5 ms·

Show HN: Off-grid web server for the developing world

47 points by MichaelAO 12y ago

MichaelAO 12y ago
We built this over the weekend at Hack the North. All of the code, along with an SD image for the Pi can be found on github: https://github.com/alisha/seed https://github.com/alisha/seed It was a really fun project and the hackathon was great - Sam Altman made a cameo! Feel free to ask any questions.
deserted 12y ago
Be sure to do some load testing with multiple simultaneous users! In my experience using a Pi as a Wi-Fi hotspot can be pretty unreliable.
- MichaelAO 12y ago
  Good point. The Pi made sense for the hackathon. What type of wifi antenna have you used? http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=76604 http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=76604
krrishd 12y ago
I'm really glad that a lot of hackathon projects are addressing YC's RFS categories, a lot of good can come out of these.
jameshk 12y ago
Hey! I was at the talk during Hack the North in which you practiced your pitch. Awesome job!
- MichaelAO 12y ago
  Thanks! Have you recovered from the weekend yet? It was intense. What'd you built?
brandonhsiao 12y ago
Why is Linux/Nginx/MySQL/PHP abbreviated LEMP?
- jameshk 12y ago
  The E is for Nginx, which is pronounced "Engine X"
andrewchambers 12y ago
My problem with all the save Africa hardware/software projects, is they seem to be made by people who don't live in Africa. I'm not confident they even have a grip on what the customers actually want or need.
- korzun 12y ago
  Everybody in Africa has portable devices, they are just missing this useless $10 hotspot gimmick with pre-loaded Wikipedia to get their information on Ebola.
  - steven77723 12y ago
    The project did work on palm os so I'm assuming it would work on almost any other device as well http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/04/tech/mobile/africa-mobile-opinion/ http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/04/tech/mobile/africa-mobile-opin...
    - korzun 12y ago
      Did you just link to an article about people in South Africa using mobile phones in 2012? You realize that SA has been rolling out good infrastructure for a while now? Right? Do you think people in South Africa need this thing to read about Ebola in 2014? How ignorant are you really? Signed up 3 hours ago. Surprise.
      - steven77723 12y ago
        Of course not, as the project isn't geared for people with existing infrastructure that allow them to access the Internet without any problem. Rather it is for the community that may have a mobile device but cannot access the Internet as easily. Of course not all people in such developing countries would have a mobile device but if we take the scope a little big bigger and say, a village, then there is a higher chance of a mobile device within such a community. Through this, we hope that information may be much more accessible to such audiences. It was my bad about that link, wasn't the most appropriate one.
korzun 12y ago
> We've specifically implemented an Ebola prevention section, as Seed 1.0 will be deployed in Africa. Stop using Africa for your advancement. You obviously live in a bubble.
- cbolton97 12y ago
  Not trying to "use" Africa. Just trying to make something that could help people. The description is a little rough but I truly believe that once we start talking with the groups that have specific requirements for each region, these devices could do some good.
  - korzun 12y ago
    What in the world are you talking about.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
xellisx 12y ago
I'm surprised it wasn't done in Node.JS and a "NoSQL" DB.
martin_ 12y ago
This could be great - what do you need, and how do we help?
- MichaelAO 12y ago
  Thank you! At this point, we're going to work on the code base and experiment with different hardware setups before deploying. It'd be great if others would contribute on github and build their own. Other than that, helping us connect with organizations that might benefit from this type of technology would be great.
  - jk4930 12y ago
    Have a look at the recently announced Global Learning XPRIZE (see http://www.xprize.org/press-release/gordon-brown-endorses-15-million-global-learning-xprize-united-nations-education-forum http://www.xprize.org/press-release/gordon-brown-endorses-15... ). Soon teams will register and some could be interested. Or run/join a team.
fubu 12y ago
I've actually been playing around with a local network consisting of a single wifi router attached to an old netbook as a server. Have you considered attaching an off the self wifi router attached to an external battery pack? There are economies of scale on external battery packs that run 12v(common wifi router DC voltage) and marine batteries also can run 12v. You could create a new power cable that never does the dc to ac conversion and use that battery pack for the wifi. Then you could run the raspberry pi or other system as the server itself. Nice idea and don't worry about the Africa haters. Plenty of stuff is originally made for mid 20s SF techies that ends up being useful for a whole lot of other people.
- cbolton97 12y ago
  Thanks for the tip! Exactly the info we were looking for when we posted on HN :)
  - fubu 12y ago
    Great to hear. I haven't looked into the project fully, so I'll apologize in advance if you already have a solution for what I describe below. I used a catch all DNS wildcard with a dnsmasq rule which I set up on a DD-WRT flashed router. address=/#/192.168.11.2 That IP was the IP of my server. The nice part of that rule is that many people will type in google.com or something similar when they find your open wifi spot assuming they are connected to the web. The wildcard will resolve that the the IP of the local server and send them there automatically. That can be the landing page of the network that introduces things, provides links etc.
    - MichaelAO 12y ago
      We ended up using an mDNS (http://www.avahi.org/ http://www.avahi.org/) that pointed towards hostname.local - not perfect, but we didn't have to use the IP address anymore. The catch all is a much better idea.
- keenerd 12y ago
  > Then you could run the raspberry pi or other system as the server itself. Or use the router as the server too. A $50 router will have a USB port (higher quality than the RPi's) and a 500MHz MIPS cpu that is not too far behind the antiquated ARMv6 core in the Pi. I've done a little similar work with using routers off-grid: http://kmkeen.com/chatbox/ http://kmkeen.com/chatbox/
doodlebugging 12y ago
This recent successful Kickstarter may have covered some of the bases you're trying to cover. http://www.brck.com/#thebrck http://www.brck.com/#thebrck
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- MichaelAO 12y ago
  Thanks for that. We could definitely use your help. I'll send you an email later this week. HN is great :)
moreentropy 12y ago
For creating decentralized mesh networks, it might help to look at what the freifunk project has done. Freifunk is a community project that builds open mesh networks (mostly in Germany) using cheap (€15-20 range) off the shelf routers. The routers usually provide two wifi networks, an open access point as well as a mesh interface that will mesh with all other access points in range. The used firmware (called "Gluon") is based on OpenWRT and all open source: http://gluon.readthedocs.org/en/v2014.3/ http://gluon.readthedocs.org/en/v2014.3/ https://github.com/freifunk-gluon/gluon https://github.com/freifunk-gluon/gluon http://freifunk.net/en/ http://freifunk.net/en/ Apart from that, for communicating with systems that have no or only temporary internet access, the pretty ancient UUCP protocol comes to mind: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UUCP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UUCP I actually had my first email and news accounts subscribed over the UUCP protocol. The main advantage of UUCP is that it will queue all data destined for a remote system and asynchronously transfer everything when a system is reachable. It is also possible to relay data using multiple hops that are not online at the same time. It was used mostly with dial up systems that were only online during data transfers. So with UUCP it might be possible to implement a sort of drive-by update where a mobile node (maybe installed in a car) can connect to a local server, exchange incoming/outgoing messages and relay them to the node in the next village when the driver moves on.
- ualisha 12y ago
  Thanks for the resources! We will definitely check them out
qwerta 12y ago
My android phone can do just that.... It provides WIFI router, hosts USB hdd...

