Great work!

[Charles McKnight]

Greetings,

Extremely interested to read about the project in Linux Journal and
the other data on the web site. Wondered if/when it would be feasible
to tackle something like an Open Source GSM femtocell that connects to
either a local analog line or a MeshPotato like device.

Keep up the great work, I'm looking forward to see how things develop!

Best regards,

Charles McKnight

[David Rowe]

Hello Charles,

You can use OpenBTS to implement a GSM femtocell. It's back end is
Asterisk so you can then connect to an analog line, Mesh Potato etc.

Cheers,

David

[David Rowe]

Hello List,

We are trying to design a Beta program that has maximum value for the
project.

For example plugging a few MPs in and making some phone calls is low
value (we have done that already), although using it very day for a few
months as your main phone system might be useful.

Finding a bug would be useful, but actually fixing a problem/adding an
improvement or contributing code would be even better, as the core team
won't be able to fix every bug or code every improvement.

Those people who are on the Beta testing list - could you please tell us
what you have planned for your Beta Mesh Potatoes?

Thanks,

David

[Lew Pitcher]

If I'm lucky enough to be included in the beta test, I'll use the Mesh
Potatoes to help prototype out and develop an "MP mass configuration tool".

Primarily, I'll look at
- what facilities exist on the default configuration MP to enable a
configuration query process
- which additional facilities will be required to enable configuration
gathering and configuration change distribution at the MP (these additional
facilities would be candidates for inclusion in the base MP configuration of
the production-level MP)
- the methods for applying configuration changes, including the current
package management process, and various ad-hoc update processes
- the base configuration of the MP to establish the initial configuration
values
- "use case" validation, specifically in the area of using one MP as a
connector to all the other factory-configured MPs during the configuration
gathering phase of the tool

--
Lew Pitcher
Master Codewright & JOAT-in-training | Registered Linux User #112576
Me: http://pitcher.digitalfreehold.ca/ | Just Linux: http://justlinux.ca/
---------- Slackware - Because I know what I'm doing. ------

[Michael K. Rodriguez]

Hello David,

I am willing to participate in such a Beta program. What is need to become a member?

-michael

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[Donald Gordon]

Hi

As someone on that list, my plans are to experiment with using batman-advanced as the mesh protocol (along with my pile of reflashed old meraki minis), and if that goes well, use it as my flat's main phone.

donald

[victor tejada]

ey david my name is victor tejada i am a computer sciences students i am developing my thesis on mesh network to use VoIP in rural community is a very interesting project to test a mesh potato what is the requirement to be a tester of mesh potato GOD BLESS YOU DIOS te Bendiga y Guarde --- On Tue, 12/1/09, David Rowe <da...@rowetel.com> wrote:

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[David Rowe]

Hello Victor and Michael,

The Beta units were assigned back in July - pls search this list for
details.

However you may be able to buys some Beta units directly from Atcom,
please contact Edwin Chen: edwin_at_atcom_dot_com_dot_cn

- David

> village-telco-...@googlegroups.com.

[Carlos Martinez]

Hello David Rowe and Village Telco people

For the last two month I have been reading---actually studying---the emails you have sent to the list. I can tell you it is not an easy work to understand the concepts, the experiments and the tools you have been using.

My first idea is to reproduce (here at the University of El Salvador) the same experiments you have done.  We have to study the emails on the list again. After gaining experience we can try to formulate our owns experiments. But I can say, to this very moment, We can not tell any plan for  MP testing.

It will be interesting to have some ideas from you regarding this issue.
Sincerely,
Carlos

2009/12/1 David Rowe <da...@rowetel.com>

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Carlos Eugenio Martínez Cruz
Escuela de Ingeniería Eléctrica
Universidad de El Salvador

[Pascal Laurent]

David,

It's my pleasure to be a part of the Beta testing. A lot have been
discussed on the performance tuning side. We would like to hear more
about Documentation, dashboard, billing, the business side, packages,
etc. What is the roadmap, milestone, timeline, etc? The success of the
project will be measured by how easy it is to be deployed, maintained,
and supported. Having a couple of the MP will provide me with the
opportunity to help with troubleshooting, documentation, scripting,
asterisk, and possibly a2billing (hoping the final decision will be
a2billing).

