Training Materials for Wireless Networks from WiLAC available for download

WILAC, an initiative to promote wireless technolgies in Latin America and the Caribbean ("Tecnologías inalámbricas para el Desarrollo en América Latina y el Caribe"), has published some of their training materials in English. I uploaded their presentations to Slideshare for people to be able to embed them into their websites and blogs. Here is the presentation with an introduction to Wimax.

As part of the TRICALCAR project a set of 7 brand new modules, which
we are please to share with the group of technicians part who develop
the original curriculum of the CWCA project in Africa. We know publish
this materials in English, as a feedback to the community who has been
using the original curriculum. The materials are publiched under the
same formats and conditions of the rest of the TRICALCAR project. (16 Junio, 2008 – 11:00 AM, http://www.wilac.net/mod…)

The materials were created by different wireless experts including Ermanno Pietrosemoli (well-known for his longrange wireless connections), Alberto Escudero-Pascual, Louise Berthils, Lilian Chamorro, Dafne Sabanes Plou and Alberto Escudero Pascual.

The WILAC website is part of an initiative of ESLARED with the support of the Instituto para la Conectividad en las Américas (ICA). More presentations and Handouts can be downloaded or viewed at my Slideshare account. The Spanish versions of the workshops are also available at their site.

To learn more about Wimax, check out Wikipedia:

WiMAX, the Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access, is a telecommunications technology that provides wireless data in a variety of ways, from point-to-point links to full mobile cellular type access. It is based on the IEEE 802.16 standard, which is also called WirelessMAN. The name "WiMAX" was created by the WiMAX Forum,
which was formed in June 2001 to promote conformance and
interoperability of the standard. The forum describes WiMAX as "a
standards-based technology enabling the delivery of last mile wireless broadband access as an alternative to cable and DSL" (and also to High Speed Packet Access).(Version 17 June 2008, at 10:39, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WiMAX)

Open Hardware from Squidbee for Wireless Sensor Networks

A couple of weeks ago I was talking with Alex about meshlium. I found out more about the project now. Last week I did an interview with Jose Luis Marina from Peopleware at a workshop of FOSS Bridge in Hanoi. Peopleware develops Osmius a very advanced monitoring tool to monitor all kinds of devices. He told me about their idea of using the open Squidbee hardware for their sensor networks. They want to be able to transfer data from sensor networks in an easy and affordable way. A scenario I see here is to use mesh networks for the transmission.

SquidBee is a project that uses an open hardware design as well as open-source software as a platform for remote control and sensing: "SquidBee is an Open Hardware and Source wireless sensor device. The goal of SquidBee is getting an "open mote" to create Sensor Networks." SquidBee uses the ZigBee self-organizing low power wireless mesh network protocol. ZigBee operates in the unlicensed 2.4 GHz, 915 MHz and 868 MHz ISM bands with data rates from 20-250 kbit/second, per channel. ZigBee is optimized for super low power operation so that the devices can be operated from battery power for long amounts of time. For long-running outdoor applications, powering the devices from photovoltaic panels would be an obvious technology choice. Using the 1mW XBee power level, the XBee maximum device-to-device range is 100 meters. At the 100mW XBee pro power level, the range is extended to 1KM. Each additional node can extend the range of the mesh network, since data passes through the nodes. (Download, June 16, 2008, http://lwn.net/Articles/260223/)

Behind the project is Libelium Comunicaciones Distribuidas, a SpinOff company of the University of Zaragoza (Spain) which has develop the ZigBee communication module. The Libelium team is formed by Marcos Yarza, Alicia Asín and David Gascón. The board has been developed by the Arduino team by David Cuartielles, Massimo Banzi, David A.Mellis and Tom Igoe. They come from different institutions in Spain, Sweden, Italy and New York (compare: http://www.libelium.com/squidbee/index.php?title=Who_is_behind%3F).

 

Some more info from the Squidbee wiki:

The main concepts behind SquidBee are:
* Self-powered
* Wireless Comunications
Repeat with me: "Ubiquity, Ubiquity, Ubiquity…"

How does SquidBee work?  

  1. Acquires  values from environment parameters: temperature, humidity, lightness, presence, pressure or (almost!) whatever you can sense.
  2. Operates with these values, when required.
  3. Transmits these values using a low power comsumption wireless technology (ZigBee).
  4. Sleeps until next timeout and repeats from the first stept.

