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Firechat and nearby communication

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Re: Firechat and nearby communication

#21

Post by higherpurpose »

nemasu wrote: post #18

I took a look at FireChat, but bluetooth is a bit too 'nearby' for me. Very cool that it's off the grid, but only useful if you're basically right next to them anyways. I wanted something like: talk to everyone nearby in a football/hockey/tri-d chess stadium, but bluetooth falls a bit short. What would be really cool is if you could set up a relay system through other devices. I've made (i.e. works, but not polished…

I wonder of LTE Direct, which goes up to 500m would help that, but I'm worried the carriers will be able to control it somehow, which will make it kind of pointless in terms of decentralizing the technology.

I'm also very disappointed in the Wi-Fi Alliance for not creating a better long-distance Wi-Fi. That's its future right there - disrupting cellular, and getting more people to prefer Wi-Fi over cellular. But that's only going to happen if we can easily create "mesh networks" across the country.

Re: Firechat and nearby communication

#23

Post by allard »

kylelibra wrote: post #3

I downloaded this a few months back hoping that in NYC there would be enough user density to make it useful, but it seems I was too early. Interesting use case that protesting would be using it.

A couple months ago I installed this on two devices and could not get it to work off-net nor did I see a good description of how it is supposed to work in that case. I assume Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on but not connected to an access point.

I have seen mesh alive with XO-1s.

Re: Firechat and nearby communication

#24

Post by prawks »

nemasu wrote: post #18

I took a look at FireChat, but bluetooth is a bit too 'nearby' for me. Very cool that it's off the grid, but only useful if you're basically right next to them anyways. I wanted something like: talk to everyone nearby in a football/hockey/tri-d chess stadium, but bluetooth falls a bit short. What would be really cool is if you could set up a relay system through other devices. I've made (i.e. works, but not polished…

YikYak is similar to what you're talking about, though it's anonymous by design. IIRC it's limited to a 10-mile radius.

http://www.yikyakapp.com/

Re: Firechat and nearby communication

#25

Post by mxgr »

Is there something similar that is based on Wifi connections instead of bluetooth? Wouldn't that offer a greater range?

Edit: Nevermind, the article explains that firechat does in fact use Wifi in addition to Bluetooth to transmit messages:

  From the first IP, I understand that Firechat is also looking to create bond
  between WiFi device. It periodically sends UDP packet to the multicast
  address 239.192.0.0 and will also forward message just as it does with
  bluetooth. So not only every message sent are forwarded by bluetooth, they
  are also forwarded by WiFi !

Re: Firechat and nearby communication

#26

Post by natar »

I saw this a few days ago in F-Droid's „Recently Added“ category, a bluetooth chat app called Gilgamesh:

https://github.com/n8fr8/gilgamesh (https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=info.guardianpro...)

Don't know if it's anonymous or encrypted (is that is even possible?) but other then Firechat (and most other apps linked here until now) it's Open Source.

Would love to know what someone with a more technical expertise than me thinks about this.

Re: Firechat and nearby communication

#28

Post by rlpb »

There is an XMPP standard for link-local messaging. It's supported in Empathy through the telepathy-salut library. In other words, it's installed by default on Ubuntu (though you need to turn it on) and presumably other distributions.

It'd be nice to see mobile apps supporting this standard, too.

Re: Firechat and nearby communication

#29

Post by lcedp »

riffic wrote: post #19
nemasu wrote: post #18

I took a look at FireChat, but bluetooth is a bit too 'nearby' for me. Very cool that it's off the grid, but only useful if you're basically right next to them anyways. I wanted something like: talk to everyone nearby in a football/hockey/tri-d chess stadium, but bluetooth falls a bit short. What would be really cool is if you could set up a relay system through other devices. I've made (i.e. works, but not polished…

Slight ( http://slight.la ) is one way of leaving messages in a location; those running the app receive a notification when new messages are left nearby.

Does anyone know an alternative for Android?
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