Burning Man Goes Open Source For Cell Phones 152
coondoggie passes along this excerpt from Network World:
"Today I bring you a story that has it all: a solar-powered, low-cost, open source cellular network that's revolutionizing coverage in underprivileged and off-grid spots. It uses VoIP yet works with existing cell phones. It has pedigreed founders. Best of all, it is part of the sex, drugs and art collectively known as Burning Man. ... The technology starts with the 'they-said-it-couldn't-be-done' open source software, OpenBTS. OpenBTS is built on Linux and distributed via the AGPLv3 license. When used with a software-defined radio such as the Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP), it presents a GSM air interface ("Um") to any standard GSM cell phone, with no modification whatsoever required of the phone. It uses open source Asterisk VoIP software as the PBX to connect calls, though it can be used with other soft switches, too. ... This is the third year its founders have decided to trial-by-fire the system by offering free cell phone service to the 50,000-ish attendees at Burning Man, which begins today in Black Rock City, Nevada. "
Why is this on the front page in red? (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously, I'm totally confused by this. Did the burning man attendees actually set the /article/ on fire as well?
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Because you are not using the text-only version. Though to be fair, they are breaking it more and more every month and slobbering on features that break in Konqueror that I don't use, anyway.
Bummer (Score:5, Insightful)
I haven't been to Burning Man in a few years, but when I did go it was nice to get away from it all. I suppose I could choose to not use/bring my cell phone - but if other people are still tethered to the ordinary world...? Well - bummer!
Re:Bummer (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, if this project does what it says, there won't be any place left in the world where you won't be tethered to the grid.
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Theres always the Alaska Highway
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You can still get satellite there though. To Mars!
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you are clearly not an AT&T customer.
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I couldn't make it this year, but myself and friends are renting/buying an RV and driving out there next year. Looking forward to it =)
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Experience is good, participation is better!
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The verb "to sex " means to "determine the sex of", as in what a chicken sexer does for a living (yes, that is a real job). This Burning Man thing sounds pretty boring.
"Sex up" does have other informal meanings, but I am not sure either is exactly what you mean.
See the OED [oxforddictionaries.com]
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seconded... I went in 2008 (would love to go back but it's a bit of a hike+ a lot of gear from the east coast) and one of my favorite aspects of it was knowing that for the next week I would have no contact with the outside world. Even when i left to drive home, i left my cellphone turned off for a few hours just to savor my last moments of "freedom" before listening to the inevitable voicemails, letting my parents know i'd survived "that crazy thing in the desert", etc.
As you say...you can choose to leav
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To be fair, I've been with large enough groups that had to bring in sat phones to coordinate trucks and supplies, and having an emergency line wasn't such a bad thing. Most of that stops at the beginning of the week though.
I didn't see any people using their phones last year either, so it's not that hard to avoid. I was a bit surprised to find my cell phone had signal at all during the event, but just did what I always do and stored it in the glove compartment the whole week.
I swear though, I'll punch som
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You're always tethered to reality.
My bias:
I just spent the weekend on a farm in upstate new york (with about 20-30 other cityfolk) and it was more socially & sensorily taxing than my usual weekday office existence. Insects, breezes, sunlight, socializing, games, activities... so much to do and think about! For an introvert, corporate anonymity is much more relaxing.
I'm not being facetious. Burning man is a temporary city, after all - different and creative, but a city nonetheless. May as well remain con
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unless you're still harboring that false "nature/civilization" dichotomy, but even then - hello, town full of people, it ain't disconnected from civilization...
That dichotomy is exceptionally annoying. I previously sold camping goods at REI and would occasionally get the customer who would turn their nose up at "technology" (like water filters) because it got them "away from nature." Never mind the fact that they were wearing clothing made from synthetics and if they got giardiasis, they'd be using "moder
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The side of my phone has two buttons. One of them is volume up, and one is volume down. If I keep hitting volume down, I get vibrate mode. Hit it one more time and the phone goes silent. Then I check it on my schedule. My phone is a $25 crackphone. You have no excuse for being interrupted by your cellphone any time you don't want to be, unless your thumbs aren't opposable and your penis is missing.
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Hacking At Random near Amsterdam
As someone who lives in Amsterdam, I'm always amazed when somebody calls places that are definitely outside the Amsterdam area, outside the Randstad even, "near Amsterdam". From my point of view, they're practically on the other side of the country, like 100 km away or something.
