[leoedin]

This sounds similar to this project: https://www.meshtastic.org/ which was featured on HN a few weeks ago.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22540066

I think selling it as a communicator for skiing/hiking is maybe a better idea than as a disaster radio, solely because a disaster radio is never really going to be used. If it's a useful, well used system that happens to be highly resiliant, that makes it much more likely to be available when a disaster hits.

[punkgeek]

yep - I'm one of the meshtastic devs and that was our thought as well.

* use off the shelf hardware, so user can just buy a finished device from China * make it cheap * Make something useful for people in general (without disaster) - then they will have it when the disaster happens.

[gh0st42]

One of the paper authors here and the one mainly responsible for the rf95modem firmware.

The idea was not only to provide another msg app but a platform that can easily be used for different applications. One use-case in the paper is the chat app, the dtn part is not directly connected to the chat app but also uses the LoRa modem.

The modem firmware (initially developed in 2017/2018) is even more general purpose and is currently used in many different ways in different projects and prototypes. The main selling point is that one can easily connect cheap LoRa hardware to smartphones and desktop computers without microcontroller programming or providing specific device drivers. Thus, the same modem can be used for messaging as well as environmental monitoring or other IoT applications without the need to reprogram the LoRa modules.