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

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Hello World,

My name is Tony. I am a GEEK of all trades, master of none :nerd_face:. For the past 25 years, I have enjoyed using and building tech.

In the late 90’s, on into the 2k, I volunteered my time at the local ARC chapter and our county FD. I was an EMT-A and taught every class the ARC offered to the community. I later got my amateur radio license and have spent some time with our county Sheriff DCS team, all the more learning. For the past 5 years, I have volunteered my time helping both businesses and households to have a disaster plan that includes a comm plan. I have even built a few emergency radio and repeater kits (both Part 97 and Part 90).

When goTenna v1 came out, I thought this was great, but if only it could relay. We were excited to hear about the goTenna Mesh and immediately ordered several on Kickstarter for each member of my team. I have already set up a permanent node at my home, and now I am eager to set up a MOAN and at the same time, we are keeping our eye on the goTenna Pro.

73,
Tony (W1LMS)

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Oh hell yeah @W1LMS!

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Australia calling. I am Evan, still waiting to receive to goTenna mesh devices, very keen to try them and keen to encourage other to try them here too. We have a very dangerous bush fire season rushing down on us and I may be able to encourage our government and emergency services to take an interest is goTenna mesh.

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My name is Brian Hendrix. Just got my email saying the goTenna devices are shipped and arriving soon. They are going to be part of my bugout bag and one will always be in the bag and one in the car.

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Hi goTenna Team & fellow backers!

My name is Vivek, live in East Bay,CA and anxiously waiting for delivery of my devices. After reading all the praise of the produce from people who have received it i am just happy with the thought that soon i will be starting using it.
Though i am not a Techie i can sense importance of this communication option.
Cheers!

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Hi All,

I’m Rob and I am in the forestry program at the University of Idaho. The group of students I work with and I are very interested in trying out goTenna mesh and eventually the Pro models for different kinds of safety applications that make use of location sharing (tethering) in the woods.

Great to meet you all. I enjoyed reading the introductions and hearing about the range of people interested in goTenna!

Rob

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My wife bought these as a way to stay connected when hiking or other outdoors activities as well as some of the off grid activities (trips to Alaska, post disaster or evacuation communications- We live in FL, so yeah…).

Working to get my HAM license to have that as a way to communicate as well. As I use these I realize need a few more, one for use at home as a design similar to the MOAN and another random mobile repeater.

Registered twice because I didn’t like having our phone numbers as our GID’s.

We got lucky during the hurricanes this year, and having a solid communications plan for local resources is imperative to getting in touch with the local area to assist or request assistance.

Carl & Dawn
Riverview, FL

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I just got back from working disaster relief in San Juan area. Phone service mostly out along with cell service. No Verizon, very spotty AT&T and Sprint. Hoping for the best for your family and friends and contact soon!

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Hello to all. I’m Ken Pascal in Fort Pierce, FL. I am a Amateur Radio operator, callsign W4KLP, so this gotenna system is right up my alley. On ham radio, I use morse code and various digital software to communicate with other hams all over the world. I am always trying to prepare for the future especially concerning the power grid and communication backbone. I have solar power as a backup for lights and appliances. I plan to put a gotenna relay on my 60 foot antenna mast with a small solar panel and a high gain omni-directional antenna to replace the internal fractal antenna. The gotenna will be enclosed in waterproof container. Good luck with yours and spread the word!!

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Daniela,

PLEASE consider an upgrade to INCREASE the number of hops our gotennas can make. That would really be an awesome enhancement.

Ken Pascal - W4KLP

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Ken, welcome! This thread is for introductions only, please go share your
suggestions in other threads. But we’re already working on this one haha!
Thank you :slight_smile:

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Simon here
I’m an amateur radio nerd who joined the kick starter campaign long time ago just got my Meshes a few days ago. I’m going to try to have them in accessible places for the Laguna Beach area in So California and have a phantom 4 drone that will be testing this weekend .
If I had one wish it would be that the developers would release an app that could be run on raspberry pi or even come up with a low-cost standalone Bluetooth messenger something with a keyboard and small display that would pair with a Gotenna. Yes an old Apple iPod touch will do it but I can want…

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Greetings, all! I’m Ray, KF6GPE, yet another amateur radio operator, living south of Silicon Valley up in the hills. I do a fair amount of emergency and public service with amateur radio, and am curious to see how using goTenna Mesh can play a part in that. I do a fair amount of hiking, too, but I’m a little less interested in goTenna for that; when I go out I’m usually either going solo, or the people i want to talk to are right in front of / behind me. But I still see its uses there, too.

Can’t wait for my units to arrive!

