Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

bitchat.free

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 353 posts

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

#321

Post by [deleted] »

londons_explore wrote: post #271
squarefoot wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A small USB pluggable module that supports LoRa plus an app using Codec2 or similar low rate codec for voice encoding could fill the gap, although having it bundled with the phone would make it a lot less cumbersome to use. For non phone portable solutions, the LilyGo T-Deck Plus/Pro come to mind, but they're not phones so that would imply a 2nd device to carry around.

Yet compared to the 5G radio that can do gigabit speed and 20+ kilometers of range....

[deleted]

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

#322

Post by foltik »

eddythompson80 wrote: post #304
foltik wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not worthwhile? “It’s too hard” isn’t a great argument for why our phones should just become useless during power outages, natural disasters, ..

It’s not “too hard”. It’s physically impossible without regulation. There is but one limited RF spectrum that we all share. One bad actor (intentional or misconfigured) can render the entire RF spectrum in their area unusable. The radius of their impact only depends on how much kWHs they have access to and it doesn’t take much to cripple radio communication in a large metropolitan area. Until some clever cookie can f…

> It’s physically impossible without regulation.

Not true. Bluetooth, lora, and zigbee all coexist in the same unlicensed spectrum just fine. There’s no reason phones couldn’t speak these, or that a similar low-power protocol couldn’t be standardized.

> One bad actor can render the entire RF spectrum in their area unusable.

Ok, and? That’s already true for cellular, gps, and wifi today.

> Nothing is stopping you from getting an HT for communication during power outages, natural disasters, etc.

You’re missing the point. People already carry radios everywhere which are more than capable of longer range p2p communications.

The real question is why no such standard exists, despite its obvious utility.

Telling people to just carry an HT is smug and irrelevant. Average people carry phones.

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

#323

Post by coppsilgold »

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…

Many WiFi chips can be put into monitor mode (process all the data packets it can detect over the air) and inject packets for transmissions themselves. This pathway is typically unoptimized and would offer poor bandwidth but it is enough for text and audio.

You would need root to do this, and implement your own protocol on top of it with forward error correcting codes.

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

#324

Post by subscribed »

Elfener wrote: post #205
mlrtime wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a cruise ship, isn't the cheap walkie talkies still a thing? Or did those die with cell phones? For me the cell phone without internet is almost useless, not much I can do on it, might as well sue a purpose built device. They're also very cheap. Even better if Nextel still worked on phones (but without service).

The fact the even simple encryption with walkie-talkies is basically illegal might be problem (though I have no idea how/if that applies to at-sea ships).

Well, it's not illegal per se.

On the cruise I'd need to seek the written permission of the vessel's master's to operate :) (and ideally cruise company permission to even bring the transmitter on board)

Unlicenced passengers could probably plead ignorance and sneak UHF DMR radios.

Or get a business allocation and use P25 radios and once again plead ignorance :)

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

#325

Post by eddythompson80 »

AngryData wrote: post #320
eddythompson80 wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not “too hard”. It’s physically impossible without regulation. There is but one limited RF spectrum that we all share. One bad actor (intentional or misconfigured) can render the entire RF spectrum in their area unusable. The radius of their impact only depends on how much kWHs they have access to and it doesn’t take much to cripple radio communication in a large metropolitan area. Until some clever cookie can f…

Theoretically people could cripple RF comms on accident, in reality that almost never happens despite many people possessing devices able to do so. My mikrotik router will let me broadcast all sorts of illegal signals with a few clicks inside their GUI, and yet I never heard about problems with people crippling city blocks with bad router settings. Or from their weird microwave setups. Or trying to run and operate so…

That’s because almost any legal to sell consumer device gets an FCC certification. It can still cause interference, but within limited parameters that significantly limit the blast radius. Most of the interference people experience will be very limited and almost exclusively due to misconfigured or defective devices. Ham operators run into this occasionally and if memory serves correctly, there was a chapter in the ham license exam about how to identify potential bad RF source and how to handle it (the FCC usually recommend politely letting the person with a bad transmitter know that their TV antenna or generator or whatever is causing RF interference before you involve the authorities as most people who encounter this are simply unaware)

The situation would be very different if it were commercially legal to sell devices that are designed to let you broadcast to anyone without FCC certification on the device or enforcement from a governing body. A billion startups would be selling “communicate with your family across town for free” devices that can easily render emergency services radios useless in a city.

