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In my opinion, all these types of projects (Meshtastic, etc) fail at their goal of working "completely offline" as I discovered when I brought a bunch of Meshta

In my opinion, all these types of projects (Meshtastic, etc) fail at their goal of working "completely offline" as I discovered when I brought a bunch of Meshtastic stuff with me on vacation to a place with very limited internet. If I need to do a bunch of pip install instead of a zip file I can thumb drive around to anyone who needs it, it isn't really that useful. Even the documentation is on a web site; I would have loved a PDF, or at least a single file HTML, so I could at least learn about how to use the system while being offline. Sure, you can download it all yourself, but that requires you to know what you'll need beforehand. In short, we need a "click here before going offline" button. If the internet is still working, you probably would just use it for your messaging instead.

Y_Y 2y ago
You can `pip install` from the filesystem just as easily as you would over the internet, either from wheels or source folders. I'm sure if you wanted to you could write a quick script to download all of the packages and dependencies you need and then zip it all up for you.
- alnwlsn 2y ago
  I'm considering it. Of course, the whole argument could then be extended all the way to "does your computer have an OS installed?" and that can of worms is something I think most would agree is outside of the scope of the original project. Bootstrapping can be tricky.
- IshKebab 2y ago
  Yeah but given that the default is apparently not to do that... kind of shows that these things are just a fun theoretical exercise rather than a serious attempt to solve a problem that actually exists.
edsq 2y ago
It looks like the RNode firmware does exactly what you're looking for with its "RNode Bootstrap Console": https://unsigned.io/rnode_bootstrap_console/ https://unsigned.io/rnode_bootstrap_console/ Documentation is surprisingly hard to find, but from blog posts on the site it looks like if you press the reset button twice within one second, an RNode will turn into a WiFi access point and host this website. From there, you can download everything you need to create and use another RNode (including Reticulum, Nomad Network, and Sideband). I find this notion of RNodes being self-propagating really compelling!

Y_Y 2y ago

You can `pip install` from the filesystem just as easily as you would over the internet, either from wheels or source folders. I'm sure if you wanted to you could write a quick script to download all of the packages and dependencies you need and then zip it all up for you.

alnwlsn 2y ago
I'm considering it. Of course, the whole argument could then be extended all the way to "does your computer have an OS installed?" and that can of worms is something I think most would agree is outside of the scope of the original project. Bootstrapping can be tricky.
IshKebab 2y ago
Yeah but given that the default is apparently not to do that... kind of shows that these things are just a fun theoretical exercise rather than a serious attempt to solve a problem that actually exists.

edsq 2y ago

It looks like the RNode firmware does exactly what you're looking for with its "RNode Bootstrap Console": https://unsigned.io/rnode_bootstrap_console/ https://unsigned.io/rnode_bootstrap_console/ Documentation is surprisingly hard to find, but from blog posts on the site it looks like if you press the reset button twice within one second, an RNode will turn into a WiFi access point and host this website. From there, you can download everything you need to create and use another RNode (including Reticulum, Nomad Network, and Sideband). I find this notion of RNodes being self-propagating really compelling!