WIP: NSW MeshCore - civilian community mesh communications LAD map layer

[JohannesNicholas]

This is a work in progress PR to get early feedback and direction

Background

NSW Mesh is a public community based group of volunteers that setup low power, radio based repeater nodes that are capable of relaying short text based messages. NSW Mesh currently uses the open-source MeshCore protocol for their off-grid, licence-free, long distance messaging. This can be a life saving line of communication for civilians in disaster scenarios where regular means of communications like cellular or NBN become unavailable, like in floods, fires or other major natural disasters. I'm looking at integrating optional layers of this data into LAD, that can be switched on when needed.

Here are some relevant links:

local community: https://nswmesh.au/
meshcore: https://meshcore.io/
live map of NSW MeshCore traffic: https://corescope.nswmesh.au/#/live
live public messages sent over the mesh: https://corescope.nswmesh.au/#/channels/Public

Current WIP state:

This is the current state of the PR. A toggle in the layers setting queries the corescope.nswmesh.au server for node locations observed on the mesh. The node locations are then displayed on the map.

Next steps:

1. I would like to include a messages window to display public messages and when a message is selected, highlight the nearby nodes it was detected on.
2. Overall polish and cleanup (nicer map icons, code cleanup, renaming of terms)
3. Include external links to corescope.nswmesh.au for more information on nodes, messages or users
4. anything else that may be needed

Let me know if this is looks like something that would be nice too have, or if you think it'll likely be rejected.

[lucanos]

It's an interesting resource, but what functionality or capability does it provide to NSW SES, or the wider community?
Is it aligned with the purpose of Lighthouse, or more widely Beacon?
How resilient, resourced, reliable is it? Does it pass the thresholds for accessibility and adoption where it could be used or promoted as a redundant emergency communcations network?

[JohannesNicholas]

It's an interesting resource, but what functionality or capability does it provide to NSW SES, or the wider community?

In emergencies anyone with a companion node could send out emergency requests on the #emergency or #sos channels. You could imagine a member of the community surrounded by flood water, or cut off by overflowing rivers, sending out emergency messages through the mesh. Currently this relies on other mesh users relaying those messages to authorities like us, where communications could be missinterpreted or otherwise miscommunicated because of the extra degree of seperation. By integrating this data into a LAD layer, we can see the source of these communications, reducing risks around misscommunication and decreasing barriers in access to potentially critical information.

Is it aligned with the purpose of Lighthouse, or more widely Beacon?

The information that can be surfaced in Lighthouse Aided Dispatch can be useful in dispatch senarios involving mesh based emergency communications.

How resilient, resourced, reliable is it?

The community has appeared to grow quite quickly over this year. When I setup my first node there were less than 250 repeater nodes on the mesh. Now there are over 400, and the public channels are a lot more active. This signals that community resourcing is growing, and more repeater nodes means more reliability and resilience. Many of the repeater nodes are setup with solar panels and batteries to be reliable in power outages.

Does it pass the thresholds for accessibility and adoption where it could be used or promoted as a redundant emergency communcations network?

The hardware required for a node is financially accessible, a cheap companion or relay node can be setup for $20. Spare inventory or stockpiled nodes can be setup or distributed during a disaster, giving communication access for those in need.

If we go ahead, I'll also get this pull request into a well seperated, modular state that should not impact the reliability of anything else in lighthouse, so to not add any excess maintenece work.

Cheers!

[lucanos]

I think it's an interesting idea, but I wouldn't vote for integrating this into Lighthouse. Even if you had people using this network for emergency comms, knowing the locations of the nodes as opposed to the locations of the reported incidents doesn't add significant value.

It's a cool network, and I am interested in buying the components and building a node myself to experiment, but it's not something accessible to a significant portion of the population.

If the Lighthouse project lead disagrees, I'll defer to their opinion, but I don't see a significant benefit from integrating this network, and even if we did, I don't see value from mapping the locations of the nodes.