INTRODUCTIONS: Who are you & why are you here? :)

Hello world. I am Nick and I am interested in mesh networking but don’t have any gotennas yet

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Hey everyone!
So excited to be a part of this community. My name is Christian, and my wife(Megan) and I are headed to Zambia in a couple days to serve in the Peace Corps :slight_smile:
We plan on packing our gotenna’s and want to build a network overseas!

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Welcome! Have a great time serving others and take care.

The goTenna Mesh is certified for legal use in some 40 countries, but Zambia isn’t on the list.

The List Currently
United States, Canada, Albania, Andorra, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Greenland, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Malta, Monaco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, San Marino, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and United Kingdom.

Probably worth making some discrete inquiries about use there. It may be OK, but from having friends in the Peace Corps in the past I know how careful they like to be to avoid any unneeded complications. They’re certainly worth taking along so you have them available as you travel IMO.

BTW, we have a great little Zambian restaurant here in Urbana and takeout from there was dinner tonight coincidentally enough.

Certified for legal use? Interesting. Yeah I’ll ask around and see if anyone has any experience with similar tech in Zambia

Yes, there are somewhat differing sets of frequencies and power levels that are automatically selected according to user’s location. In the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and perhaps others, a full watt of power is available, but in most European countries only 1/2 watt is allowed.

Each nation sets their own radio frequency use regs, either independently or in concert with the trading community that they are a part of, determined in part by what WTU (World Telecommunications Union, the governance body where international agreements on the division and use of radio spectrum is decided) region they are a part of. It gets complicated.

Hard to say how Zambia fits in. Some nations are very laid back about such innovative technologies. Others treat such things much more harshly. Having them around so you have them when you travel to places where they are clearly approved is ordinarily not a problem, but then again there are places like North Korea where you’d be advised to be very cautious. No Peace Corps in the North yet, but maybe soon? That would be an interesting assignment. The friend whose assignment I remember served in Paraguay back in the 80s, IIRC when the ambassador and several others were lost in a commercial airline crash. Tough time with that happening, but I know he found it very rewarding work.

Hi everyone–my name is Mike and I am a product manger at goTenna. I am based in Brooklyn, NY but I try find myself outdoors as much as possible–typically on a bike but also on skis or hiking. I’m looking forward to getting your feedback and learning more about how you’re using goTenna Mesh!

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Welcome Mike! Good to see a new face for the home team. Looking forward to being mutually confused with each other :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

I’m sure it won’t really be too hard to tell us apart. Your responses will be the ones that are shorter, more to the point and less rambling around at 4am when I can’t sleep. :rofl::rofl:

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Background: IT guy, interested in all things distributed, and slightly worried about infrastructure fragility.

I’ve been watching the GoTenna thing since it’s inception. I was doing some FEMA courses, and realized that for regional communications in the event of a natural disaster, that the GoTenna Mesh would be ideal in this circumstances, so I bought an 8 pack so I can give one to all of my friends, and set up a node at home and at my work. (The one near my work is most likely to be utilized, I would imagine. My home one I will probably try to find a nice tree to hook up to at a midway point from where I am to my closest friend, depending on the real usable range of these things. Worst case I will buy everyone GMRS radios and pay for their licenses.

I went on a cruise a while back, and I really wish I had them at that point in time. Oh well. I hope that beyond hiking in areas where there is no cell reception that I never NEED these things, and over the next few weeks I look forward to testing these with my friends and spouse downtown. I like the end to end encryption for the messages, and the mesh hop architecture.

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My name is Matt, and I’m interested in goTenna to pair with CivTak for large scale airsoft events. I’ll make a post about that on another thread, but that’s me and what I’m looking for! Excited to delve into this technology!

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hi, I am interested in using goTenna in disaster relief situations such as earthquakes, hurricanes etc as well as for use with TxTenna to transmit bitcoin transactions where internet is not available. First found out about this through TxTenna and Samourai Wallet tweets. I was ready to buy the devices but unfortunately had to find out that there is no shipping to Mexico. This is very discouraging, as this is one of the countries where your service is most needed (we have natural disasters here every year). I sincerely hope you will start supporting Mexico soon.

