
GoTenna Mesh: first 100% off-grid, mobile, long-range, consumer mesh network+SDK - tomlemon
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gotenna/gotenna-mesh-off-grid-people-powered-connectivity
======
SpikeDad
Their first product was long, long, long delayed. This seems like a better
product but as a company they seem to be pretty clueless. I backed the
original product but they've not seen fit to include us in any marketing nor
offer any incentive to upgrade.

The original product makes more sense since it's more likely that people who
are hiking or whatever circumstances have them off of a cellular network will
bring their devices. There's never going to be enough critical mass for
someone to depend on this as something active in their area.

~~~
daniper
Hey there, we sent an email out first thing this morning to all our v1
preorder customers (thousands and thousands) before we publicly announced the
preorder campaign for Mesh and the mail system we use for newsletters bungled
it and didn't send it at all, except to 24 people and their dashboard didn't
show this happened til hours later (so we assumed everything was fine). We are
working to remedy it right now. You all were supposed to get the very first
email. (Here is proof of me yelling at the company whose software is
responsible for this on Twitter -- after they didn't reply to 4 attempts to
reach them prior:
[https://twitter.com/danielaperdomo/status/781222497131827200](https://twitter.com/danielaperdomo/status/781222497131827200)

We are working in real-time to get this issue fixed, which was the opposite of
our intention. I'm really sorry this happened.

Anyway, we like both products! Our award-winning v1 device gets great point to
point range; this new one will do that plus offer the opportunity to relay
messages via mesh in certain situations. And we can finally address demand
internationally (Mesh can ship to 49 countries bc we're going through
regulatory process in other regions).

And finally I guess I'd say that meshing is useful even among just 3 people
who know each other. It has blue-sky possibilities that are really game-
changing if adopted widely. I'm betting on both ;-)

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frankliminal
@gotenna can you speak a little to why you're the first ones to do the kind of
mesh network described in your campaign and in the title of this HN post?
plenty of people have been working on MANET mesh stuff for 30+ years, what
design decisions or other decisions make your mesh scalable/possible and not
merely condemned to the academic or laboratory like so many other mesh
projects?

~~~
daniper
That's a really good question and part of it is that this shit is super hard
and takes forever and it's totally binary: it works or it doesn't and you
spend a lot of time in the "doesn't" and that is soul-crushing for anyone. So
there's that barrier to cross, haha. But I think you're asking more about what
decisions as we designed/planned our mesh network topology has enabled us to
do this.... and I think it's because we started by focusing on an MVP and then
became philosophically attached to that MVP in the long-term for different
reasons beyond just being a practical place to start.

What that meant for us is we decided to focus specifically on burst data. As a
result our hardware can be lighter/smaller/less expensive and our networking
protocols can scale to do things that other mesh projects have failed at.

For goTenna/goTenna Mesh, not doing real-time high-bandwidth media
transmissions is a feature not a bug. Plus, focusing on packetized burst data
transmissions doesn't preclude us from even sending a whole Netflix show over
goTenna if we wanted to, because you could technically send a video over in
lots of small packets and reconstruct it at the other end. Everything, after
all, are 1's and 0's. (BTW with our SDK you can do that if you'd like! We're
still gonna be focused on text & GPS in our own apps for now - for both
goTenna v1 and goTenna Mesh).

Because we didn't have the choice of working on beautiful licensed spectrum
used by limited users and less subject to regulations by government. We always
had to by definition design goTenna (and now goTenna Mesh) to work on public
spectrum which is a scarce and shared resource with potentially unlimited
users and regulations that we have to fit into.

TL;DR: Focusing on burst data has been a really great way of scaling our
technology from the first intelligent protocols that power v1 (which we call
Aspen Prime) and goTenna Mesh (Aspen Grove).

Also perseverance. And naivete probably helped too because it's easier to get
into something difficult when you have no clue how hard it's gonna be. We've
learned a lot along the way since our first working prototypes in early 2013.

(Sorry if I sound barely coherent right now; I haven't slept in a few days
leading up to goTenna Mesh launch!)

------
daniper
Thanks for mentioning the SDK — anyone can build atop goTenna now. Devs: build
whatever you want over a really unique open data layer (totally off-grid,
long-range). M2M, gaming, messaging —
[http://www.gotenna.com/pages/sdk](http://www.gotenna.com/pages/sdk)

------
nanomonkey
Anyone know if these will work along with the older GoTenna devices? I'm
curious if the only difference is that the new devices can resend messages on
enabling a mesh network.

~~~
blastmasterB
Nick from goTenna here. goTenna Mesh devices will not be interoperable with
our first-gen goTenna devices because they operate on different frequencies.
We would have loved to enable interoperability but that's physically and
legally impossible due to regulatory restrictions.

~~~
SpikeDad
Did you not think of including your original GoTenna backers? This is the
first I'm reading of this - you didn't send out email to current customers?

I assume you're not going to give your original Kickstarter backers any
discount even though we endured months and months of delays and broken
delivery promises?

~~~
daniper
Hi you asked this twice in the thread; just replied to your other comment but
copy/pasting here to be thorough:

"Hey there, we sent an email out first thing this morning to all our v1
preorder customers (thousands and thousands) before we publicly announced the
preorder campaign for Mesh and the mail system we use for newsletters bungled
it and didn't send it at all, except to 24 people and their dashboard didn't
show this happened til hours later (so we assumed everything was fine). We are
working to remedy it right now. You all were supposed to get the very first
email. (Here is proof of me yelling at the company whose software is
responsible for this on Twitter -- after they didn't reply to 4 attempts to
reach them prior:
[https://twitter.com/danielaperdomo/status/781222497131827200](https://twitter.com/danielaperdomo/status/781222497131827200)
We are working in real-time to get this issue fixed, which was the opposite of
our intention. I'm really sorry this happened."

~~~
SpikeDad
The email's in the mail. I guess I should have been grateful for what, 2 hours
advanced notice. You obviously have little loyalty to your crowd sourced
folks. Seems to me a LOT of advanced notice and some extra information to the
original crowd sourced folks would have been appropriate.

Another reason why I'm NEVER crowd sourcing again. The very people that should
get the MOST consideration (after all we're basically throwing money at a
promise) actually get the least consideration (we often are robbed or get a
1/2 ass implementation.

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ceonyc
So psyched for Daniela and Jorge--this is the product they had in mind when
they first started the company.

