[DisasterRadio] I few ideas and questions about the "portable node" presented in YouTube video.

[scott at peoplesopen.net]

Xavier,

I'm glad that you're excited about the Disaster Radio project. I think that all working on the project would agree that disaster scenarios aren't the only use case. In fact most of us want to use it for every day life. We chose the name for a variety of reasons, one of which was in homage to Disasteradio, the computer music artist, who in turn took the name from a 1950's Crystal Radio kit. But in the end, it's just a name, and after awhile you just need to move on and get working on the real deal. 

As to your other questions, we're sorry our documentation doesn't cover all of the iterations and scenarios one would want to use it as of yet. We are still iterating on the project, trying to work out a couple of designs that work best. Tonight we will be working on the antenna design for the solar powered home station, testing out some different options to see which gives us the best coverage, yet still makes mounting easily feasible. We're also working on mobile unit for people that want to have one on hand at all times.

This is an open source project, so we are all working on this in the free time, funding it from our own pockets. Hopefully we'll get to a few stable designs that we can start making available to the general public, in an easily assembled package design that doesn't require excessive soldering skills. In the meantime we make as much of our progress openly available so that those that can contribute feel comfortable reproducing our work at home.

I'm not sure where you are located, but if you're ever in the Bay Area of California, we'd love to have you over to our hacker space, Sudoroom, where we can walk you through putting together a board. Alternatively I can try and ship you a pre-soldered pair of development kits if you want to cover costs of the board and shipping. Not sure what the costs are right now, but I can find out if you're interested.

I'll look getting answers to all of the filed issues on github, along with more public facing information for all of you all that are interested in the project. In the meantime, thanks for reaching out to us. We look forward to having more available soon. It helps to know that others are interested.

Thanks again,
Scott
September 4, 2018 8:45 AM, "Xavier Fiechter"  wrote:
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 (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 (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


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