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A decentralized peer-to-peer messaging application that operates over Bluetooth

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Re: A decentralized peer-to-peer messaging application that operates over Bluetooth

#241

Post by zelphirkalt »

littlecranky67 wrote: post #49
card_zero wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the person controls the product, and the product will continue to develop, so the person's character is relevant to the quality of the product.

You are making assumptions about a future that hasn't happened yet. It is open-source, so whatever move the person might do in the future, you can fork it anytime.

You can fork, but will you want to fork and spend time and effort, potentially in huge amounts, on that fork? There are reasons to be wary. Choosing an alternative, where that particular reason for forking might not exist, is a valid choice to make.

Re: A decentralized peer-to-peer messaging application that operates over Bluetooth

#242

Post by lxgr »

lormayna wrote: post #237
modeless wrote: post #217

It's criminal that cell phones are bristling with incredibly advanced radio technology and yet they are by law not allowed to communicate directly with each other over a distance of more than a couple hundred meters without assistance from a licensed and centrally controlled base station. Meanwhile a $10 walkie talkie using primitive stone-age radio technology can go many miles with zero infrastructure, but by law is…

A walkie-talkie requires a big antenna and consume a lot more power than a cellphone.

Both not true.

Both European PMR446 and the US FRS are limited to 0.5 W; GSM uses four times that. There are walkie-talkies with very small antennas too. The limiting factor is line-of-sight, in any case.

If you're fine with less than real-time audio, you can get much, much smaller and low power.

Re: A decentralized peer-to-peer messaging application that operates over Bluetooth

#243

Post by lxgr »

jansper39 wrote: post #226
modeless wrote: post #217

It's criminal that cell phones are bristling with incredibly advanced radio technology and yet they are by law not allowed to communicate directly with each other over a distance of more than a couple hundred meters without assistance from a licensed and centrally controlled base station. Meanwhile a $10 walkie talkie using primitive stone-age radio technology can go many miles with zero infrastructure, but by law is…

Personally, the additional complexity and overheads required for a P2P phone network is not worth while and I'm not sure it would fix that many problems that haven't already been fixed with walkie talkies.

Not worthwhile to who?

The point is exactly that everybody is carrying a phone, but almost nobody is carrying a walkie-talkie. And why should I carry one more thing? My smartphone has already replaced my music player, camera...

Re: A decentralized peer-to-peer messaging application that operates over Bluetooth

#244

Post by rm30 »

nicois wrote: post #26

One missing feature: deferred message propagation. As far as I understand, while messages will be rebroadcast until a TTL is exhausted, there is no mechanism to retain in-transit messages and retransmit them to future peers. While this adds overheads, it's table stakes for real-life usage. You should be able to write a message and not rely on the recipient being available when you press send. You should also be able…

I’ve read all the posts and, as the 'old man of the village', I would suggest taking a look at FidoNet. It was running 40 years ago, for more than a decade, before the internet was available to the average person.

Store-and-forward, hierarchical organization, scheduled transmissions, working over dial-up and radio links, everything is there.

There is nothing new to invent, and it was far more reliable than the 10m real-world range of BT5 (not the 1km claimed for lab devices, which aren't commercial phones).

A BT5 mesh only works under well-defined conditions, which usually coincide with the cases where you don't actually need it.

Re: A decentralized peer-to-peer messaging application that operates over Bluetooth

#245

Post by modeless »

lxgr wrote: post #239
modeless wrote: post #217

It's criminal that cell phones are bristling with incredibly advanced radio technology and yet they are by law not allowed to communicate directly with each other over a distance of more than a couple hundred meters without assistance from a licensed and centrally controlled base station. Meanwhile a $10 walkie talkie using primitive stone-age radio technology can go many miles with zero infrastructure, but by law is…

> Meanwhile a $10 walkie talkie using primitive stone-age radio technology can go many miles with zero infrastructure, but by law is not allowed to be used for data transmission. Is this even true? I still have two Gotennas from before they pivoted to military use cases, and they were legal to use both in the US and in Europe (on different bands auto-configured via GPS, as far as I remember). REI also currently stock…

Wow, you're right, data is technically allowed on FRS frequencies. I didn't realize that. It's not unrestricted though. There are a lot of regulations that constrain how FRS radios can work, much more than for 2.4 Ghz.