Thanks,
--Pascal

[Michael Adeyeye]

Hi All,
I am Michael Adeyeye, a researcher at the Electrical Engineering Dept, UCT, and my research interests include Web & telephony services. I quite agree with Carlos on not having any plans for MP testing. It would however be a great idea if you guys could tell us how to help out. I could file a bug during the test. I was also thinking of hacking it. This is primarily for adding new features. The long and the short of it is that I would like to see a list of things we could help with.

I am really looking forward to the MPs because I would like to contribute to the project.

Regards,
Michael
http://crg.ee.uct.ac.za/members/micadeyeye

[Michael Ziglar]

Our plan is to use the MPs to connect four (4) branch officies in
three counties (TWO IN VIRGINIA, USA ---- and two in West Africa ----
Dakar, Senegal & Monrovia, Republic of Liberia.

I have created portable electricity from a briefcase (18 amp-hours of
110 volt power -- and an expandable back-up electricity unit with 33-
amp-hours -- that can be recharged ---- using the sun ---- or
recharged with a gas or a diesel generator) as a power source for use
in villages without electricity.

In addition, I believe I can assist in creating a business model that
can help financing of the MPs.

We are anxious to be included in the beta testing for the MPs.



Michael J. Ziglar,Sr., CPA
President
Electronic Accountants
(A business unit of Concerned Citizens in Action)
Virginia Beach, VA. 23462
Richmond, irfinia 23222
1-804-269-1609 USA (Mobile Phone)
1-804-201-4104 USA (8x8.com VoIP phone)
1-804-228-1126 USA (Residence)
michael...@gmail.com

[Rael Lissoos]

Hi

we are currently running a live telephone system.  We will install mesh-pots in client dwellings as soon as we get them. we will be able to connect these to internet.

we can istall in urban or rural area.

thanks rael

[David Rowe]

Thank you all for your comments on Beta testing.

1/ Here are some ideas I came up with:

- finding and preferably fixing bugs
- performing complex tests and improvements (sort of stuff that takes
significant time to set up like load tests)
- improving the system
- documenting
- publicity via blogs and other articles
- demonstration to stakeholders and building local excitement
- Securing pre-production volume orders

2/ Another though re Beta testing:

Say one of the beta testers find a problem, like "sometimes calls break
up" or "it wont register with my SIP provider".

OK, so how do we track that down and implement a fix? Your Wifi/SIP
environment might be completely different to ours. This suggests we
might need some tools of trouble shooting guides to diagnose complex
problems.

Cheers,

David

[Alexander Chemeris]

Hi David,

On Wed, Dec 2, 2009 at 23:41, David Rowe <da...@rowetel.com> wrote:
> 2/ Another though re Beta testing:
>
> Say one of the beta testers find a problem, like "sometimes calls break
> up" or "it wont register with my SIP provider".
>
> OK, so how do we track that down and implement a fix?  Your Wifi/SIP
> environment might be completely different to ours.  This suggests we
> might need some tools of trouble shooting guides to diagnose complex
> problems.

Is it possible to add command-line version of Wireshark (don't recall how
it is named) with a script to capture only SIP or SIP+RTP and ability to
download these logs from MP?
Having SIP logs helps a lot in many cases when you have problems with
SIP.

--
Regards,
Alexander Chemeris.

[Corinna Elektra Aichele]

Hello Alexander -

> Is it possible to add command-line version of Wireshark (don't recall how
> it is named) with a script to capture only SIP or SIP+RTP and ability to
> download these logs from MP?

the solution would be to capture/dump traffic with tcpdump. You can install it
with the opkg package manager.

