[rinchik]

Disaster Radio. Does one need an FCC ham license to own/operate an endpoint? What are the frequencies? After some light poking on the website I don't see any info on that. Love the idea though.

there is also this: https://www.nycmesh.net/ , somewhat related and can be used as a back up information/communication source

[myself248]

The ESP8266 is a wifi chip, so almost certainly OK to operate without a license unless you're doing something really bizarre with antenna gain to get above the 36 dBm EIRP threshold.

LoRa can run in any band you want, but it's almost universally deployed in ISM bands as well, 315/433 or 868/915 MHz. I don't think I've ever seen a LoRa chipset that would push enough power to exceed part-15 regs.

HOWEVER, to be strictly legal, a part-15 device actually needs to be tested and certified thereas. Otherwise the parts can only be sold as a kit and stuff, which is how pretty much all lora stuff is sold right now. And you'd be hard pressed to piss anyone off enough to care.

[rinchik]

> Otherwise the parts can only be sold as a kit and stuff

Yeah. Disaster Radio does not look like a "kit" at all. Not for "an average user" at least. I'd be cautious building and operating hardware that can potentially get me in trouble with authorities.

Still great general idea though, to build a solar-powered kit that's easy to setup and operate, a kit that makes sure there is a "plug-and-play" solution in case of a disaster (natural or not), kit that also delegates legal responsibility to the "creator"/manufacturer.

[myself248]

Okay, I should've been clearer about my initial post, that it's breathtakingly unlikely for anyone to get in trouble doing this.

Look at the unmitigated chaos on CB for a sense of how much the FCC feels like enforcing anything on the unlicensed bands. Probably 95% of CBers are running above-legal power, many of them by _several orders of magnitude_, and behold, the field in which the FCC grows its fucks, it is barren.

[teraflop]

It uses WiFi for local communications and LoRa for the mesh network, both of which operate on frequencies that don't require licensing.

https://disaster.radio/learn/hardware/

[rinchik]

Interesting, so how is it different from similar projects, e.g nycmesh.net, I mentioned above? Is it a promo for the custom hardware design initiative? hardware that's more modular, cheaper, focused than traditional brands?

[tlrobinson]

NYC Mesh and similar networks use point-to-point relatively high bandwidth links (e.x. Ubiquiti radios commonly used by WISPs)

Disaster.radio uses LoRa which is very low bandwidth and typically omnidirectional antennas. It only uses WiFi to connect users’ “terminal” devices to the node within a short range.

[juuul]

Yes! To expand on this a bit, disaster.radio locally hosts web apps, e.g. a vector tile map of the local area, and serves them up over WiFi to local devices with a reasonable bandwidth, then uses the very low bandwidth of LoRa to share points on the map added by users over long distances (e.g. where you can get water, food, etc).

disaster.radio is not a replacement to a existing internet infrastructure like NYC Mesh. Setting up a high bandwidth mesh network is a lot of work. Each node needs a non-trivial amount of power (enough to make solar hard) and nodes generally need line of sight which requires good mounting locations and planning.

We, the creators of disaster.radio, actually also run a small wifi-based mesh network https://peoplesopen.net/ and the idea for disaster.radio came out of frustration with difficulty of mounting wifi nodes (finding interested people in good locations, then negotiating with landlords for permission to mount on rooftops and running ethernet cable for PoE into building, then finding another location within line of sight and repeating the process). We thought: What if we could make a "mesh throwie" where installation was as easy as throwing it on a roof (and maybe strapping it to something).

[ShakataGaNai]

No, you do not need a license.

Wifi is 2.4/5ghz.

"LoRa uses license-free sub-gigahertz radio frequency bands like 433 MHz, 868 MHz (Europe) and 915 MHz (Australia and North America)." -Wikipedia

[romanr]

What license? In event of disaster there will be nobody to check or enforce licenses.