Second step is not always necessary, depending of the calculations needed it may be better to make them in receiver computer to save nodes energy.

An open mote? What does it really mean? It means every part of the mote is accessible and can be studied, changed, personalized, … From the schematic circuit to the source code of the programs that are running inside the mote.

Who is interested in SquidBee? Anybody who is researching in the environment monitoring field. This is also an educational project so that universities can offer to the students a multi-learning device. With SquidBee people can learn at the same time electronic, programation, communications… and everything in just one device.

Who is supporting SquiBee? The board inside SquidBee has been developed by the Arduino team. The communications module wich lets  the node transmit through a ZigBee module has been developed by Libelium. Both components are open hardware and they have a really strong community support. A specialized wiki related to SquidBee and the Sensor Networks  will be created soon. There, all the Arduino and Libelium tutorials and examples will be shared and other research teams will be able to exchange their knowledge with the community.

What can I do with SquidBee? The main concept is: "sense what you want where you want and transmit it".

Two configurations of SquidBee? What is it exactly? Using the same board and communications module we have created 2 kinds of SquidBee: the sensor mote and the gateway. The first one is the self-powered sensor mote and the second is the computer USB connected receiver.

Can I integrate SquidBee into a wireless 802.11 Mesh network? Yes! We have also developed an outdoor Mesh Router: MeshLium which you can use to collect the information using the ZigBee protocol and transmit it to the mesh network using the Wifi technology (802.11). (Version, May 15, 2008, 15.22, http://www.libelium.com/squidbee/)

Journal for Community Informatics Special on Wireless Networking for Communities, Citizens and the Public Interest

The Journal "Community informatics" has published a special about Wireless Networking for Communities, Citizens and the Public Interest. Authors include Michael Gurstein, Alison Powell, Sascha D. Meinrath, Marco Adria, Hanna Hye-Na Cho, Laura Forlano, Andrea H Tapia, Julio Angel Ortiz, Kim Dara, Seán Ó Siochrú, Vidyut Samanta, Chase Laurelle Alexandria Knowles, Jeff Burke, Fabian Wagmister, Deborah Estrin, Ermanno Pietrosemoli, Andrew Clement, Amelia Potter,  Alisha Bhagat.

http://ci-journal.net

This special issue documents the state of the art in
research on community wireless applications, and presents assessments
of community wireless projects in a variety of local contexts: from
large urban centers in North America to rural locations in Asia and
Latin America. Together, the papers and field notes in this special
issue reflect on a community-centric approach to communications
infrastructure development. These works describe the challenges – both
practical and theoretical – that face community wireless networking, as
well as the implications many of these projects have to support social
and economic justice around the globe.

The papers in this special issue demonstrate that
community-based approaches to Wifi development are part of a broader
integration of technology, organizational capacity, and local culture.
Social goals are part of most community Wifi projects, and integrating
these goals and the technical structures of Wifi networks is part of
what makes many community Wifi projects successful. Both full papers
and field notes explore this integration and focus on various facets of
the community wireless networking movement.

The papers included in this issue explore different
theoretical approaches that help situate community wireless networking
as social and technical phenomena. Adria provides a meta-theoretical
discussion of how Wifi networks reconfigure space and time — using the
medium theory of McLuhan and Virilio to suggest that Wifi networks have
the potential to integrate local geographical and temporal experiences.

The other papers use empirical approaches to assess the
social aspects of community wireless networking. Tapia and Ortiz
explore the claims made by operators of municipal-community networks
that these projects are addressing the digital divide. Using a textual
analysis of claims made in documents including “press releases,
requests for proposals, letters of intent, and other official policy
documents,” as well as interviews with key informants in US
municipal-community projects, they interrogate the extent to which
networks facilitate meaningful digital inclusion.

Both Cho and Forlano explore the social aspects of
community wireless networking in more detail: Cho focusing on the
development of networks and Forlano on their use. Cho reveals how the
development of community wireless networks (CWNs) builds social capital
for the participants. She develops the concept of “place-peer
community” to explain how Wifi projects define “community.” Cho also
describes how contributions to community wireless networks help to
develop ‘civic bandwidth’ among their contributors. Like Tapia and
Oritz, she identifies CWNs as developing a discourse that connects the
development of digital information and communication technologies with
efforts to improve communities.