There are many software packages available in Openwrt and therefore also for
the MP. So far we did compile only a subset of the available Openwrt packages.
Here is the current list:
http://downloads.open-mesh.net/mesh potato/packages/mips/Packages.gz

If there is demand for more Openwrt packages currently not available we'll
compile and upload them to open-mesh.net upon request. If the package is a
must-have we can include it in the firmware image. The MPs will have 8MB of
flash, and about 4MB space will be available. The file system is jffs2, which
uses compression.

If you need more packages you can build the software build environment on your
own according to the instructions here:
http://wiki.villagetelco.org/index.php/How_to_use_the_software_build_environment
Then choose from the wide variety of available packages using the "make
menuconfig" command :-)

Cheers,
Elektra

[Alexander Chemeris]

Hello Elektra,

On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 01:34, Corinna Elektra Aichele <onel...@gmx.net> wrote:
> There are many software packages available in Openwrt and therefore also for
> the MP. So far we did compile only a subset of the available Openwrt packages.
> Here is the current list:
> http://downloads.open-mesh.net/mesh potato/packages/mips/Packages.gz
>
> If there is demand for more Openwrt packages currently not available we'll
> compile and upload them to open-mesh.net upon request. If the package is a
> must-have we can include it in the firmware image. The MPs will have 8MB of
> flash, and about 4MB space will be available. The file system is jffs2, which
> uses compression.

I just recommend to make this a standard option. You will likely have problems
with SIP and having a simple way to get traces from remote user is always
a good idea.

--
Regards,
Alexander Chemeris.

[sebastian buettrich]

hello all,

On Wed, 2009-12-02 at 06:46 +1030, David Rowe wrote:

> Those people who are on the Beta testing list - could you please tell us
> what you have planned for your Beta Mesh Potatoes?

we ll mostly be interested in

- re-purposing / dual-purposing the MP for voicedata / other data

e.g. data capture in mixed networks

(yes, a USB port would have been great, Steve)

- long term stability under harsh conditions (difficult to short term
test though)

- antenna performance

- using MP in mixed hardware meshes

whether any of this could generate direct input to code base 7 bug
fixing - that remains to be seen.

all the best,
keep up the great work,

sebastian
http://wire.less.dk

[kilos]

http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=77016
When I read these type of articles , where communities do not even
have a decent telephone service from Telkom, let alone broadband, its
a sad
situation as I spend some time last weekend in the Karoo on wireless
maintenance - and poor folks spend their time & monies on alcohol,
hopefully
when cheaper broadband access and a phone service thats offers free in
town calls this will introduce productivity, entrepreneurship

I spoke to Geoffrey Grundlingh the a farmer from Laingsburg District
and his telephone line was so bad, thats why projects like
Village Telco provide hope for rural Africa, if you look at this area
between Lainsgburg and Seveweekspoort Pass no cell reception

Keep up the good work team , your effort are really appreciated.
With the World Bank Millenuim Goals - this project will bring
connectivity to the under developed nations and assist in reaching
those goals
http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/EXTABOUTUS/0,,contentMDK:20104132~menuPK:250991~pagePK:43912~piPK:44037~theSitePK:29708,00.html

Cheers
Justin Miles

[Alberto Escudero]

Hi,

Currently OpenBTS also works with FreeSWITCH :)
http://www.mail-archive.com/freeswit...@lists.freeswitch.org/msg16824.html

/aep
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>

[David A. Burgess]

Alberto -

"Good stuff!" One point, though: In release 2.5 and later, the SIP
username needs to be prefixed with "IMSI", instead of just the 14/15
digit IMSI code. For example

<user id="31041464646464646" cidr="192.168.46.15/24">

becomes

<user id="IMSI31041464646464646" cidr="192.168.46.15/24">

And you might want to take a look at the 2.5 release to be sure that
all of your patches carried through.


ALSO...

