Soliciting Fame » barcampyeg

Temporary Mesh WiFi

Eric — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 20:07:38 +0000

This weekend at BarCampEdmonton1 I set up a temporary WiFi network using my Open-Mesh routers. Things went relatively smoothly after I unplugged 2 of my repeaters. For some reason plugging in 1 gateway and 5 repeaters at the exact same time wouldn’t let some of the repeaters update with new SSIDs. In the end I used 2 gateways and 2 repeaters.

At one point over 40 people were using the WiFi at the same time. The network saw a total of 71 users throughout the day.

I’m looking forward to the better firmware that Open-Mesh is developing on a daily basis. Eventually I’d like to see these things as simple as plug-and-play without having to worry about them checking in.

BarCampEdmonton Was a Success!

Eric — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 03:53:27 +0000

BarCampEdmonton was a great success this weekend. There were over 100 people in attendance and it was great to meet new people and learn about new projects and interests.

A picture of the schedule is here:

I went to

Financing an Idea
What Problem Does The Semantic Web Solve?
Angel Fund, U of A, Robert
Evolution of Nexopia
Why Twitter Will Rule The World
Emerging Mobile Platforms

I also led a session on Edmonton Wireless & WiFi Mesh Networks with Mack Male.

One of the most interesting conversations I had was with a fellow named Clark Murray. Clark and three other guys have created a great product called dub5 which stands for the 5 W’s in everyone’s life, the Who What Where When and Why. Essentially dub5 is a new take on scheduling and calendar management. Their major advantage over competitors like Outlook and Google Calendar is their text message integration. Personally I love this and I hope to be using it as soon as it’s ready.

Since all the video I took of my sessions ended up being like 300mb a piece and 20 minutes long I haven’t finished uploading them to Google Video yet. However, check out the quick demo I had the dub5 guys give me.

BarCampEdmonton1

Eric — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 06:54:11 +0000

BarCampEdmonton1 is in 9.5 hours. I’ve stayed up later than usual quickly putting together a splash page for the WiFi network I’m setting up. This will let me track all the traffic it receives over the course of the day.

I reflashed and updated 5 of my Open-Mesh routers this evening. I’m hoping that’s enough but I have at least 10 I can break out if I have to.

I’m hoping to do a session at BCE1 on mesh networks and the current state of technology surrounding them. I seriously haven’t planned anything yet so I’m going to gather my thoughts a bit before I hit the hay.