Volk Fi: Distributed network smartphone • Hacker News Board

Re: Volk Fi: Distributed network smartphone

#51

Post by tomglynch » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 6:49 AM UTC

I'm concerned that providing a bounce for someone else's call will use large amount of battery. This means, trying to conserve battery won't be possible if people keep using your phone to bounce off.

Re: Volk Fi: Distributed network smartphone

#52

Post by angel_j » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 6:55 AM UTC

ac29 wrote: post #37

sinak wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The frequencies are what I was curious about as well. To have a half mile range at relatively low powers it would need to be a low frequency band. I'm guessing they haven't bought licenses from the FCC, so my bet is that they're using the 900 MHz ISM band. There's only 26 MHz of spectrum in that band, which isn't much, particularly for a mesh setup that won't be particularly spectrally efficient. Even with a high 30…

I work with 900MHz radios and infrastructure, here's my thoughts: > The frequencies are what I'm confused by as well. To have a half mile range at relatively low powers it would need to be a low frequency band. > I'm guessing they haven't bought licenses from the FCC, so my bet is that they're using the 900 MHz ISM band. Seems likely, and probably even works in controlled tests over relatively short distances. 900MHz…

What if you used the noise as the carrier wave for the signal? Like, if in an urban area you have a "stable" probability distribution of noise, modulate that.

Re: Volk Fi: Distributed network smartphone

#53

Post by sliken » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 7:01 AM UTC

remyM wrote: post #4

angott wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you haven't even mentioned the fact that mobile phones can move around, leading to high rates of dropped connections as devices come and go. There's no way this is going to work.

Whoops, my phone connected to someone on a train that just went past! My phone call just dropped.

Think of it the opposite way. You have no coverage, are trying to get a message out and the nearest gateway is miles away. A moving car/train is close to you for plenty of time to transfer a few 100 bytes, and someone in the car/train has a mesh aware widget. It stores a copy and waits to go near a gateway where it upload it for you.

Sure, it's not as nice as a WAN connection, but the average cellular contract is pretty expensive per month. Something like $10 per GB, and often a $30 and up base rate.

So sure, long distance multi-hop mesh stinks for real time voice, but could be quite usable for other use cases.

Re: Volk Fi: Distributed network smartphone

#54

Post by ksec » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 7:04 AM UTC

Matthias247 wrote: post #43

chpmrc wrote: post #28

Very interesting. This website is completely unusable on Chrome 72 (MacBook Pro 15" Mid-2015) but is smooth as butter on Safari.

It's absolutely unusable for me on Safari. Scrolling is less than 1fps. Haven't tried another browser.

Same here. It was literally killing my CPU.

Re: Volk Fi: Distributed network smartphone

#55

Post by max_ » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 7:10 AM UTC

This is slightly off-topic, but why don't we have WiFi networks that work on a scale as large as Cellular networks?

Re: Volk Fi: Distributed network smartphone

#56

Post by noway421 » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 7:12 AM UTC

This is amazing. I think it delivers on the promise of https://n-o-d-e.net/hyperboria.html much more than Hyperboria+cjdns itself. Very excited, I expect there could be a compatibility layer with existing mesh networks which use cjdns.

Re: Volk Fi: Distributed network smartphone

#57

Post by mosselman » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 7:31 AM UTC

anonymous5133 wrote: post #40

int_19h wrote: post #20

This makes a bit more sense: "Every Volk phone has a SIM card slot and supports use on traditional LTE networks. However, a SIM is not necessary and the phone will always prioritize the Volk network first. The Volk network works as such: every Volk user gets a special router with their phone. The router acts as a wireless Qi charging pad also. The router connects to your existing internet via Ethernet or something si…

Sounds like a genius idea to me. In theory at least.

Ok, I have the following idea: instead of having to do house chores ourselves, our phones do them. How? Well, at night they transform, like in Transformers, into household robots and do all the cleaning, maintenance and food prepping. Then when you wake up it transforms back into a simple phone.

Genius right?