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Internet in a Box

internet-in-a-box.org

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Re: Internet in a Box

#111

Post by aaron695 »

nchmy wrote: post #94
aaron695 wrote: post #40

Internet in a Box DOES NOT WORK I don't know how many more times this needs to be proven. You do not understand data, you do not understand the reality around you, you do not understand 80:20 style engineering rules, you can't look at previous implementations of the Internet in a Box and see it didn't work. Worse, you now live in a Starlink era where you can give them a real "Internet in a Box" and there is no soluti…

Could you elaborate on/point us towards resources about why it does not work?

It's been around since 2012 and the best Wikipedia has - "explored using these boxes in the Dominican Republic for three months." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet-in-a-Box

Where is a follow up study 3 years later? Are there any follow up studies [1]?

(I have said in past comments the medical version might work, it failed in the Dominican Republic [1])

One follow up study - [1] https://www.sipa.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/2023-01/In... which is not real positive.

Why does it not work? An idea to think about, physical encyclopedias and university textbooks have been around forever and accessible.

I've worked in schools with 1000's on one ADSL trying to use proxies to cache. I've volunteered for a few years in country on mobile apps for use in very low PPI villages without internet. I'm not coming at this with zero experience.

It's impossible to discuss these things on HN, there is neither the technical or process knowledge here, I could be totally wrong but I have looked hard to disprove myself.

The solution I propose Starlink -> box with billing / access control + terabytes of offline vids/books + fun online games, that an idiot with determination can manage and make a profit or run free and works well in a country where the MPAA doesn't exist.

Re: Internet in a Box

#113

Post by gioazzi »

Bengalilol wrote: post #30
gioazzi wrote: post #3

Brilliant concept! I recently met the fine folks at Beekee who make something rather similar: https://beekee.ch/beekeebox/ It's an apparently simple problem on the surface, but quite hard to get it right... I once worked on a wireless network deployment for a transit refugee camp, and at least that was built on the assumption that some sort of Internet connection would be available at all times, making remote managem…

Did you meet Beekee in Geneva? I bet those kind of boxes work very well when there are less than 30 connections at once. All in all, if it is about accessing useful information, I think this is somehow brilliant (as you wrote).

They are based in Switzerland as I am, but it so happened we met in Doha

IIRC they support 40 concurrent users, and in their model that would always be a school class, which I guess shouldn’t be larger anyway

Re: Internet in a Box

#114

Post by fc417fc802 »

9x39 wrote: post #69
flaburgan wrote: post #26

With the crazy news we have those past months, I actually started to wonder what would happen if internet went offline "for real" (let's say, several weeks) here in developed countries. I know we can easily download Wikipedia and Openstreetmap. But what else? And how to share it? I can do a hotspot home, but would my neighbors understand it? I would need some kind of captive portal to tell them when they connect to m…

Too little bandwidth and too few nodes to do this in the sense I think you mean. You can build a hotspot and try setting up meshes with any of the available hardware or software packages out there, but you're going to end up being the gatekeeper to the service. HAM radio ends up working out the same way, as I understand. It's just too technical for people to have this spring up collectively without a single person or…

You might be able to define this particular problem using negatives instead of positives. Everything except stuff like YouTube, Netflix, etc. If you cut out images, audio, video, and other intensive data streams text based communication in natural language is extremely lightweight. Particularly if the protocol is carefully designed with the intended deployment conditions in mind.

I guess a requirement for that is a sufficiently generalized protocol with a matching hardware stack.

Re: Internet in a Box

#115

Post by lutusp »

zipping1549 wrote: post #98
lutusp wrote: post #88

> ... Now you too can put the internet in a box and customize it with the very best free content for your school, clinic or family! Yes ! And at very low cost! It doesn't require a network, a power connection or high technology! It prepares its users for adult life! How can people read this article and not think, "Wait ... don't we already have books?"

Books - take up a lot of space - are not free & not necessarily cheap - are not searchable - take a lot of effort to index - are heavy, prone to damage & loss - cannot be accessed by multiple users simultaneously - need physical copy to back up

Most of these points are true for computer media as well if separated from some degree of computer power, especially "not necessarily cheap".

