4 ms·

So Zello is a battery flattener? Perhaps a few Signal groups with a bot would have been better, as the other cited issues with it were around rescue request tra

by posguy 9y ago

So Zello is a battery flattener? Perhaps a few Signal groups with a bot would have been better, as the other cited issues with it were around rescue request tracking and a breakdown in communication when Zello channels were too busy.

technofiend 9y ago
Zello has three problems: one is the afore-mentioned battery overhead, the second is cellphone push-to-talk adapters resold by the company are very expensive. You can find knockoff PTT devices on eBay but they don't have momentary switches, so you have to remember to click once to speak and again to clear the channel and any accidental brush against the toggle can end up blocking the channel indefinitely. And that's the third problem with Zello: its "only one person may speak at once" nature. As I mentioned previously, this really seems like the same problem a music festival faces just at a different scale. If someone could build an app that supports Glastonbury or Burning Man that could be the commercial underpinning that lets this hypothetical app donate services during a disaster. You'd already know how to add and allocate people to bands of channels based on their role and responsibilities. And how to deal with griefers who try to channel dominate or block for their own selfish or stupid ends. Heck maybe Zello (or this hypothetical app) add a more WhatsApp-like buffered playback mode that means people just queue for whose message is heard next but no one hears anything from you until your transmission ends, rather than trying to make your cellphone literally emulate a two way radio or Sprint/Nextel phone. That would also mean you could just see the previous stream of talk activity and play it back on joining or rejoining a channel. Add a way to tag conversations with rescue numbers and you can even make accessing data about a given rescue searchable. Sounds like a fun project. If anyone needs an SRE guy when they get ycombinator funding look me up. :-) One last note to potential investors: the Department of Homeland Security established CERT to let the general public be trained for assisting first responders. Included in that training is buying a go bag of your own for basic first aid. Adding a $10 waterproof PTT switch to your bag is not unreasonable. (Asking people to shell out $50-$175 which is what current Zello ptt adapters cost is too much IMHO). Anyway one could potentially sell this to the government although that would probably mean FEMA coordinating the onboarding of users and devices during a disaster for both the good and bad it implies.
- sbierwagen 9y ago
  Adding a $10 waterproof PTT switch to your bag is not unreasonable If I was going to add any communications stuff to a CERT bag, it would be a $25 baofeng ham radio. (Even if I wasn't licensed, since I have the feeling the FCC wouldn't be enforcing the rules with a heavy hand after a disaster. Part 97.403 says "No provision of these rules prevents the use by an amateur station of any means of radiocommunication at its disposal to provide essential communication needs in connection with the immediate safety of human life and immediate protection of property when normal communication systems are not available." ... but that's specifically about "an amateur station" defined earlier as a FCC-licensed ham operator.)

by posguy 9y ago

technofiend 9y ago

Zello has three problems: one is the afore-mentioned battery overhead, the second is cellphone push-to-talk adapters resold by the company are very expensive. You can find knockoff PTT devices on eBay but they don't have momentary switches, so you have to remember to click once to speak and again to clear the channel and any accidental brush against the toggle can end up blocking the channel indefinitely. And that's the third problem with Zello: its "only one person may speak at once" nature. As I mentioned previously, this really seems like the same problem a music festival faces just at a different scale. If someone could build an app that supports Glastonbury or Burning Man that could be the commercial underpinning that lets this hypothetical app donate services during a disaster. You'd already know how to add and allocate people to bands of channels based on their role and responsibilities. And how to deal with griefers who try to channel dominate or block for their own selfish or stupid ends. Heck maybe Zello (or this hypothetical app) add a more WhatsApp-like buffered playback mode that means people just queue for whose message is heard next but no one hears anything from you until your transmission ends, rather than trying to make your cellphone literally emulate a two way radio or Sprint/Nextel phone. That would also mean you could just see the previous stream of talk activity and play it back on joining or rejoining a channel. Add a way to tag conversations with rescue numbers and you can even make accessing data about a given rescue searchable. Sounds like a fun project. If anyone needs an SRE guy when they get ycombinator funding look me up. :-) One last note to potential investors: the Department of Homeland Security established CERT to let the general public be trained for assisting first responders. Included in that training is buying a go bag of your own for basic first aid. Adding a $10 waterproof PTT switch to your bag is not unreasonable. (Asking people to shell out $50-$175 which is what current Zello ptt adapters cost is too much IMHO). Anyway one could potentially sell this to the government although that would probably mean FEMA coordinating the onboarding of users and devices during a disaster for both the good and bad it implies.

sbierwagen 9y ago
Adding a $10 waterproof PTT switch to your bag is not unreasonable If I was going to add any communications stuff to a CERT bag, it would be a $25 baofeng ham radio. (Even if I wasn't licensed, since I have the feeling the FCC wouldn't be enforcing the rules with a heavy hand after a disaster. Part 97.403 says "No provision of these rules prevents the use by an amateur station of any means of radiocommunication at its disposal to provide essential communication needs in connection with the immediate safety of human life and immediate protection of property when normal communication systems are not available." ... but that's specifically about "an amateur station" defined earlier as a FCC-licensed ham operator.)