Tag Archives: detroit

Springtime meshes

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It has been a busy winter for me, and I’m sad to say that i haven’t been very active with the community internet building until recently… that said, it has been pretty awesome for the past few weeks.

cut coax, foreground, with jig, background

Cut coax, foreground; jig, background

For the past couple OCD “open hack night” Thursdays, I’ve invited fellow wireless hackers to work on neighborhood mesh projects, talk about network protocols, and generally goof off in nerdy subversive ways.  That first Thursday, these two super-smart network engineer types, Patrick and Adam, came by.  The next week, piles of coaxial cable showed up and we started building omni antennas!  Also present this past Thursday was Ryan Hughes.  He’s organizing a community wireless project in Ann Arbor, and recently attended the Battle Mesh.  Finally, another superleet hacker came into the mix, Marky B, who is interested in experimenting with mobile mesh devices.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be busy working on these antennae as well as some other experiments.  I’ve got a few new dual-radio open-mesh nodes on my workbench, and i’d like to work on devising a benchmark test for small neighborhood mesh networks.

my neighborhood: institutions, current mesh, future mesh

my neighborhood: institutions, current mesh, future mesh

Also notable:  A few weeks ago, I took part in a panel at SXSW Interactive (a surprisingly well-recorded audio feed of the event is available at that link).  Along with Adriel Thornton, Diana Nucera, Jenny Lee, and Invincible, I spoke about Detroit’s future media-based economy.  I introduced the idea of “media miles” as a technological parallel to “food miles” — sure, we all like avocados and parmesan reggiano once in a while, but shouldn’t we prioritize what we can grow in the back yard?  How can we design technology that emphasize local community exchange, in the same way we are designing food distribution systems that do the same?  Of course, you know the answer… mesh networks and community internet.  I’ll be elaborating on these ideas sooner or later, in cahoots with Nina Bianchi.

bicyclists and North Corktown

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Recently a few of my friends have asked me what could help encourage more people in my neighborhood to ride bicycles. For all the time I’ve been a bicycle commuter and advocate for cyclists in Detroit, I’ve never really considered what a specific neighborhood could do to encourage bicycle use. My work at Back Alley Bikes / The Hub of Detroit is rooted in a neighborhood that I moved out of, and after the Jeffries projects closed down it turned into less of a neighborhood resource and more of a city-wide resource (more on that in a minute). Whenever I’ve seen bicycle advocacy come up in the public discourse, it’s been about city-wide or state-wide issues (bicycle licensing, safe streets funding, etc).  It’s not often that I see local/block-level efforts to promote green transportation…  but isn’t that the right place to start?

Blair rides her bike when it's cold

It’s easy for me to not think about it on the day-to-day:  I’m more than happy to jump on my bike and ride to work 5 miles away in the middle of winter… mostly because I’ve spent my whole life growing fond of cold-weather discomfort and learning how to fix a flat with frozen fingers.  What would it take to convince someone with less pain tolerance and more concern for their finger’s nerve endings? If you look at North Corktown from a mainstream bicycle-aware urban planning standpoint, the situation might seem bleak.  There isn’t much in place that would encourage non-automotive transportation: bus stops are mysterious, sidewalks come and go, and the nearest bike shop and grocery store are a half-hour walk away, in opposite directions; in other words, you’d better pray that you don’t end up with a broken chain and an empty pantry.

The mainstream urban planning fancy-pants plan for a neighborhood like North Corktown might include accoutrement like bicycle lanes, a marketing campaign to encourage alternative transporatation, and maybe a spokesthing for good measure.  I think that a lot of these ideas may not be especially relevant to many of Detroit’s neighborhoods.

A pile of cycle in my neighborhood

Rather than paying tens of thousands of dollars per mile for silly things like these, I’d prefer to see that money go into Detroit’s growing bicycle service economy.  Detroit has a history of creative entrepreneurship, and the last few years have seen a plethora of bicycle-related businesses start up: The Hub’s in-school youth education services and repair shop, Wheelhouse Detroit’s bicycle tours, Detroit Greencycle curbside recycling pickup, Cass Cafe’s food delivery service.