Forlano explores the new social relationships created
through the everyday use of community-based Wifi networks, examining
the gap between media representations of Wifi as an “anytime, anywhere”
solution and the socio-cultural practices of people using free Wifi
hotspots in New York City. As she discovers, freelance workers use Wifi
hotspots to create temporary working environments that eliminate some
of the isolation of working without a fixed office, while providing a
basic infrastructure including network connectivity and electrical
power. These Wifi hotspots support communities of mobile, flexible
workers who establish relationships with a particular place and its
people. Together with Cho’s insights about the social capital mobilized
through the process of developing community Wifi networks, this
suggests that Wifi hotspots may have a unique role to play in
redefining the experiences of community in urban areas.

The field notes in this issue offer a window into the
realities of local experiments with Wifi technology. The impacts of the
projects they document depend on the local political context (Clement),
the community’s capacity (Dara, Dimanche, and O Siochru; Bhagat), the
potential for community and industry partnerships to create new ways
for community members to gather data and to aggregate it (Samanta), and
how changing our assumptions about the role of wireless infrastructure
can open up new opportunities for affordable broadband (Pietrosemoli).

These notes highlight how local contexts influence what
is considered the “public interest” and how community wireless projects
can best serve the general public. For example, Clement criticizes the
Toronto Hydro Wireless project, considered a technical success, because
its governance structure forces the network to be operated for-profit
rather than as a public service. Samanta provides an outline of some
potential social uses for an experimental wireless network that could
aggregate data from numerous wireless devices. Some suggested uses of
this network include collecting ambient audio data that, when mapped,
could provide quality of life indicators.

In the global South, the public interest is served by the
communication and applications made possible by wireless networks
established in previously un-served areas. In these contexts as well,
important challenges also emerge. Bhagat assesses the results of a mesh
network built in Mahavilachchiya village where a local entrepreneur
developed a wireless network as an extension of a computer school where
local children learned ICT skills. This Wifi connectivity project
extended internet access to homes, and encouraged more local residents
to use the internet. However, Bhagat also notes that connecting the
village to the internet may have negative impacts as well: introducing
new forms of media and new social expectations to the village and
disrupting historical cultural norms.

Dara, Dimanche and O Siochru explore how local political
and social contexts impact the design and deployment phase of one local
wireless network. From the challenging context of Cambodia, they report
on the first phase of the I-REACH project, a distributed mesh network
providing internet connectivity and local media using solar-powered
devices. The project’s challenges in obtaining permission from local
government, sourcing material, and recruiting qualified local staff and
contractors underscores the notion that community-based infrastructure
implementation is a social (and an institutional) as well as a
technical endeavor.

Ermanno Pietrosemoli and his international team of Wifi
researchers have deployed wireless links spanning hundreds of
kilometers. By proofing out a methodology for creating low-cost,
long-distance Wifi, Pietrosemoli forces us to question the notion that
Wifi is just for local networking. As a potential backhaul solution,
Wifi may offer an exceptional value for communities and constituencies
that would not otherwise be able to afford broadband connectivity.

Across these paper and notes, a common thread linking the
articles is the importance of establishing local strategies for
leveraging wireless technologies in the public interest. (Alison Powell, Sascha D. Meinrath, Introduction to the Special Issue: Wireless Networking for Communities, Citizens and the Public Interest, Vol. 4 No. 1, 2008, http://ci-journal.net/index.php/ciej/article/view/490/389)

Global Freifunk Newswire back online

The global freifunk newswire is back online. There were some problems with the newswire server in Switzerland. Alex Antener who is the main admin taking care of the server now switched to another provider. Unfortunately we lost some updates. I put in recently added feeds again. In case I forgot a feed or if you have suggestions for a new feed please drop me a line by using the contact form at http://kontakt.freifunk.net. Thanks for supporting me in keeping the service running to Alex Antener and Sascha Tamim Asfandiar!

Anfrage des Berliner Senats – Auf welchen öffentlichen Gebäuden stehen Freifunk AP’s?