47 points by MichaelAO 12y ago

We built this over the weekend at Hack the North. All of the code, along with an SD image for the Pi can be found on github: https://github.com/alisha/seed https://github.com/alisha/seed It was a really fun project and the hackathon was great - Sam Altman made a cameo! Feel free to ask any questions.

deserted 12y ago

Be sure to do some load testing with multiple simultaneous users! In my experience using a Pi as a Wi-Fi hotspot can be pretty unreliable.

MichaelAO 12y ago
Good point. The Pi made sense for the hackathon. What type of wifi antenna have you used? http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=76604 http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=76604

krrishd 12y ago

I'm really glad that a lot of hackathon projects are addressing YC's RFS categories, a lot of good can come out of these.

jameshk 12y ago

Hey! I was at the talk during Hack the North in which you practiced your pitch. Awesome job!

MichaelAO 12y ago
Thanks! Have you recovered from the weekend yet? It was intense. What'd you built?

brandonhsiao 12y ago

Why is Linux/Nginx/MySQL/PHP abbreviated LEMP?

jameshk 12y ago
The E is for Nginx, which is pronounced "Engine X"

andrewchambers 12y ago

My problem with all the save Africa hardware/software projects, is they seem to be made by people who don't live in Africa. I'm not confident they even have a grip on what the customers actually want or need.

korzun 12y ago
Everybody in Africa has portable devices, they are just missing this useless $10 hotspot gimmick with pre-loaded Wikipedia to get their information on Ebola.
- steven77723 12y ago
  The project did work on palm os so I'm assuming it would work on almost any other device as well http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/04/tech/mobile/africa-mobile-opinion/ http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/04/tech/mobile/africa-mobile-opin...
  - korzun 12y ago
    Did you just link to an article about people in South Africa using mobile phones in 2012? You realize that SA has been rolling out good infrastructure for a while now? Right? Do you think people in South Africa need this thing to read about Ebola in 2014? How ignorant are you really? Signed up 3 hours ago. Surprise.
    - steven77723 12y ago
      Of course not, as the project isn't geared for people with existing infrastructure that allow them to access the Internet without any problem. Rather it is for the community that may have a mobile device but cannot access the Internet as easily. Of course not all people in such developing countries would have a mobile device but if we take the scope a little big bigger and say, a village, then there is a higher chance of a mobile device within such a community. Through this, we hope that information may be much more accessible to such audiences. It was my bad about that link, wasn't the most appropriate one.

korzun 12y ago

> We've specifically implemented an Ebola prevention section, as Seed 1.0 will be deployed in Africa. Stop using Africa for your advancement. You obviously live in a bubble.

cbolton97 12y ago
Not trying to "use" Africa. Just trying to make something that could help people. The description is a little rough but I truly believe that once we start talking with the groups that have specific requirements for each region, these devices could do some good.
- korzun 12y ago
  What in the world are you talking about.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

xellisx 12y ago

I'm surprised it wasn't done in Node.JS and a "NoSQL" DB.

martin_ 12y ago

This could be great - what do you need, and how do we help?

