Mesh/18 April 2017

people's open network hacknight - 18 April 2017

intros

• marc juul
• scott garrison, nanomonkey: getting back into using IRC
• jorrit: made some changes to the peoplesopen.net site. figuring out how to get ESP8266 to work.
• jeff / jefdaj: wants to put stuff on roofs
• obed - software engineer. family from haiti so understands importance of offgrid comms, been in the bay area for about a year.
• jenny
• eve
• lesley
• dave - cryptorights, working on global mesh project

updates

grant firmware update

Been updating firmware to include Jehan's new dashboard. Firmware is working (it was a permissions issue). Need to test one more time.

eve gate update

Did not hear back from the person who was going to help install the gate. Daniel is away. Eve will loop in Marc on the Signal thread and we will ping this person again to see if they're still up for helping.

• marc welded a sweet sign for mesh! ^_^

peoplesopen.network

We now have the domain peoplsopen.network We could get open.network (and thus peoples.open.network) but it's expensive so meh.

entity stuff

• jenny will start a thread to discuss whether we should take over old-omni's 501c3 or submit an independent 1023 app for 501c3 status

off-griddy-ness

• juul: I'm working more on off-grid power stuff. if anyone wants to work on this, have all the materials for an offgrid node setup using a 12V car battery, long speaker cable, cigarette lighter plugin, etc
• https://sudoroom.org/wiki/Mesh/Power for specs
• see also: https://sudoroom.org/wiki/DisasterRadio

action items

• talk to b&g to get a quote for D&O insurance [jenny]
• create an issue on the github to set up an etherpad-lite instance on the sudo server [jenny]
• update inventory infoz - https://sudoroom.org/wiki/Mesh/Inventory
• put next BYOI workshop on calendar [jenny]

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People's Open Network 11 April 2017

intros

• jehan: dashboard, talked to business people today
• grant: hacking on some firmware, talked to business people today, new people can talk to me
• kareem: disrupt things and help people disrupt things... something about pirates.
• bullet: i do what i want
• charles/cel: i also sometimes do whatever i want. i'm trying to put scuttlebutt stuff on the mesh
• jeff (jefdaj): i also work on scuttlebutt stuff. maybe we can set up a node on my roof on sunday
• lesley: i do some things. i try to do other things that then don't work.
• arthur: quality assurance
• jorrit: i'm jorrit. i just got here. been working on editing wikis so people can get started easier. been playing with ESP866. if anyone wants to get an intro, just come see grant.
• daniel its ok w/no presentation. :)

general / announcements

• board meeting Monday 4/17 at 7:30 PM
  • will will send out a pre-read with bylaws and last year's meeting minutes
  • should we get director and officer's insurance? will discuss at meeting

updates

hardware / installation

Omni neighbors debrief

jehan: went to rent a relic. will choose it because of the dinosaur. they were pretty negative. went to reed brother's and talked to the owner and he was really cool about it. jorrit: how did you represent is? jehan: Non-profit wireless ISP who brings free internet access to anyone who needs it jorrit: free vs open? <discussion about how to represent it> jorrit: when i hear free i hear advertising. free is like negative money. juul: community owned and operated, distributed infastructure We need to talk more about messaging. Will passed around our business cards. Will to order more cards (get consensus on wording first) People want will to order more business cards.

Will's node install debrief

42nd street nodes installed on roof - 2 ubiquiti m2s

Will: Really steep roof. My friend's a climber and used to install solar on roofs. He taught me how to walk the ridge. We put two ubiquiti nanostation M2s. One pointing down 42nd towards telegraph. The other one I pointed straight towards Omni. That one you can get two blocks up on 44th st.

Jeff install status?

Hopes to do it this coming weekend, can't say for sure but probably.

= gate project update

Mike came and measured the place. Mike needs where gate will be area to be cleared up by monday. estimate, very rough one, about 200 bucks.-new wood.

software

• Dashboard status
• CI attempt: Andy
• Hack on installing new dashboard Sunday

SSB

Working on having automated raspberry pi SSB builders. The actual install of the raspi with the wifi works and cel is just now adding the SSB stuff. This is also separate from the mesh.

off-grid solar

Solar is cheap. Craigslist can get you lightly used panels for 50 cents per watt. Urban Ore has new panels for 60 cents per watt right now.

juul got a single 255 watt panel with a 30.5v MPP output voltage.

You can get cheap MPPT solar charge controllers on ebay for ~$35 than can handle two of these panels. Then all you need is batteries (and those will likely end up costing more than all of the rest) and you may need high power buck converters to convert the battery voltage to whatever voltage you actually need. E.g. 19 volts for laptops, 10.5 to 26 volts for ubiquiti gear and 4.5v to 23v for the My Net N600 nodes. More info here: https://sudoroom.org/wiki/Mesh/Power

adjustable voltage buck converters are cheap. Here's one that can do 8-40v input and 1.25 to 36v output at max 8 amp max 300 watts: https://www. aliexpress .com/item/1pcs-Professional-Step-down-Power-DC-DC-CC-CV-Buck-Converter-Supply-Module-8-40V-To

or if you use 12v (or 6v or 3v) batteries then you will probably only need a boost convert and only for e.g. you laptop.

I have not tested this model yet but ordered some and will report back when they arrive. They are probably ~85% efficient.

The cheap MPPT controllers are called MPT-7210A and handle up to 600 watts. They can only take up to 30 volt input and have a small issue with freaking out when heavy clouds pass over and then taking ~10 seconds to start up again, but both issues can be fixed by simply swapping out capacitors (search youtube for info on this). With this capacitor mod you can run two 255 watt panels in serial. Without the mod you can run them in parallel (more cabling, lower voltage, more loss).

= discussion -

good place to mount nodes: satellite dish j-pole

communications

Manylabs folks have been Invited to have a booth at Civic Center to showcase Manylabs for the March for Science. Should we be there?

Set up is 4/22, 9:30am, then hang out from 10am-6pm.

If we show up, can we help set up and/or tear down the booth?

Email Dvorit by Friday, 4/14!

"Outside of LAN" means outside of individual nodes