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 Invitation: Meshtastic / CRISiS Lab trial
Kia ora
This is somewhat timely given the recent weather related tragedies around the motu. Some of you may be aware that an ECB priority for me is community resilience, and that I manage an emergency radio network (based on CD tech) around the bays. You may have read in the latest Eastbourne Herald about the local Eastbourne-Bays Community Trust funding a specialised drone for NZRT-18, Lower Hutt's search and rescue team, and the benefits to the whole city and beyond. The trial described here has the same benefits.
The current radio network is old and being replaced nationally, but we will not be included so we need to look for options. I recently initiated a trial of a personal radio network called Meshtastic - it has the advantage of
- being digital (works with your phone)
- very affordable ($50-$100)
- independent of any external network including the mobile network,
- can be used to communicate between family members, residents within a street or bay, between bays, across the city and more
- requires virtually no training or licence
- no ongoing costs
- encrypted (can be secure and have private groups)
I have been involved with the Joint Centre for Disaster Research (JCDR) at Massey University in Wellington, and they are keen for the Eastern Bays to become part of their research. Essentially they will provide radio units to a range of residents to trial (this is separate from our project) It represents a great opportunity to not only create a more resilient community, but also contribute to the wider good in this context.
I've been asked to organise a meeting for all interested parties who would like to take part in or just learn more about this project.
If anyone from your association or community is interested please encourage them to get in touch (see below).
My initial though is that an evening meeting (say 7:00pm - 8:30pm) in the village, Sunday through to Thursday (i.e. not Friday/Saturday) - please indicate which evenings would be ok and I'll try to find a best fit.
Migada Perera from the CRISiSLab team will be there to hand over devices, give guidance on how to use them, and answer any questions.
I've included a bit more information here ( https://eastbourne.nz/crisislab-project/ ) but I don't know the details of the project other than the expectation that it will be similar to what we need.
In essence you will receive a small transceiver unit and will need to install a Meshtastic app on your mobile phone to control it. If you already have one of our units I'm hoping that initially you'll still be able to have one of theirs (to keep things simple), so please come as well.
I'm assuming geographic distribution is relevant, so if you know of anyone who is located in a place distinct from you feel free to pass on the invitation.
If you can't make a meeting that's fine, reply anyway, we'll work around that somehow.
I'm aware that some of you will probably receive multiple emails on this topic as I'm sending to various email lists - my apologies, I won't do it often, promise!
Ngā mihi
Bruce Spedding |
