature + if we show it off as something we're working on it could gain us some attention. For now I might make a prototype at some point. For software I'd go with pre-recorded messages that are combined as needed, since it will sounds _much_ nicer than speech synthesis. You can do 10 minutes of very nice sounding human voice in about 800 kB, so i think we could fit enough voice samples on there without running out of storage. fiverr.com is a good source for really inexpensive high quality voice acting talent. -- marc/juul