I set up my first node after the last major Verizon outage that rendered my cell phone useless as a mobile communications device. Now, when the next outage happens, with the always-on base station that I have at home, I can bring a portable Meshtastic radio out with me, paired to my phone via Bluetooth, and retain the ability communicate wirelessly back home, or with any of the other many nodes in the extensive network here in the NYC / Hudson Valley region. I also enticed a couple of local friends to install them and we often opt to text over the mesh. I see it as a thing that is fun to play around with now, but which may become critical at some point in the future.
Reminds me of what Frithjof Bergmann called our "poverty of desire" in his (excellent) book: New Work New Culture: Work We Want and a Culture that Strengthens Us
If you're interested in kids + computers + education, this 1955 Technology in Education House Committee Meeting is a surprisingly great watch, and has Kay alongside Seymour Papert:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwsQn1Rs-4A
Wow, this looks so cool. Do you have a BOM or some schematics or even source code lying around? I would be interested to try something like this myself.
I found working with relatively simple 8-bit microcontroller architectures (e.g. Atmel AVR, Microchip PIC), studying the datasheets and programming them in assembly, to be an effective and gratifying introduction to the basics of CPU architecture.
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