On a related note, we are thinking about organizing a workshop for
OpenBTS developers and deployers, probably in Europe, probably in
July. The idea would be to actually set up and run multiple BTS
units, add features on the spot, modify configurations, provision
handsets, connect real calls to real VoIP carriers, customize SIMs,
play with iNum and ITAD, etc. We would need to do this in a rural
area where we can run these networks in the open without contention
from local cellular service, so if you are looking for an
entertaining junket, fancy hotels, nightlife, etc., this is not it.
Think "small-town rustic", probably on a farm somewhere. We are
sensitive to the matter of expense and would do our best to limit
costs, but we can still find recent lodging and have nice meals.
Would there interest in this sort of thing?

-- David

On Dec 10, 2009, at 9:28 AM, Alberto Escudero wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Currently OpenBTS also works with FreeSWITCH :)
> http://www.mail-archive.com/freeswit...@lists.freeswitch.org/
> msg16824.html
>
> /aep
> --
> Stopping junk mailers is good for the environment

David A. Burgess
Kestrel Signal Processing, Inc.

[Alexander Chemeris]

Hi David and all,

On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 21:50, David A. Burgess <dbur...@jcis.net> wrote:
> On a related note, we are thinking about organizing a workshop for
> OpenBTS developers and deployers, probably in Europe, probably in
> July.  The idea would be to actually set up and run multiple BTS
> units, add features on the spot, modify configurations, provision
> handsets, connect real calls to real VoIP carriers, customize SIMs,
> play with iNum and ITAD, etc.  We would need to do this in a rural
> area where we can run these networks in the open without contention
> from local cellular service, so if you are looking for an
> entertaining junket, fancy hotels, nightlife, etc., this is not it.
> Think "small-town rustic", probably on a farm somewhere.  We are
> sensitive to the matter of expense and would do our best to limit
> costs, but we can still find recent lodging and have nice meals.
> Would there interest in this sort of thing?

I'm very excited of such great posibility of face-to-face meeting and
I will try hard to arrange to come there and will help it all I can.

My opinion is that if we want to really lower costs for attendies, this
workshop should be right after (or prior to) some big and well-known
conference on SDR/GSM/Communications/FOSS, so people could
attend both and save on airfare, visas (for foreigners) and just their
time.

re: place
I wish I could welcome this event in my out-of-city house 100km
from Moscow, but with pretty clear spectrum. But I fear that's not
exactly what you mean by "Europe" and this contradicts with my
own statement about a big conference nearby. :)

--
Regards,
Alexander Chemeris.

[Raphaël Jacquot]

On Thu, 2009-12-10 at 10:50 -0800, David A. Burgess wrote:

> On a related note, we are thinking about organizing a workshop for
> OpenBTS developers and deployers, probably in Europe, probably in
> July. The idea would be to actually set up and run multiple BTS
> units, add features on the spot, modify configurations, provision
> handsets, connect real calls to real VoIP carriers, customize SIMs,
> play with iNum and ITAD, etc. We would need to do this in a rural
> area where we can run these networks in the open without contention
> from local cellular service, so if you are looking for an
> entertaining junket, fancy hotels, nightlife, etc., this is not it.
> Think "small-town rustic", probably on a farm somewhere. We are
> sensitive to the matter of expense and would do our best to limit
> costs, but we can still find recent lodging and have nice meals.
> Would there interest in this sort of thing?
>
> -- David

the most interesting solution would probably to present the workshop at
the Rencontres Mondiales du Logiciel Libre

http://2010.rmll.info/

you still have plenty of time to propose a talk there ;)

[Alexander Chemeris]

Hi all,

On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 22:14, Alexander Chemeris
<alexander...@gmail.com> wrote:
> My opinion is that if we want to really lower costs for attendies, this
> workshop should be right after (or prior to) some big and well-known
> conference on SDR/GSM/Communications/FOSS, so people could
> attend both and save on airfare, visas (for foreigners) and just their
> time.

As a variant of such event to which the workshop may be connected,
June 23-25, Mainz, Germany:
http://www.sdrforum.org/2010europeworkshop/location.html

--
Regards,
Alexander Chemeris.