MichaelAO 12y ago
Thank you! At this point, we're going to work on the code base and experiment with different hardware setups before deploying. It'd be great if others would contribute on github and build their own. Other than that, helping us connect with organizations that might benefit from this type of technology would be great.
- jk4930 12y ago
  Have a look at the recently announced Global Learning XPRIZE (see http://www.xprize.org/press-release/gordon-brown-endorses-15-million-global-learning-xprize-united-nations-education-forum http://www.xprize.org/press-release/gordon-brown-endorses-15... ). Soon teams will register and some could be interested. Or run/join a team.

fubu 12y ago

I've actually been playing around with a local network consisting of a single wifi router attached to an old netbook as a server. Have you considered attaching an off the self wifi router attached to an external battery pack? There are economies of scale on external battery packs that run 12v(common wifi router DC voltage) and marine batteries also can run 12v. You could create a new power cable that never does the dc to ac conversion and use that battery pack for the wifi. Then you could run the raspberry pi or other system as the server itself. Nice idea and don't worry about the Africa haters. Plenty of stuff is originally made for mid 20s SF techies that ends up being useful for a whole lot of other people.

cbolton97 12y ago
Thanks for the tip! Exactly the info we were looking for when we posted on HN :)
- fubu 12y ago
  Great to hear. I haven't looked into the project fully, so I'll apologize in advance if you already have a solution for what I describe below. I used a catch all DNS wildcard with a dnsmasq rule which I set up on a DD-WRT flashed router. address=/#/192.168.11.2 That IP was the IP of my server. The nice part of that rule is that many people will type in google.com or something similar when they find your open wifi spot assuming they are connected to the web. The wildcard will resolve that the the IP of the local server and send them there automatically. That can be the landing page of the network that introduces things, provides links etc.
  - MichaelAO 12y ago
    We ended up using an mDNS (http://www.avahi.org/ http://www.avahi.org/) that pointed towards hostname.local - not perfect, but we didn't have to use the IP address anymore. The catch all is a much better idea.
keenerd 12y ago
> Then you could run the raspberry pi or other system as the server itself. Or use the router as the server too. A $50 router will have a USB port (higher quality than the RPi's) and a 500MHz MIPS cpu that is not too far behind the antiquated ARMv6 core in the Pi. I've done a little similar work with using routers off-grid: http://kmkeen.com/chatbox/ http://kmkeen.com/chatbox/

doodlebugging 12y ago

This recent successful Kickstarter may have covered some of the bases you're trying to cover. http://www.brck.com/#thebrck http://www.brck.com/#thebrck

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

MichaelAO 12y ago
Thanks for that. We could definitely use your help. I'll send you an email later this week. HN is great :)

moreentropy 12y ago

For creating decentralized mesh networks, it might help to look at what the freifunk project has done. Freifunk is a community project that builds open mesh networks (mostly in Germany) using cheap (€15-20 range) off the shelf routers. The routers usually provide two wifi networks, an open access point as well as a mesh interface that will mesh with all other access points in range. The used firmware (called "Gluon") is based on OpenWRT and all open source: http://gluon.readthedocs.org/en/v2014.3/ http://gluon.readthedocs.org/en/v2014.3/ https://github.com/freifunk-gluon/gluon https://github.com/freifunk-gluon/gluon http://freifunk.net/en/ http://freifunk.net/en/ Apart from that, for communicating with systems that have no or only temporary internet access, the pretty ancient UUCP protocol comes to mind: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UUCP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UUCP I actually had my first email and news accounts subscribed over the UUCP protocol. The main advantage of UUCP is that it will queue all data destined for a remote system and asynchronously transfer everything when a system is reachable. It is also possible to relay data using multiple hops that are not online at the same time. It was used mostly with dial up systems that were only online during data transfers. So with UUCP it might be possible to implement a sort of drive-by update where a mobile node (maybe installed in a car) can connect to a local server, exchange incoming/outgoing messages and relay them to the node in the next village when the driver moves on.

ualisha 12y ago
Thanks for the resources! We will definitely check them out

qwerta 12y ago

My android phone can do just that.... It provides WIFI router, hosts USB hdd...