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I’m Dennis, a new GoTenna MESH user and yet another Amateur Radio operator (WL7AQ) in the group. I love any kind of gadget that is based on radio signals. Also, I recently relocated back to ANCHORAGE, ALASKA, where I used to live many years ago. I believe GoTenna MESH will be great to have here in Alaska where distances are HUGE and many, many areas don’t have telecommunication coverage of any kind. I think it will be a great device to have in case of emergency in these areas but also for experimentation and fun. Cheers everyone!

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i am sergio from chiapas,mexico and i am here because we need for a communication ways in emegency and for replace with a mesh by the bad service of our voice and text provider´s in mexico so in going to probe 4 of thems and if you have more ideas how to make a repeater for rural area ,thanks in advance

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Hi. Tony from Australia. Not many pins in the map down here, but a lot more than the first iteration of the imeshyou map. Looking foward to taking my pair on a cruise in a couple of weeks and see how it works around the ship and in port. I got these as a cool devices and for non-specific uses as part of my gadget arsenal for the family.

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Greetings from Baltimore.

I got interested in GoTenna both from a technical perspective (I’m a bit of a radio geek) as well as from the perspective of enabling self-forming networks. The Internet was originally founded as such, but it no longer resembles this, with most needing to subscribe to one of two wired networks or one of four mobile networks in their region.

Any tech that pushes back on the centralization of telecommunications is a good thing.

I envision communities using technologies such as GoTenna as communities for a time used CB radio back in the 1970s.

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Hi Everybody.
I’m Steven Tjiang. I bought my GoTenna mesh for outdoor activities. I enjoy hiking, running, biking and off-roading in areas where there is no cell phone coverage. I am already a ham radio operator but many of my companions don’t have amateur radio licensde but they all have smart phones, so GoTenna Mesh offers an ideal way to keep parties in contact.

I also have a few deaf friends and goTenna is perfect for communicating with them while out in the woods.

I’ll be testing extensively the mesh network features on an off-road trip to death valley in early spring of 2018.

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Hello. My name is Julio Bracero-Rodriguez. I was born, raised and trained in Puerto Rico (PR), but currently live in Dallas, Texas. I work as a pediatrician, my dream job. Do you know of anyone who is an “early adopter”, that seems to always figure things out when it comes to technology? That’s me. Out of my immediate professional circle, I do not know of any physician using private, secure, HIPAA + CJIS compliant email, or OMG - a text from the doctor - AthenaHealth. Heck, I even did a nanotechnology summer internship in college. Date of birth, September 1979… analog childhood, digital adulthood.

I’m here because I need technical guidance and some support (moral and technical). I literally want to drop goTenna’s around cities in PR to bring up the basic communication method most people use nowadays - text messaging. Communications in Puerto Rico are essentially down after Hurricane Maria, and electricity won’t be back for months. My family lives in the Southwest part of the island (yes, they’re doing well and have their own generator) but communication is non-existent. As part of a desperate effort, I donated 5 satellite phones, out of my own cash (rather, "magic plastic) to be provided to hospital directors, so they could communicate a bit more effectively. Don´t ask me if they got there quickly!! Hopefully, I can get more phones for what I consider key people.

However, “satellite phones for everyone” is not sustainable. I was pleased to discover goTenna, and even more interested as to what led to its creation. You can buy some prepaid cards in PR, and they are hit-and-miss, but people use their smartphones and they’re not gonna go back to a “regular phone”. Period.

In fact, a 2015 Pew Research Center report (U.S. Smartphone Use in 2015) shows that the most used app is text messaging.

My question to all enthusiasts and volunteers out there - how far can you daisy chain people using the goTenna devices? And how many users can a network realistically hold? I don’t intend on bringing internet up - that’s not my job. But going door to door, town to town, providing education - that’s right up my skill set. Once seeds are planted, it is just word-of-mouth. Ironically, there is sporadic internet access, so these nodes will be powered by data sometime throughout the day.

Ideas? Thoughts? I’m also commenting on Looking for Mesh users in Puerto Rico, but feel free to reply here, send a private message, or email at julio ALT doctorbracero DOT com

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Hello community! I am Kim, live in West Seattle, WA—got a couple of kickstarter units for my daughter who with husband and friends spend a good deal of time off in the woods around the world. They’re not techies by any means and are (if you will) poster children for “normal” users. Once the units arrived I had to get another pair for myself and the better half. Not quite sure what I’ll do with them other than play around, help with MOAN testing or other interesting field tests but hey… when the big one hits. Right?

A very very very long time ago I was an RF Engineer at a local airplane company, then medical devices, as-seen-on-tv products, and most recently ‘app development’ so while I have zero free time for messing around (I’m with a startup so work === life, there is no balance) I’d be thrilled to ping this and that to see what happens!

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