A bicycle-related business grows the local economy and promotes bicycling at the same time.  These groups are putting down fertile soil to grow bigger and better things on in the future.  Those bike lanes take a lot of nutrients to get going, don’t they?  Shouldn’t we start with the basics?

I live across the street from an apartment complex that was recently bought by a neighborhood nonprofit.  Many residents look forward to using some of the units for community institutions, and I think that it’d be a perfect site for regular bike education workshops.  An organization like Fender Bender or Mt Elliott Makerspace could provide a mobile toolkit and some educators, and my neighbors could try wrenching a bit or maybe learn some winter bike riding skills.

Let's jam econo with small-fry bike education on a massive scale

Running a program like this can be done on a shoestring budget (c.f. Back Alley Bike’s budget of 4000/year a few years ago), and can have lasting impact as well as serve as a statistical/research base for expanding into new ideas and ventures.  A few other projects (Earthworks on the east side and All Saints Church in SW) are running their own small-scale bike education programs, and I’d love to see more neighborhoods join in.  In Earthworks’ case, The Hub sponsored the formation of a shop at the soup kitchen/community farm and it turned into a program on its own over the course of a year.  And I heard that the youth at All Saints want to open up a retail shop…

It’s up to us to make these ideas and plans available to any and all neighborhoods in our city.  As the above projects show, we have what it takes to make amazing things happen, without having to wait on municipal decisions or state mandates.

Vote for FACT Social Justice Challenge projects!

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The public voting period for this year’s FACT Social Justice Challenge ends this Friday!  Read about how to vote on projects — unfortunately it’s a bit complicated.  I should’ve written up a grant to improve their website.

There are two interesting Detroit projects, as well as a few other cool ones, that I would like to promote:

Thanks for voting!

Detroit digital justice-related netsquared/FACT grant ideas

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I worked with two groups in applying for Netsquared/FACT grants:

http://netsquared.org/projects/detroit-garden-sensor-development

http://netsquared.org/projects/pomaceous-detroitfruit-trees

The former project will hopefully lead to other sensor tech developments including environmental air-quality sensors.

The latter is a bit more ethereal but will hopefully get more urban agriculture-minded people interested in using media for organizing.

If you have a moment, leave a note of support by commenting and “like”ing the projects.

Late summer updates: leaves, chicken races, hacker spaces, garden sensors

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I’d like to share a few stories:

Auto the dog, with leaves

Auto the dog, with leaves

1) Leaves

For some odd reason a tree in my backyard thinks it’s Autumn, turned yellow, and pooed its leaves all over the place.  Here’s a photo with my dog Auto.

This leaf event, combined with the end of an endless heat wave, has noticeably  changed my mood.  Time to start storing up nonperishables and fattening up for winter.  Gotta fix my fender-clad bicycle, fortify my insulation, and spend more time outside before detroit winter coma sets in.

A group of chicken racers prepare to release their hens

Racers prepare to drop hen

2) Chicken races

My friend Karthik Kavasseri convinced seventeen chicken farmers to let their fastest hens walk around in circles at the Temple Bar a few weeks ago.

Check a Flickr page for my photos, and also use the google to read other people’s reports.  Mr. Todd Scott has a lovely summary and additional photos.

Blair Nosan featured her frozen yogurt product at the Chicken Race

Blair Nosan featured her frozen yogurt product at the Chicken Race

While I was busy coaxing one of my chickens down a gravelly aisle, my girlfriend Blair Nosan served up some mean frozen-yogurt (fro-yo, if you will) with toppings.  The froyo was met with universal accolades, save for the one or two people who’d never tasted yogurt before.  Her offerings were nicely paired with the renegade food-cart offerings of the Pink Flamingo, which arrived fashionably late.

My upstairs neighbors and I ran one chicken in this event and I think we finished second.  I delivered the chicken to the event by bungee-cording a gigantic dog crate atop my B.O.B. trailer.  Yes, it was copping a backwards lean but the chicken and more importantly all of the straw was contained.  I delighted in riding through the Motor City Casino stretch of Temple with this contraption on display.  Nothing attracts a crowd like a bicycle trailer and a chicken.

