Hi all I'm looking for Android app developers to collaborate/contribute to a project that was selected for the Idealab (see http://sciencegallery.com/events/2012/06/idealab-closing-ceremony ) for Hack the City event for Dublin Science Gallery's "City of Science 2012". 5 projects were selected (from over 600 proposed) and this will be an opportunity to be involved in something that will get a lot of publicity, and that will hopefully change the world for the better.
Below is the project description: Open Free Ad-Hoc Peer-to-Peer Telecommunications infrastructure On September 11, 2001, the New York mobile phone network locked up - not because the infrastructure damage, but because everyone in the city tried to make calls at the same time, and the network could not scale beyond the limitations (channels) of the phone masts. The earthquake in Haiti completely destroyed the mobile phone infrastructure. People who were alive, but trapped in rubble, with a fully charged battery in their phone, died alone, with no way of calling for help, or of their location being made available via their phone. The majority of telecomms traffic is local calls and local texts. The density of mobile phones in a city like Dublin requires expensive infrastructure to provide sufficient quality and continuity of service for both voice and data. If each phone was able to route calls and data to and from nearby phones, instead of using the nearest mast, the network would be self healing, and would improve as phone density increased. This project aims to build an "app" that runs on smart phones, that enables phone-to-phone communication. * resilient to infrastructure collapse * scalable from 2 devices to infinite devices * connectivity and reliability increases as more phones connect (in contrast to current network topology reliant on phone masts, as more phones connect the network quality and reliability degrades) * free (each phone acts as a network router or "mast" - transmitting messages on to other phones until the message is received by the recipient) as each phone owner becomes the network provider - so by sharing a portion of their devices bandwidth and power, they are part of a community providing the network. It is in each persons own selfish interests to share. * provides an emergency communication network when critical infrastructure fails * provides location of a trapped victim via an SOS over whatever transmission channel is available (bluetooth, wifi, mobile channel) and is responded to, using location data from whatever is avaiable to the phone (last (stored) mast IDs for rough triangulation location, GPS, triangulation based on location of phones within range) to aid search and rescue. * Provide a public telecommunications network, that cannot be controlled and censored or "switched off" by a dictator, but which can be used by everyone to share information freely and openly. Recent unrest in the middle east shows the power of social networking in toppling autocratic regimes, but the current network topology can be switched off too easily. It is possible that people in places like North Korea, Iran, Zimbabwe, and many other repressed populations could use this technology if it became ubiquitous to free themselves from tyranny. Goals for the 10 day workshop: * Raise awareness of the possibilities of using similar apps for local "first response" in emergency, eg for neigbourhood watch or during a disaster. * Raise awareness of the need for a scalable and robust telecommunications network that improves with the number of phones that connect to it, and * Raise awareness of the idea that the whole community is responsible for providing and sharing the services they consume. Sharing is in our own selfish interests. * Create a proof-of-concept "Minimum Viable Product" open source, free, smartphone app, that can be used to send text messages via peer-to-peer ad-hoc wifi/bluetooth mesh network between mobile phones (without needing a signal from the mobile network). To achieve this in 10 days means: 1. Limiting the app to a single smartphone architecture - Android is my first choice, for several reasons: * More open architecture/less constraints on the app functionality (WiFi is more "programmable" than on iPhone) * Market share (Android has more market share - more devices, from multiple vendors, at lower prices) * Existing open source software available to use as a springboard for this project * Active open source project teams likely to be interested in contributing to this project to help get it off the ground, and to help promote it as it grows 2. Limiting functionality of the app: * text messaging only (no MMS, voice, internet sharing, etc - these are future goals) * unreliable network (but more reliable than no network!) * unencrypted communications * insecure (no guarantee that a message gets to the intended recipient - I imagine it will be relatively trivial to hack the alpha app to intercept communications - i.e. a "man in the middle" attack, or to fake credentials and impersonate the recipient) Anyone who is interested in helping with this project, with: * suggestions * open source code they have developed (or know of) * Android app dev skills * by passing this on to a friend who is an Android developer * and/or who has a couple hours of time you can donate over the 10 days please contact me at [email protected] I'll add all contributors names and their contribution to the source code, the "About" in the app, and anywhere else that will give appropriate attribution. Anyone interested in ongoing involvement with this? Thanks and regards, Sal Email [email protected] Tel 085-7089335 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Python Ireland" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/pythonireland/-/SuJnuAyIczUJ. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/pythonireland?hl=en.
