[Discuss] Funkfeuer in Chinko, Central African Republic

[Harald Geyer]

Hi Raffael!

raffael hickisch writes:
> I'm working at Chinko nature reserve in the east of the Central
> African Republic.

Great project. Thanks for bringing my attention to this ... :)

> So we have been looking at a solution like mesh potato (which is
> however too expensive. I think Funkfeuer can be the solution.

I'm curious: What's your cost estimate for going with mesh potato.

I agree that mesh potato is probably not exactly what you need or
want, but I doubt you can get much cheaper financially: There is
cheaper HW around, but it is mostly built from low grade components which
either won't survive in harsh environments or will consume too much
power to run off reasonable solar panels and batteries.

> Before going ahead with this though, I have a couple of questions (I
> am not an IT specialist, so sorry for the simple words I use)
> 
> * Do you have any recommendations, about lightweight and relatively
> cheap solar driven sets (ie. a small panel, an accupack, and a router)
> - that can work with 5 hours of sun/day? Or any other idea how we
> could work around the fact that only one corner of the airport has a
> generator running?

I don't know of any ready to use sets available, but a few years ago
a group from funkfeuer researched the possibilities to run a mesh
node in remote areas on solar power. The website is down but you
should be able to find some of the work here (sorry german only):

http://web.archive.org/web/20111230085817/http://alpenrouter.xaok.org/doku.php

This project never got beyond concept stage, so there is no real
experience, but working from 5 hours of sun/day sounds quite easy
to achieve.

A few additional observations:
* Consider if you really need a mesh network: Mesh networks are great
in terms of redundacy if some nodes fail (battery runs out, HW failure,
etc), but if staff is around to fix any problems in reasonable timeframes,
the maybe it isn't worth the trouble. - There are commercial internet
service providers in austria that use wifi on there infrastructure, but
they mostly don't use mesh protocols.

* I assume that your target area is in a low radio noise, no physical
obstacles environment. There you will have much better wifi range then
we have in Vienna. Maybe it is worth checking how far you can get with
directional antennas. Maybe with an omnidirectional antenna for the
area around the generator, a low-gain antenna for in between and a
high-gain antenna for the distant part of your target area (each antenna
on an separated wifi channel) you can cover large parts of the target
area directly from the generator... This would be the cheapest solution
and if a part of your target area can't be covered that way you have the
budget left to build some reasonable hardware there.

HTH,
Harald