I totally soldered that Garduino

I totally soldered that Garduino

3) Hacker spaces and garden sensors

As I mentioned in an earlier posting, I joined OmniCorpDetroit, a splendid hackety-hacker outfit in Eastern Market.  I’m currently trying to figure out how to construct mesh-networked temperature sensors to deploy in various Detroit greenhouses and hothouses.

Ideally, every greenhouse will have four temperature probes: soil and ambient, indoor and outdoor.  The probes would transmit back to a nearby wireless mesh network node that would operate as a local data server and, when there’s a good ‘net connection, upload data somewhere safe.  Mesh nodes would also act as community wireless extensions, if they’re in a useful location for that.

This work builds on the idea of connecting technology democracy / digital justice work with community gardening / environmental justice principals.  Read more about these ideas in OTI’s Hot Mesh report.

The initial prototyping will take place at the Mt Elliot Makerspace and the Earthworks Garden on the eastern side of our city.

Random thoughts to be expanded at a later date: thermocouple vs thermistor for temperature sensing: may have opportunity to make our own thermocouples…. do cost comparisons… length of cable, power draw? RF concerns with xbee vs 2.4/5.8 networking / lots of thermo sensors?

GSM hijacking + VoIP + community wifi

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Via HN: Chris Paget demonstrated a nifty little GSM hijacking device at Defcon: with a directional antenna and some clever OpenBTS-based software, he was able to provide an irresistably-strong signal for cellphones, which would switch off call encryption and then trunk the call onto a VoIP network.

Sure, this is awesome for espionage, playing jokes on your neighbors, etc. but how about running an experimental cellphone network that can provide service for not only VoIP handsets but also old GSM phones?  It’d be great fun to build a renegade cell network using throwaway old GSM handsets and cobbled-together VoIP devices / homemade phonebooths.

NB: One commenter on hackernews pointed out the different types of phones that would allow this hijacking.  Good to know.

Extensive mesh

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After an invigorating AMC2010, and a very fruitful HOT MESH conference session and media lab presence, I’m back at my daily work of code wrangling, system adminstering, etc.  But this afternoon I had the chance to extend the North Corktown community wireless network, with Dan from OTI and a few freshly-prepared wireless routers.

Back story

I live in North Corktown, a Detroit neighborhood about two miles from downtown.  I used to live up the street and had a cable modem, but when I moved a few blocks away and tried to transfer my account, the cable company refused to install service.  After a struggle, I ended up with a barely-broadband DSL connection.  Many of my neighbors have had similar problems in trying to get internet access.  To solve this, I set up a small network of meshed routers to repeat my signal down my block.  Also, a neighbor up the street from me was willing to share his connection with nearby residents, so I set him up a mesh router as well.  Hot Mesh was born, and North Corktown got a little bit of free internet.  People started noticing the signal, random cars started hanging out in front of my house, and I got to meet my new neighbors.

Enter the Spaulding Court

Spaulding Court is an apartment complex.  I live across the street from it.  After being neglected by an absentee landlord for a decade or so, some neighbors started getting serious with it and are fixing the place up.  Read more about this whole process in a Detroit YES! thread or via the official Spaulding Court web presence.

The US Social Forum served as a catalyst for Spaulding Court.  It’s playing host to a couple dozen tent-dwellers and temporary apartment tenants, as well as one long-term tenant.  Read a slightly-tongue-in-cheek mise-en-scène by my neighbor (and community wireless participant) Patrick.  The project’s organizers were interested in providing internet access to the new residents, and I was willing to help.

A few days ago, we deployed a few more nodes and extended the wireless coverage to the west.   The network now solidly covers about three blocks and is served by two residential DSL connections and a cable modem shared between nine wireless mesh nodes.  All of the new infrastructure will stay in place for the neighborhood to benefit from.

