[Nodedb-interop] Freifunk Node Database

[Mitar]

Hi!

> The new database follows the KISS design principle and is (currently)
> focused on rather "offline" data maintained by the node owners. As i've
> experienced with other projects like FFSomething and Netmon the aggregation
> of live data and ideas alike takes away the developers focus from the
> regular people's needs way too much. Therefore my approach is trying to
> keep the perspective of the technically unexperienced user as much as
> possible. In the long run i envision a smooth and fancy application that
> provides a "new node wizard" with automatic ip address generation and
> nearby subnet proposal based on geo location.

This is very very like what our ideas for our node database are. Please
check it here:

http://nodes.wlan-lj.net/

You can freely register and try with some test node to see how it works.
So the idea is to make very smooth user experience for newcomers (thus
also graphical designing everything and integration with wiki so that
all additional information and help is easily available) while still
allowing complex network analyzes and tools for power users.

So our way is somehow like that:

- user registers
- user adds a node and can input as much of information as he/she knows,
all else is automatically set (minimum is in fact just location and type
of the router)
- user presses a button on the web interface and gets complete firmware
image with all configuration in it to his/her e-mail
- user flashes the image with GUI flasher program (wizard) (on TODO)
- user puts the router on location, plugs it into electricity and plugs
it into Internet uplink (VPN) and this is it, plug&mesh

So all this (except GUI flasher) already works and it is proven. We are
also using MVC framework, but Python one, Django. And have put a lot
network (health) monitoring and analysis into it and more will come in
next version.

But for example all nodes are reporting how they are working. Check graphs:

http://nodes.wlan-lj.net/nodes/node/211639ea-a1be-4a2c-a742-1449268d775e

Of course system allows also power users to do things differently, in
this case it is just a node database. But if you want it can help you
maintain your node very easily (and because voluntaries' time is very
limited this means you spend less time maintaining nodes and more time
building new ones). So even I rather use this system than to do things
by hand. (And of course we are configure the system to do exactly the
right thing.)

So the question I have, as you are just started the project: would you
be maybe interested in participating in our node database system and
extend it with your ideas while getting everything we already
implemented. All code, comments and repository is in English. If
somebody else joins development it will be no problem also switching
tickets and documentation to English (later will be in any case probably
in English).

Please go around and check it. If you have any questions feel free to
ask them. (I think it could be also on this mailing list as node
database design and ideas are I believe very on-topic.)


Mitar