Sudomesh meeting - 28 feb 2017

attendees

jnny - working on outreach, wants to work on cleaning up the wiki
juul - working on the live node map
shaene - tourist here from familab in florida, has NFC tag implents
Will - community organizing & getting folks excited
Jorrit - works on a software-defined mesh playground called babeld-lab, and working on noob-tutorial for people's open network
jehan - working on a new and improved dashboard for our firmware, with status of mesh and what's plugged in
arthur - somewhat new. not quite sure how to help out. come be a floater for the upcoming workshop.
daniel - been with sudomesh from about a year after it started. excited about project. helps out here and there.
steven - a friend of his who couldn't be here found out about it.
grant - working on the babeld lab with jorrit
lesley - working on the dashboard w/ jehan
andrew - working on random stuff. made a flyer and helps to organize workshop. hacks on router stuff.
hillary - member of sudo room and generally supports what's going on - does computer in a box education for kids where they take apart and put back together

agenda

babeld lab:

Have a two-node virtual babeld mesh using linux network namespaces (like docker)
grant is expanding to make it work with an arbirary number of nodes

Inventory restock:

Incoming ~100 Western Digital My Net N600 routers at $16 a pop
Incoming 10 NanoBridge M5 25 dBi version (very long range. good for 20+ km links) at $54 (retail price $110)
- Product replaced by LiteBeam M5 23 dBi version which retails for $46 but isn't yet supported by OpenWRT (62.5% less range)
- Closest current OpenWRT supported product is NanoBeam M5 19 dBi, so 4 dBi less which is 2.5 times less range
We still need a stock of NanoStation M5 and M2 (or NanoStation M5/M2 Loco but never buy those used as older models have a hardware bug)
- NanoStation is still $79 and no cheaper replacement in sight. Very useful for window installation.

Mesh maps:

LibreMap: No longer maintained
NodeShot: No longer maintained and couldn't find info on how to use it
NodeWatcher: Should be possible to run in "map only" mode. Tried installing but ran into bugs. Will report to wlan slovenja devs.
Started building a simple map: https://github.com/sudomesh/peoples-map
- So far very simple client side code only
- Will check node status by consulting exit node's babeld (version 0.0.0 - unmappable list)
- Will get addresses from our meshnode database (version 0.0.1 - node locations and online status)
- Will get connections by asking individual nodes for their babeld output using ubus-http (version 1.0.0 - maps node to node connections)
  - Will need to save data in a DB and have re-query all nodes every n minutes
  - Need to add a "info only" user to the ACL on all nodes

Nonprofit Entity Structure

Omni's old nonprofit (501c3) entity is being phased out - however, we could take it over, amend the activities slightly

Breakout Groups

Switch over to hurricane electric
- Set up old CCL server with Debian Jessie and RAID 1
Order more stickers
Get examples of live router info for dashboard (jehan and juul)
Set up netbooks with ubiquiti nodes on poles for live demo
Print and laminate RJ45 wiring diagrams (or design and order stickers)
Finalize wording for flyer/poster
Organize incoming my net n600 routers
Hack on introductory guide
Hack on software projects
- The mesh experimenters setup
- The new dashboard
- The mesh monitor map
Test range of My Net N600 with $14 chinese panel antenna
Schedule a board meeting to decide on entity structure