81–90 of 179 posts
edit: I see the maps feature but I also see the text of the messages asking where someone is, so that is what spurred the question.
Does anyone have details on the RF layer? What band does it use? What emission type does it use? What bit rate does it send at? What happens when 1000 of these are in the same place at once?
From what I am reading, it runs on Multi-Use Radio Service (MURS). i.e. 151-154 Mhz spectrum. Excerpt From https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-02-139A1.p... Under the revised rules, MURS units are: • Permitted to have detachable antennas; • Permitted to have external antennas up to 6.1 meters (20 feet) above a structure or 18.3 meters (60 feet) above the ground, whichever is higher; • Permitted to have…
This can be significantly better than walkie-talkies. In poor reception, sometimes you can't manage to deliver even a simple message coherently (especially since, to be understood by a fellow human, you need reliable communication in real time for the duration of your entire message). But usually, you just want to get a message across. You want something like morse code, not voice. Delivering a short textual message,…
Interesting ... does this do any kind of store and forward or relaying? Say I send a message to a friend who happens to be out of range, but there was another GoTenna user who neither of us know, but who is in range of us both, will it relay the message via this 3rd party (encrypted) or is it purely a direct connection between sender --> receiver?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We'll expand internationally later!
To me it seemed like part of your sales pitch was infering that you could use it internationally where you don't have service or don't want to pay the high overages ;)
This is pretty interesting. I work for an NGO and something like this looks really useful for people working in the field to allow some sort of simple communication/location when you don't have service, or it is super expensive.
From the FAQs: "Use our free app to type out a text message or share a location." Ugh, it's a lot less magical than they make it seem in the video.
All it takes is replacing the actual phone dialer app (which AFAIK can only be done in AOSP-based distributions) to make it work transparently. You'd also have to add a phone number broadcasting service to make it work with phone numbers though, but I can see the potential. I'm much more skeptical about range, battery or security concerns.
Have the app sync to a registry online when connectivity is available, and keep the key-value table locally (phone->deviceID).
That seems wonderful, maybe in the future this could have an SDK where developers could use the device for something other than messaging, for example long range car remote! or any type of long range RC.
What happens to a message if it's not received? Will it be retransmitted or is it lost? Do I know if my message has been received by my contact (1:1) or anyone (1:all)?
There are delivery confirmation receipts for 1:1 messaging but not for groups as that's a networking nightmare (e.g. not even Whatsapp or iMessage does that).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
From what I am reading, it runs on Multi-Use Radio Service (MURS). i.e. 151-154 Mhz spectrum. Excerpt From https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-02-139A1.p... Under the revised rules, MURS units are: • Permitted to have detachable antennas; • Permitted to have external antennas up to 6.1 meters (20 feet) above a structure or 18.3 meters (60 feet) above the ground, whichever is higher; • Permitted to have…
They also explicitly forbid store-and-forward operations.