Heute habe ich eine Anfrage des Berliner Senats erhalten. "Er fragt freifunk":

"auf welchen Standorten von Gebäuden in Verantwortung der Senatsverwaltungen, der BIM (Berliner Immobilienmanagenment GmbH), der Bezirke, sowie der landeseigenen Wohnungsbaugesellschaften befinden sich Access Points(o.ä.) die dem Berliner Freifunknetz dienen.

Die Anfrage wurde von der Fraktion Bündnis 90/Die Grünen an den Berliner Senat gestellt und von diesem an die Verantwortlichen der Bezirke weitergeleitet in deren Auftrag wir handeln."

Bisher kommen wir "nur" auf:
1. Dathe-Oberschule in Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg
2. zukünftige Wriezener Park

Kirchen sind in dem Fall keine öffentlichen Gebäude.

Kennt jemand noch weitere Standorte von Freifunk-AP’s auf/in öffentlichen Einrichtungen/Gebäuden? Antworten bitte gegebenenfalls auch per Mail an christian.heise (ät) e-demokratie.org.

Das Ergebnis des Schriftverkehrs werde ich hier noch mal gesondert veröffentlichen.

FFLuCI the Next Generation Lua web interface für OpenWRT von Steven Cyrus Barth

Steven Cyrus Barth im Gespräch mit Bastian Bittorf über das Freifunk-Luci-Interface für OpenWRT.



Luci-Interface für OpenWRT von Steven Cyrus Barth from Mario Behling on Vimeo.

Some more info in English: FFLuCI is a Lua MVC-Framework for Freifunk with templating support. There are
working configuration pages for many system, network, services and wifi settings. Please visit http://luci.freifunk-halle.net for an overview of functions, screenshots, tutorials, SVN URL and snapshot images for Atheros and Broadcom.

Steven Cyrus started to develop Luci because he was not satisfied projects like XWRT implemented things. He had a look at the X-WRT Lua files in their repository first, but what was missing was a clear abstraction layer and templating support so I decided to build everything from scratch. According to Cyrus – X-WRT has a very nice UI written in shell code but there are only limited capabilities of this scripting language and so "it is time
to bring this thing to the next level using OOP and such nifty stuff."

Luci already has a number of working configuration pages. There are more – or in a few cases less – working configuration pages in (for now) German titles and descriptions for the:

  • Ethernet Switch
  • Ethernet Interfaces
  • DHCP-Server
  • PPPoE/PPTP
  • Static Routes
  • Portforwarding
  • Firewall
  • QoS
  • Wifi Devices
  • Wifi Networks
  • OLSR + Plugins
  • FFLuci itself
  • Package Management
  • Root Password and SSH-Public Keys
  • Mount Points for external drives
  • HTTP-Server
  • SSH-Server
  • Dnsmasq

Also there are a few public status pages for basic system information, WLAN-Scan, Contact data and OLSR a bit like those in the Freifunk Firmware. Have a look at the screenshots here: http://firmware.freifunk-halle.net/ffluci/screenshots

Configuration Bind Interface (CBI):
You just describe the data model of the UCI file and Luci does the rest for you: It will create the HTML-form, parse and validate the user input and write the configuration data to UCI. So no need to redo all these things on every configuration page again and again. It also supports basic field dependencies, dynamic validation functions, section creation, deletion and more. See an example here: http://wiki.freifunk-halle.net/Luci:WritingModules#CBI_models

Privilege dropping:
To avoid remote exploits (like those in older versions of the Freifunk Firmware) FFLuCI will set the UID/GID of pages running in the main public non-protected section to nobody/nogroup. There are many things left to do like porting over dhcpsplash, accounting, statistics and more to Kamikaze. Contributors are welcome.

Links:

Interview with Free Wireless Evangelists from the Italian Ninux Community and the Freifunk Community in Germany

Saverio from the Italian Ninux community has now published a video interview Daniel Paufler and I conducted with them at the Wireless Community Weekend in Berlin. Thank you very much for the great montaggio! It is real fun to watch!



Interview to Ninux and Freifunk members at WCW2008 from Saverio Proto on Vimeo.