Re: A decentralized peer-to-peer messaging application that operates over Bluetooth

#246

Post by lxgr »

kanbankaren wrote: post #236
modeless wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walkie talkies as licensed today wouldn't because they are required by law to use exclusively stone-age radio technology. But modern unlicensed radio technology is incredibly good at sharing scarce 2.4 Ghz spectrum. Sometimes devices do interfere with each other, but they remain useful and they are far better at sharing than any expert would have predicted years ago. Let the radio engineers try.

It is not as easy as you think. RF attenuation is proportional to frequency and at 2.4 GHz, it is very high. Also, the distance over which one could communicate depends on antenna height, so if both parties are at ground level, it is not feasible over a few hundred meters unless both are in wide open space. Source: ham operator who has played with long distance device to device communication without using a repeater.

> RF attenuation is proportional to frequency and at 2.4 GHz, it is very high.

Through building materials, foliage etc, but not in free space/line-of-sight.

> Also, the distance over which one could communicate depends on antenna height, so if both parties are at ground level, it is not feasible over a few hundred meters unless both are in wide open space.

Isn't it just the opposite? Antenna height is only the limiting factor with line-of-sight, otherwise NLOS considerations like attenuation by building materials, multipath propagation etc. start to matter much more. Modern radio standards are extremely good at that.

Of course line-of-sight usually remains the ceiling, since there usually isn't much in the sky to helpfully reflect signals back down, at least with mobile transmitter compatible transmission levels (i.e. excluding shortwave).

Re: A decentralized peer-to-peer messaging application that operates over Bluetooth

#247

Post by cbdevidal »

drittich wrote: post #177
cbdevidal wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once wrote an article detailing as many prepper uses for an offline phone as I could think of. Dozens of offline apps useful for a survival situation. My favorite might be ATAK, which is from the US military and allows a team to communicate encrypted over Wi-Fi or radios, completely offline. Share GPS coords, camera feeds, messages, map markers, all kinds of goodness. And if nothing else, you can always rupture the…

And of course you can now run local LLMs on your phone as well.

Prepper J.A.R.V.I.S. :-)

Re: A decentralized peer-to-peer messaging application that operates over Bluetooth

#248

Post by lxgr »

modeless wrote: post #245
lxgr wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Meanwhile a $10 walkie talkie using primitive stone-age radio technology can go many miles with zero infrastructure, but by law is not allowed to be used for data transmission. Is this even true? I still have two Gotennas from before they pivoted to military use cases, and they were legal to use both in the US and in Europe (on different bands auto-configured via GPS, as far as I remember). REI also currently stock…

Wow, you're right, data is technically allowed on FRS frequencies. I didn't realize that. It's not unrestricted though. There are a lot of regulations that constrain how FRS radios can work, much more than for 2.4 Ghz.

There's also a slice of ISM spectrum available around 900-930 MHz in the US, and Europe has an equivalent one around 860 MHz, which is where the (unfortunately discontinued) Gotenna consumer device used to operate.

Re: A decentralized peer-to-peer messaging application that operates over Bluetooth

#249

Post by cedws »

alt227 wrote: post #223
cedws wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American software engineers maybe. But I heard somewhere that most Americans live paycheck to paycheck or at most have a few thousand dollars in savings.

> I heard somewhere that most Americans live paycheck to paycheck or at most have a few thousand dollars in savings If you dont inherently know this fact then you should be grateful for a very lucky and priviliged life.

I don't live in America.

Re: A decentralized peer-to-peer messaging application that operates over Bluetooth

#250

Post by bilsbie »

modeless wrote: post #217

It's criminal that cell phones are bristling with incredibly advanced radio technology and yet they are by law not allowed to communicate directly with each other over a distance of more than a couple hundred meters without assistance from a licensed and centrally controlled base station. Meanwhile a $10 walkie talkie using primitive stone-age radio technology can go many miles with zero infrastructure, but by law is…

Ham frequencies would work even better?
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