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Hey everyone, I’m Hugo - Just recently found out about goTenna, and decided to buy a couple after the txtenna announcement. I’ve become more interested in decentralized networks over the past year or so, and figure this is an exciting/tangible step in that direction. Excited to try and get Boston/Cambridge covered in a mesh!

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I’m John from Southern California. I’m also in amateur radio with call sign K6KD. I’m interested in different forms of communication, and, in particular, how MESH might relate to amateur radio.

I’ve noticed a number of amateur radio operators in this Community. I am an admin with several D-STAR reflectors, including one that provides transcoding between D-STAR and DMR. We refer to our reflectors as the Constellation. For those of you familiar with reflectors, these are not the original reflectors, but open source reflectors known as X-Reflectors and XLX reflectors.

I wanted to invite all amateur radio operators to join our nets as well as participate in any discussions on the Constellation. All the A modules on the Constellation reflectors are linked, so you can connect to module A on one of the reflectors and talk with stations on module A on any of the other reflectors, so it doesn’t matter which reflector you link to.

If there turns out to be sufficient interest, we would welcome a net dedicated to MESH. Only thing needed is someone willing to be a net controller and others willing to participate.

I maintain a website listing X-Reflectors at http://xrefl.net At the top of the website is information about our Constellation and the current nets. There is also a net dealing with open source digital systems. Last night we discussed goTenna and MESH. The website associated with that net is http://roundtable.tech

Looking forward to participating here.

John

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I’m Rick (@freegold) twitter and this is very interesting and exciting and since I’m working now for a community radio station in kepw.org Eugene, OR am thinking about running a human interest story to our local community of about 300K people. Heard about gotenna last year during the holidays and forgot about it and now I’m interested in really learning more! Been studying crypto currency and other social activities.

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I’m a ham radio operator, and I like communication gear. The Gotenna is something that appealed to me right away.

73 de Ray
K2ULR
FN20kg

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Chief,

There’s a big discussion here about people who use these on cruise ships when their families are on vacation. A couple of relays would probably work, but what about OpSec?

Yeah I was more so talking about in port. I wouldn’t be worried about the BT signal leaving the ship or the data as it is encrypted. However the UHF mesh broadcast could pose as issue. Think about the benefit for shore patrol if properly meshed/noded out. Wouldn’t cost a thing after device purchase.

You’re probably right… Say every Officer and Chief had a GoTenna in a foreign port… It would be easier to track down crew in a emergency. I got two GoTennas a few weeks ago, and haven’t really had a chance to use them very much. Maybe I read too much Tom Clancy or watch too much Law & Order!

Matt

I am a video producer, filmmaker, hammer and mesh believer who born and raised in Shanghai China.

I choose gotenna is because I believer it is a great tool for my abroad travel, meet new friend in this city and as a backup communication for emergency situation.

If there is any local owner here in Shanghai, pls contact with me via email: 31968780@qq.com

上海的goTenna朋友们,大家可以互相联系起来!

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Hi everyone. My name is Pat. I was in Combat Communications in the Air National Guard for over 20 years. I did HF, VHF, UHF, Microwave and Satellite Radio. Being the Guard, we did Active Duty missions as well as disasters. We really could have used these things during Katrina.

Very interested in decentralized, survivable communication systems. Just received my first 2 units today; will probably purchase more in the coming weeks.

I live in the Research Triangle of North Carolina and am currently a Telecom Network Engineer with Verizon.

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Bruce Here in North Bend, Washington. Gateway to some of the best hiking in the world…IMO. I have a YouTube channel, https://www.youtube.com/user/northwestnaturecalls , and love anything/gear that goes with backpacking. We have pretty rough terrain, ski resorts, backcountry travel and the like. I am hoping I can spur on the backpacking community to get on board as there is nothing but benefit I can see. We have also had our shares of power and network outages, volcanoes, land slides that I can see goTennas come into action. I live right in between 3 major trails and feel I can augment with a stationary node someday as I learn. We have a lot of careless hikers out there these days and they get into a lot of trouble. I carry an InReach and have had to use that in the past. This is going to be fun even beyond hiking. Can’t wait to see where this goes.

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