To all the kindred spirit out there at MaidSafe: Recently I have been sharing my 2015 plans for hardware releases. As Dawn is a fully-transparent organization, I’d like to link to our 2015 roadmap. If you’ve questions about anything, you can feel free to ask them here, call/sms/telegraph +1-716-795-2538, e-mail faddat@gmail.com or annotate the document I linked. The roadmap will be updated as the year goes on, and likely replaced when the compute module platform is released ~7/1/15.
To everyone in this shining example of an online community, thank you for your efforts. I want to say for the record that I think MaidSafe is already a significant success with respect to one of its primary goals: keeping freedom of expression alive online-- the existence of a project pushing so hard for it proves to many that it’s something they should at least consider caring about.
As everyone here already knows, our collective future is the only thing worth fighting for.
In the timeless words of the fairly-elected American President, freedom-lover, patriot, and all-around humanitarian George W. Bush-- let’s roll! *
Great! How far will the wifi-signal reach? I think the world is ready for mesh networking but most wifi goes a couple of meters in your garden and not like the maybe 100 or 200 meters we need…
It should take care of a hundred meters, and it could be tricked into going further with fancier-than-stock antennas. With wifi range, though, everyone’s mileage will vary depending on their surroundings. Too many factors exist to be able to give you a clear estimate. Generally, if there are no other signals, I think you could expect a 200-400m radius to get coverage, but that simply doesn’t happen in the cities. Range drops fast because of interference. You can also link a pair of them to give even coverage over a large area.
FYI, Mammoth is on the higher side, but this is typical for most any wireless router. At the more extreme end, people have “shot” wifi 5km before using Pringles cans, so truly, anything is possible.
Well, it’s a step in the right direction, and you could techinicaly set it up in a large mesh to bypass ISPs, but it’s no more or less problematic from a infrastructure perspective. No meshes have scaled that big yet, as far as I know.
To answer your question: Sure, it can. In most cases, the user won’t choose to use it that way, I think. (but that’s up to them :))
Dawn is a totally open & flat company. This means it’s really easy to participate and contribute. If you want access to our collab tools, please send an e-mail to me: faddat@gmail.com
Organization is how you encourage meshes. I have spoken with some people behind the Montreal mesh. For them, going door to door and explaining the project was key.
Below I discuss features I have PLANNED for mammoth’s code-- it is not going to ship with them.
It has always seemed to me that load balancing and teaming internet connections is the way forward for meshes. I hope to figure out a way to enable neighbors to form internet clusters that can aggregate bandwidth and facilitate sharing. Once again this is not a 1.0 feature and it may never work on the first hardware rev, because it may be better implemented using two separate WiFi radios.
Maidsafe crew:
Are there ways to use maidsafe for this, or does the requirement of anonymity break it?
The flash memory will probably be used for the farming isn’t it? I mean, it’s way faster so if a request is done on the network for a chunk, you’re chance of farming a Safecoin will be higher if you provide the chunk faster than the other holders??
It runs from the 2a provided by microusb. I think that your solar idea is brilliant and fantastic. I am getting the beta hardware soooooooooooon (currently in Vietnam customs… omfgwtflolbbq!!!) and the moment I receive it, I will let you know what I think about making her waterproof. Here’s another important question: is anyone aware of an open source manufacturer of solar cells? I am pragmatic about our openness in hardware component choices due to the scarcity of open source manufacturers, so if there isnt one, we will still have a go at it and replace the panel with an open one over time, just as we plan to replace the CPU with one coming from the risc-v project when those come online.
Open source I don’t know however I do know you can get “broken”, misshapen and loose solar cells on ebay and other such vendors pretty cheap and with a little sodering and some repurposed glass you can turn them into solar panels. Not the best but it’s a workaround.
Although for serious applications I’d say a standard solar panel would be best. You want your AP to last and stay powered. Also look into hooking it to different kinds of power sources besides solar. You also might want to investigate the open ecology project. It does make a fair bit of open hardware (not for this field per se but it does). You might be interested in their power cube or wind turbine, or steam engine or biomas engine though not all power generation options would be practical for a router (but might be practical for a decentralized power grid or safecoin mine of some sort).
Actually, Open Ecology, specifically tools that modernize the production of food, is another hardware area that Dawn will attempt to enter-- if the current pace of tech development and progress with Dawn keeps up, then Late 2016-Early 2017. The idea is to make it more sustainable for people to actually live in the countryside, and failing that, supply food to all easier, cheaper, and better than ever before. One of the issues with organic farming is that it is labor-intensive. At some point soon, we will cross a threshold where that type of labor will be something a machine can do, and we’re excited by that-- specifically, at Dawn, we DO want the machines to take everyone’s jobs… and simultaneously ensure that people have the opportunity to be themselves and express themselves in those ways that we’d all love to today, but can’t because we work XXX hours per week.
They are working on something they call the Global Village Construction Set
The Global Village Construction Set (GVCS) is a modular, DIY, low-cost, high-performance platform that allows for the easy fabrication of the 50 different Industrial Machines that it takes to build a small, sustainable civilization with modern comforts. We’re developing open source industrial machines that can be made at a fraction of commercial costs, and sharing our designs online for free.
I don’t know how strong the community backing that effort is, but they really seem to be thinking forward.
I just added them to the roadmap.