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another possibility is to use wifi antennas for a longer range, people around me used that solution as a cheap alternative to radio modems.
May 02 · 4 weeks ago
Back in the day before DSL my brother in law got Internet via WiFi broadcasted from a grain silo. 802.11b I think it was. So making the backbone out of WiFi gear is one option.
Mind the frequencies are different for LoRa and WiFi so I don't know whether WiFi antennas would work. But large ones seem relatively inexpensive.
2.4GHz and 5GHz antennas would not work well since LoRa uses ISM bands around 433MHz and 900MHz but they are common frequencies so it is easy to find antennas for those frequencies.
I was looking into longer range LoRa antennas and they are cheap, really. AliExpress has some for £3-£5. Even a large, 110cm 8dbi antenna can be had for £18. You can get decent range out of those, especially if you have direct line of sight. The simpler, 2dbi antennas do look a bit like WiFi antennas, but they are for a different wavelength.
As far as I know LoRa has some VERY low bandwidth (250bit/s - 11kbit/s) and there are some regulations at least here in germany that you may only use 1% of the capacity.
1% means that you may only send one second out of hundred. LoRa is mainly for sending short GPS positions or some other sensor data.
I did my research because I wanted to use LoRa for the next ROOPHLOCH challenge, but it seems it's too low bandwidth even for gemini.
I did it in python with the ignition and meshtastic librairies, i build a simple gateway who split the gemini page in smaller messages (200 characters) because of limitation.
I configure lora device at mediumfast (3.5 kbps). Take somes time to transfert but feasable. I did it without a gopher client and also without optimisation, just a proof of concept. Need a lot more test in different environment and need gemini capsule with less text by page.
I'm working on it !!!!!!
Cotteux, very interesting!
what limitation do you mean: speed? size? why do you need to split the page to 200 byte pieces?
The meshtastic protocol is limited to 230 characters to send and receive a message. I also made some test at longfast and it's working good. A small page take around 30 to 120 secondes without optimisation.
@Cotteux - that is SO COOL. Do you have the code uploaded anywhere (github, etc)? 3.5kbps isn't much, but again as a proof of concept that's excellent. A 200 character message size sounds (to me) like a pretty large "packet" of information. How resistant are each of these messages/packets to data loss along the way? Any updates since you've last tried? I'd love to see a video or something of how it worked.
@norayr - Thank you for the generous remembering of what LoRa/meshtastic does. fwiw, I was wondering whether such a physical layer could be built/written on top of those radios. The OSI lists seven "layers," on which the internet is built. I'm wondering if a mesh of LoRa radios can be made to replace the bottom two (maybe three) layers. If each of the devices can mesh by: 'serving' data to reqestors, 'locating' (data-request-wise) specific devices, or 'relaying' requests/responses to devices they can't find, then couldn't that become something like IP addresses?
From there, existing code could be plugged in to make layesr 4-7 work. Because LoRa is inherently slower (I was assuming 56.6k equivalent, though it looks like that's optimistic), the web that would run on that hardware/mesh/layers would have to be slower. That's not a bad thing. You'd connect to the capsules that were physically closer to you a lot faster than the stuff far away.
@olav - reticulum.network looks really interesting, thank you! From what I can tell, it's a chat/comms application for the sort of mesh networks I was thinking of. Perhaps their model is a bit more realistic in that it doesn't rely on only one kind of radio. I was hoping to host/serve smol capsules over that same kind of mesh.
@fab - wow that's unfortunate. 1% really won't work for this application. :/
@requiem - This is good to know. I'd not heard of ESP's, and I didn't realize antennae were so cheap. Out of curiousity, what kind of speeds are you getting on average with your LoRa devices?
I feel like "Gemini" (by Gemini I really mean the set of smolweb protocols which are aligned to Gemini) needs a sort of "reverse mail" mode, where servers co-operate to fetch data which might be available intermittently. Once that's the case, I think LoRa works well for that use case. Maybe something Gossip-related?
functionality through an occasional connection is a good goal. The only experience that I had with gossip was Scuttlebutt. Correct me if Scuttlebutt does not use Gossip. Scuttlebutt seemed very 'heavy'.
The code is not upload for the moment, the code is terrible and i need more testing. The protocol real speed in Longfast is 300 bps and MediumFast almost 1200 bps.
For the stability my protocol send the number of lines to received and I numbered all lines. If some lines is missed, the client ask these lines back to the server. Also the protocol can received Chat and Text page at the same time.
I send a link to a video showing a reception of the Gemini capsule spartan.mozz.us at LongFast .
Gemini over LoRaWAN? — I'm fascinated by the idea of running a smolweb over LoRaWAN. Imagine a decentralized network of FLOSS-hardware devices, solar-powered, each running a gemini capsule and a relay (HAM radio style) to transmit data on to other points on the LoRaWAN mesh network. It's not a fast way to communicate, but smolweb gemini doesn't need to be. If LoRaWAN can reach 56.6kbps, it'd feel like the days of dialup, but... decentralized, solar-powered, and resistant to censorship. Has...
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