Technical Details

Take a look at the network map and notice the distance between nodes — even with a few trees in the way, we have a couple very large gaps between gateways and repeaters.  The node in the middle, codenamed “landyacht” and stowed in the pantry of an Airstream trailer, acts as a repeater that would bridge traffic if either of the gateways had a problem.  Landyacht is often out of service due to power issues.  The other out-of-service node, Courteous, is sitting on my table waiting to receive a specially-crafted XSS payload.

Both Dan and I were surprised at the power of these little 30mW routers: some of them are traversing multiple empty lots.  We’d thought that we would’ve needed some cantennas, but it wasn’t needed.

[update]   The North Corktown network is actually made up of a few separate Open-Mesh networks:  the one linked to above uses another network as a backhaul, and any other network can use it as a backhaul.  This means that anyone can set up their own nodes, with or without an internet connection, and easily extend the network.  These new networks can have completely different settings (i.e. you can set a password for your own personal network, or limit bandwidth, or give it a funny name).

The Future

This is my neighborhood’s network.  It worked well because I knew quite a few neighbors who were interested, and I was able to school them in mesh networking theory over and over again until they were all comfortable participating.  Many neighborhoods might not have the advantage of a resident community wifi zealot, but it only takes a few hours of playing with the hardware and learning some networking concepts to become a very capable mesh network technician.

I’d like to see the next DiscoTech happen alongside a mesh network install and computer training /giveaway.  I think there’s a nice pile of computers left around after the US Social Forum that ought to be put to good use.

AMC 2010 liveblogging: gleaning tweets with node.js and mysql

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A bit about my recent work:

As the web dev for the Allied Media Conference, I’ve been tasked with creating a system for participants to liveblog about all the sessions at this year’s conference.  I decided on setting up a three-part system: a tweet searcher+archiver, a JSON server, and the existing 2010 AMC and USSF discussion message board software.

  • Tweet searcher+archiver: a node.js app that reads a filtered twitter feed from the Streaming Twitter API (using a version of twitter-node, separates out relevant hashtags (each relating to a conference session) and stores them in a MySQL db. (80% complete)
  • Tweet server: another node.js app, this time a HTTP server using djangode, that responds to queries for certain hashtags and returns a JSON stream of tweets with that tag, or alternatively returns a “last tweet” timestamp for comparison on the frontend. (10% complete)
  • Frontend: a modified Drupal forum setup with a special field on topics that offers the relevant hashtag as an element on the page.  Javascript by PaulH will form a HTTP request using that hashtag to retrieve tweets from the tweet server and, based on the twitter timestamp, intertwine them with the topic replies. (80% complete)

This may seem like a complicated system.  Why not just draw tweets using clientside javascript during pageload?  Why use bespoke node.js servers instead of doing a Drupal implementation or buying cloud services?  Respectively, temporariness and efficiency.  With our setup, the twitter conversation isn’t temporary anymore:  we can archive the conversation and guarantee that it lasts for future viewers (no need to rely on twitter to keep on serving tweets).  It’s also more efficient: for one thing, it’s only one stream request from twitter (maybe two if i want to do redundancy) instead of a bunch of in-browser requests, and the streaming API seems to be more timely and reliable.  Node.js lends itself very well to this type of system.

While the current implementation is definitely off-the-cuff hackish, I’m going to work on generalizing the code and will release it on github afterwards.  If anyone is interested in collaboration, please comment!

hotMesh update

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Hi,

Things have been extremely busy for me with work, and I haven’t been able to spend much time with the community wireless network development. I have, however, rolled out a couple test networks.

Two of the networks are running quite well. One is in the south Cass Corridor, the other in North Corktown. The next big network experiment will be in the Northwest Goldberg neighborhood, as a collaborative project with the Detroit Digital Justice Coalition, the Hush House, and some US Social Forum planners.

In addition to this planned network, I’d be interested in rolling out a smaller mesh (3-4 nearby nodes) in the shorter term, for real-world testing.

I’m eventually going to switch one of these networks to a self-hosted management server, as opposed to the Openmesh dashboard, to make it easier to experiment with router firmware and settings.