Direct Link: http://www.vimeo.com/1052320

In Berlin, at C-Base, people from wireless communities all around
Europe meet to share ideas and experiences. See this interview by Mario
Behling with free networks activists from Ninux.org and Freifunk.net

Open Hardware: Interview with Jürgen Neumann and Marek Lindner

Jürgen Neumann, one of the initiators of freifunk.net, and Marek Lindner, openmoko developer and B.A.T.M.A.N. programmer, speak about the Open Hardware Initiative event Open Tech Summit in Taiwan.

Thema Freifunk und WLAN auf Radio Fritz

Trackback auf Radio Fritz berichtet über Freifunk. Hier Ausschnitte aus der Sendung.

… Andreas Bogk vom CCC über die Frage, ob man sein WLAN offen oder zu haben sollte.
… Dr. Reto Manz’ Doktorarbeit zum Thema “Rechtsfragen in offenen Netzen”
Cven Wagner über Freifunken und Sicherheit im offenen Netz.
(26.4.2008, Marcus Richter, http://spreeblick.com/trackback/2008/04/26/trb-074-notpron-robocup-offenes-wlan/)

Komplette Sendung: http://spreeblick.com/trackback/podpress_trac/web/293/0/trb_080426.mp3

Chaosradio Express mit Harald Welte zum Thema “Software Defined Radio” und technische Grundlagen und Entwicklung mit GNU Radio

Harald Welte ist zu Gast bei Chaosradio Express und gibt Einblicke in seine derzeitigen Aktivitäten.

Originalposting: http://chaosradio.ccc.de/cre087.html
Download: http://chaosradio.ccc.de/archive/chaosradio_express_087.mp3 (118.6 MB)
Dauer: 02:09:30h
Veröffentlicht am: 17.05.2008, 22:00 Uhr
Aufnahme vom: 14.05.2008
Moderation: Tim Pritlove
Gast: Harald Welte

Moderne Funkempfänger und
-sender setzen in zunehmenden Maße auf Software, die Schritt für
Schritt die klassischen Hardware-Komponenten ersetzen. Das erlaubt
nicht nur flexibere und günstigere Geräte, es ermöglicht auch, den
eigenen Computer als komplexes Analyse- und Dekodierungswerkzeug
einzusetzen. Die freie Software GNU Radio bietet heute schon den
Werkzeugkasten zum Erzeugen und Dekodieren von Funkwellen auf dem PC
und ebnet einer Vielzahl an möglichen Projekten den Weg, die bislang
nur mit aufwändiger und teurer Hardware realisiert werden konnte. Harald
Welte erläutert im Gespräch mit Tim Pritlove die Grundgedanken von
Software Defined Radio und erläutert wie man GNU Radio und die freie
Universal Software Radio Platform (USRP) für eigene Projekte zum
Einsatz bringen kann. Es werden verschiedene Anwendungsmöglichkeiten
vorgestellt und vor allem auf den aktuellen Stand des GSM Software
Project eingegangen, das sich die Implementierung eines GSM-Stacks zum
Empfangen und Senden zum Ziel gesetzt hat.

Harald auf seinem Blog über die Sendung:

I’ve had the pleasure of being invited to Chaosradio Express
maker Tim Pritlove to talk about Software Defined Radio in general, and
gnuradio plus USRP specifically. You can listen to the resulting 2+ hours of podcast (in
German)
. It’s been a great experience, and I have a good feeling that it was possible for
us to explain this fairly detailed subject to our already at least moderately
technical audience. SDR is really hard since it combines aspects of traditional radio, i.e. physics
of electric waves, electrical engineering both analog and digital, digital
signal processing and software. The biggest part is really advanced
mathematics, and at least from all the subjects that I’ve seen, it’s probably
the most direct and close-to-theory incarnation of applied math. Luckily, a fairly high-level understanding of the algorithms and principles
involved are already sufficient to do a lot, since most of the deep-down
mathematical details of many algorithms have already been implemented as
building blocks for gnuradio. Still, I assume the number of developers who
are actually able to use gnuradio is far too low. If you’re looking for an
interesting field of software right now, I suggest going for digital signal
processing. It’s in every area of communications, ranging from analog modems
over ISDN, DSL, WiFi, USB2, Bluetooth, GSM, UMTS, DECT, ZigBee, Ethernet, VoIP
and probably any other communication technology that we use today. (Sat, 17 May 2008, http://laforge.gnumonks.org/weblog/2008/05/17/#2080517-chaosradio-sdr)

Links: