
AMPRNet: Amateur Packet Radio Network - ch
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMPRNet
======
jacquesm
Hams are the last to go offline and the first to come back on wherever a
natural disaster strikes. They are due to their de-centralized nature
incredibly resistant and often function as the first points of contact to
provide information on the scope of the damage. Many hams are well prepared
for this and have their own backup power, just in case. It's a pity that this
'hobby' (though if you'd walk into some ham shacks that word seems very
inadequate) is slowly dying out. Most hams are well past their middle age, and
the younger ones tend to work exclusively with bought equipment. Maybe the new
'maker' trend will usher in a new age in which it is considered cool to know
how to size an LR circuit and how to wield a soldering iron.

~~~
ch
I've been on a bit of a kick to try and understand how we could re-build the
Internet and computing based on what could be pulled from the scrap heap,
which lead me to cross paths with AMPRNet. Nifty idea, though with its limited
bit rates, information dissemination would only be for those with long
attention spans :)

~~~
vvanders
There's also the restriction of no encryption or commercial traffic. Still
pretty nifty though.

~~~
jacquesm
The 'no encryption' rule is there to make sure amateur radio can not be
(easily) used for nefarious purposes. Of course two people with Yagi's, very
low power transmitters and a couple of very low bandwidth modems could still
use the amateur bands (or any other frequency, really) to exchange information
without anybody being the wiser. If they manage to be on the hoof while
transmitting and are on the air for a very short time only then they could
probably keep such a scheme alive for a really long time before being
detected.

------
ch
Perhaps in a post-apocalyptic world this will be all that is left of the
Internet. Though in a post-apocalyptic world there would be no one there to
license the radio spectrum, and so why limit ourselves to HAM radio bands? --
Plus this all overlooks the need for power generation and storage in such a
world :)

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nickysielicki
My brother lives in Alaska, and he just built a home this past summer. No
Internet, no phone. Just electricity. He has to fill a 1500 gallon water tank
in the town because he's up too high to drill a well, there's no running
water.

He's not too confident in his heater, and being away from home when it's -20C
for more than a few hours can do serious damage if the heaters not running.
Most people would just use the Internet, but he can't. So what do you do?

We scripted around APRS raw packets [1] and APRSDroid [2]. He bought some
1WIRE temperature sensors that are plugged into his OpenWRT WAP. The values
are served up by apache, and a $10 smartphone from craigslist reads the values
and pipes them [3] through APRSDroid. This then goes via the headphone jack to
his radio and it gets digipeated a couple times before it hits the 'net.

Now he can watch his home temperature while he's at work and not get worried.
How cool is that?

[1] [http://blog.aprs.fi/2010/03/decoded-and-hex-raw-packets-
defa...](http://blog.aprs.fi/2010/03/decoded-and-hex-raw-packets-default.html)

[2] [http://aprsdroid.org/](http://aprsdroid.org/)

[3]
[https://github.com/sielickin/local2aprs](https://github.com/sielickin/local2aprs)

~~~
sizzzzlerz
What does he do if the electricity goes out?

~~~
nickysielicki
The broadcasts stop, so at least he knows and can go check on things.

There's no reason he couldn't hook this up to an APU or something though.

