TOmesh and sudobuilds machine - mesh

23 Oct 2017

Hi y'all,

So I've been out of touch for a little while. During my trip, I had a lot
of time to clear my head and talk with people outside our little bubble in
the Bay. Specifically, I had the good grace to meet with some of the folks
working on TOmesh in Toronto. They had lots of great ideas and an
interesting perspective on what it means to be a "mesh network project",
I'm excited to get back to Oakland and try to share some of their thoughts.

Anyway, one idea from TOmesh I really liked, was the their mission to make
all of their hardware, software, and code entirely ship-able. It's an idea
that has bounced around our group a number of times under the nym,
"mesh-in-a-box". For us, we are so far along, that we would have to
completely rethink, or at least simplify, our project to make it fit in a
box (quite literally). TOmesh has the benefit of being a younger project,
but also they started, from my understanding, with different base
assumptions. That is, they did not assume that everyone has access to (or
knows how to use) git or can reach openwrt packages or fulfill docker's
strange dependencies (an irony considering docker's raison d'etre). So they
have assumed positions as educators, teaching the skills and concepts
related to networking, privacy, and security with a limited focus on the
real, physical implementation.

Then I saw the recent difficulties with building the firmware. This all got
me thinking about the way we share knowledge and collaborator with one
another. It has also has encouraged me to propose a project that has been
mentioned countless times. I would like to try building a firmware building
machine. I realize some of the group might see this as constructing big-bad
centralized-server that controls all the firmware running on the mesh.
However, I encourage you to read my proposed requirements or add your own
to the issue or by responding to this email thread.

https://github.com/sudomesh/sudowrt-firmware/issues/111

I've previously worked on similar projects (albeit in a Windows
environment), and I think I'll have a good amount of time to work on it
come November(post-disaster radio proposal). We'll be needing help with
hardware selection, *nix sys admin knowledge, and content creation and
documentation writing.

Key to this idea, is that it should not be seen as centralized solution to
a decentralized problem, but rather a way of off-loading some of the
knowledge currently centralized in a few individuals.

Hope everyone is doing well in the Bay, I look forward to getting back.

Thanks,
-grant_____(@paidforby)