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

#326

Post by eddythompson80 »

foltik wrote: post #322
eddythompson80 wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not “too hard”. It’s physically impossible without regulation. There is but one limited RF spectrum that we all share. One bad actor (intentional or misconfigured) can render the entire RF spectrum in their area unusable. The radius of their impact only depends on how much kWHs they have access to and it doesn’t take much to cripple radio communication in a large metropolitan area. Until some clever cookie can f…

> It’s physically impossible without regulation. Not true. Bluetooth, lora, and zigbee all coexist in the same unlicensed spectrum just fine. There’s no reason phones couldn’t speak these, or that a similar low-power protocol couldn’t be standardized. > One bad actor can render the entire RF spectrum in their area unusable. Ok, and? That’s already true for cellular, gps, and wifi today. > Nothing is stopping you from…

> Not true. Bluetooth, lora, and zigbee all coexist in the same unlicensed spectrum just fine. There’s no reason phones couldn’t speak these, or that a similar low-power protocol couldn’t be standardized.

They already do. Most phones have Bluetooth. All those examples run on the 2.4GHz spectrum and all have the same RF range limitations and challenges. What’s your point?

> Ok, and? That’s already true for cellular, gps, and wifi today.

Hence the enforcement of cellular bands and gps through regulation. Again I’m confused as to what you are trying to say? Anyone can cause an RF jam. It’s illegal. Depending on how much it impact others, you might get a visit from the FCC, a fine or jail.

> You’re missing the point. People already carry radios everywhere which are more than capable of longer range p2p communications.

No they are not. You can’t get more than very short line of sight communication on the UHF band. You need to drop to at least the VHF band for any reasonable non-assisted communication and even still most people communicating in the VHF bands are using repeaters.

> The real question is why no such standard exists, despite its obvious utility.

You just listed 3 standards. Their utility is extremely limited and very unreliable as the distance, foliage, concrete increases between the parties. Telling anyone to rely on UHF transceiver in an emergency is misleading and dangerous. Telling anyone who is worried about communication in an actual emergency situation to have an HT is not smug. It’s the tool you need for the job. Average people carry phones because they are not frequently in such emergency situations. Those who are (emergency services, hardcore hikers, snow skiers, wild adventure types carry radios or satellite phones for this reason.

Plus with the recent low orbit satellite constellations making it possible to fit compatible transceiver in small phones (as opposed to needing a huge antenna for it) it’s even more of a moot point for emergency situations now.

You’re not gonna change antenna theory because you feel it’s smug.

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

#327

Post by fenwick67 »

kyrofa wrote: post #306
fenwick67 wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well obviously cell phones have very powerful tx/rx so my question would be "what is stopping us from using this for p2p", I assume the answer is we don't have software access to the radio, and I assume that's for regulatory reasons but idk

That's not actually true: cell phone rx/tx power is quite low. We can get away with that because all they need to do is get to the nearest tower, which has a ton of power, sensitive antennas, and is very tall. Amateur radios have far more power available to them, but any "p2p" (i.e. simplex in amateur radio) runs into normal RF issues, like obstacles and interference. If you used the existing radios in cell phones to…

Sorry by power I meant in terms of capability not like, wattage

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

#328

Post by salawat »

ianburrell wrote: post #294
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…

It isn't a law thing, but I'm disappointed that LTE Direct didn't go anywhere. That let's cell phone talk to each other over range up a km. The problem is that there LTE Direct requires implementation in the radio firmware, and the companies only did it for government phones. There is also 5G Device-to-Device and I haven't found out if that is supported more widely. There would also need to be frequency allocation, s…

It's a business model thing, which seems to supplant law these days. Can't meter P2P. Intermediation to prevent usurpation of network effects is the name of the game in the modern day. No one will say that, but it's the quiet part left explicitly unsaid. The negative space of the incentive structure, if you will.

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

#329

Post by powersjcb »

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…

I’ve been tangentially involved in experimenting with Meshtastic and trying to scale it for large events like Burning Man, on the order of 2000–3000 nodes on a single frequency.

Node to node mesh communication is cool and it works surprisingly well at small scale, but the moment we brought high powered repeaters online the difference was night and day. Coverage, reliability, and usability all jumped instantly.

It makes the tradeoff really obvious. Mesh is great for bootstrapping and local traffic, but once you care about real data propagation at scale, centralized infrastructure wins almost every time. Airtime is scarce, coordination matters, and having a small number of well placed high sites beats thousands of mediocre relays.

I still think there’s room for novelty P2P protocols, but mostly as an optimization layer on top of infrastructure, not as the foundation. Every time you push on this problem hard enough, you end up rediscovering the client router model for a reason.

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

#330

Post by modeless »

powersjcb wrote: post #329
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…

I’ve been tangentially involved in experimenting with Meshtastic and trying to scale it for large events like Burning Man, on the order of 2000–3000 nodes on a single frequency. Node to node mesh communication is cool and it works surprisingly well at small scale, but the moment we brought high powered repeaters online the difference was night and day. Coverage, reliability, and usability all jumped instantly. It mak…

Of course there's no reason to use a mesh when infrastructure is available. That's not why a mesh would be useful. But it doesn't even need to be a mesh to be a useful feature. Walkie talkies aren't a mesh and they remain useful.
Post reply on HN