Of course someone who actually lives on the other side of the country would point out that HAR was a lot closer to Amsterdam than to were they lived. (It was only just outside the Randstad, and probably less than 100 km away.) But N
Missing the point (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Missing the point (Score:4, Funny)
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But I want to be free of cell phone radiation. D'oh!
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The SINGLE cardinal rule at BM ( I should know, I was a Black Rock Ranger for 5 years ) is:
"Do Not Interfere With Anyones Immediate Experience"
Or at least is used to be... I was thinking about going back as a participant, but I am really afraid that if I was sitting in the center camp cafe' having a chi and some idiot was yammering on their fucking cell phone I would rip it from their hand and smash it into a as many pieces as I possibly could.
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Are you willing to apply that same methodology to other annoying things, such as bullhorns, sound camps, shirtcockers and DPW?
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No those are things that are the fun of BM that I enjoyed. Those things happen rarely, if ever back in the world. I have to deal with idiots yammering away blathering about nothing on their cell phones right next to me in so many places as it is, I don't want it near me in a place I go to escape all of that.
While burning man is a mirror of our culture in many ways it is a mirror that is somewhat magic in as much as the reflection has a small bit of the veneer that is the basis of restrained society stripp
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I presume that 911 calls could be screened, allowing the operator to take over. It's easy enough to set up on Asterisk, and obviously when the screening capacity is up, they can go straight through.
Oucheroo (Score:2)
Looks like you have to spend thousands to build a working solution. If you were hoping to use GSM phones as cordless phones any time soon, you'd better have buckets of ducats.
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Open source solution = ~$10,000; Typical commercial installation = $50K-100K. Cost is relative.
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What's unreal about that?
nobody is going to make you a GSM antenna/BTS/BSC in a box. (when somebody tries, expect "fm transmitter" quality)
there's always going to be a lot of work involved with making groups of people with unique requirements happy. this is LIGHT YEARS ahead of the last ten years, trying to get Motorola or Siemens to put up JUST a BTS, would have started at $250K + installation, and you still need all the signaling system / authentication hardware to go with it. to be able to put up a macro
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As long as the hardware would be FCC certified, and they could obtain base station licensing, that is. I figure that's another $100k per year amortized over 10 years. If you're lucky. Or am I off base here?
Wait. (Score:5, Interesting)
Is this the same Burning Man that claims copyright on any PRIVATE photos taken at their events? [techdirt.com]
PASS. Horrible IP grab + single Open Source project is still a negative, methinks.
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I've never been to Burning Man, I've been to other free-love-get-high-hippy-alt-fests so I "get" the point of it, but I don't understand how the Open Source community can stomach Burning Man's copyright claims.
Re:Wait. (Score:5, Interesting)
I've never been to Burning Man, I've been to other free-love-get-high-hippy-alt-fests so I "get" the point of it, but I don't understand how the Open Source community can stomach Burning Man's copyright claims.
On paper it sounds really good. "We have a bunch of nudists and hippies (and exhibitionsts) that show up and walk around naked for most of the event. We don't want voyeurs to be getting their rocks off on them."
Then they went after private photographers own galleries, and the Wiki Commons. Oh, and they sell their own DVDs [burningman.com]. Complete coincidence, there.
Unfortunately Burning Man itself has kinda become mainstream. It's less about art and free love and the like, and more about college guys getting drunk/stoned and harassing girls, trying to get them to strip. I imagine there are other, better, alt-fests around, but the closest thing I get to Hippydome is reading Brad Warner's series of Zen books.
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Except for your choice of the exceptionally strong word "harass", I think this might be a good thing. Having participated in my fair share of naked hippie art and body festivals I can almost assure you that, sadly, with few exceptions the girls who don't need to be talked into it are the last girls on earth anyo
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"It's less about art and free love and the like, and more about college guys getting drunk/stoned and harassing girls, trying to get them to strip."
You seem to be confusing BM with spring break parties in Mexico. There are certainly a few of those types that show up every year, but it has grown enough that you get a variety of sub-cultures and not just hippies or frat-boys. Plus, the location they chose still tends to keep out more of the obnoxious people that couldn't handle the camping, which I believe
Re:