> ... need physical copy to back up

Certainly true for computer storage, which, if left to the whims of nature and given time, will self-destruct.

Years ago I got a call from Tom Clancy, who was writing "Hunt for Red October" using my word processor "Apple Writer." He said a diskette had become unreadable and asked how to recover its contents. I delivered the bad news and recommended that he use his backup diskette. I'm sure you can guess how that turned out.

Re: Internet in a Box

#116

Post by fsckboy »

>I also need an IC to convert the I2S signal (currently sent to the MAX98357A) to a headphone output. I haven't researched options yet. The motherboard will need additional routing to send the I2S signal from the ESP32-S3 to both the MAX98357A and this new IC. Suggestions welcome!

isn't a headphone just a high impedance speaker? you just grab the same output that goes to the speakers and reroute it through a big resistor to the headphones.

did a little searching, here you go (the extra resistance isn't that great)

https://samtechpro.blogspot.com/2014/03/how-to-use-speaker-o...

put your efforts into stereo, speaker and headphones, why wouldn't stereo set the stage for more complex brain development?

Re: Internet in a Box

#117

Post by denysvitali »

fsckboy wrote: post #116

> I also need an IC to convert the I2S signal (currently sent to the MAX98357A) to a headphone output. I haven't researched options yet. The motherboard will need additional routing to send the I2S signal from the ESP32-S3 to both the MAX98357A and this new IC. Suggestions welcome! isn't a headphone just a high impedance speaker? you just grab the same output that goes to the speakers and reroute it through a big res…

Wrong discussion?

Re: Internet in a Box

#118

Post by strofocles »

audiodude wrote: post #82

Volunteer for Kiwix here ( https://kiwix.org ), we do a lot of offline Wikipedia stuff. I've personally worked on MWOffliner ( https://github.com/openzim/mwoffliner ) which scrapes MediaWikis, primarily Wikipedia. We have apps for basically every platform. Our PWA even supports IE 11! You can use the WP1 tool which I'm the primary maintainer of ( https://wp1.openzim.org/#/selections/user ) to create "selections" whic…

May I suggest somebody out of your company reviews the website. It is not clear to me what you do, what the apps do and so on. The copy is also kind of abstract "we make the world a better place" type of copy. From your comment I understand you do good work and would be a shame for people new to your products to struggle understanding what are you doing.

Re: Internet in a Box

#119

Post by bcraven »

strofocles wrote: post #118
audiodude wrote: post #82

Volunteer for Kiwix here ( https://kiwix.org ), we do a lot of offline Wikipedia stuff. I've personally worked on MWOffliner ( https://github.com/openzim/mwoffliner ) which scrapes MediaWikis, primarily Wikipedia. We have apps for basically every platform. Our PWA even supports IE 11! You can use the WP1 tool which I'm the primary maintainer of ( https://wp1.openzim.org/#/selections/user ) to create "selections" whic…

May I suggest somebody out of your company reviews the website. It is not clear to me what you do, what the apps do and so on. The copy is also kind of abstract "we make the world a better place" type of copy. From your comment I understand you do good work and would be a shame for people new to your products to struggle understanding what are you doing.

I don't agree with your assessment. Did you find the 'About Us' page insufficient?

Re: Internet in a Box

#120

Post by kh_hk »

prepperdisk wrote: post #54
entropie wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> PrepperDisk is similar to a DIY, open-source project that started in 2012 called Internet in a Box and which has become popular in rural areas in developing countries where internet access is sparse. The idea is basically that you can carry around an external hard drive-sized, mini version of the internet with you that creates a local network your phone or laptop can access. > https://www.404media.co/sales-of-hard-…

We are actually IIAB partners, we attribute to all the various OOS projects (Kiwix, IIAB)in our credits and comply with all the licensing. Our goal was just to make those packages polished as a consumer product and add newer content (some licensed and some commissioned ).

And yet there's neither mention of projects over https://www.prepperdisk.com/pages/about-us
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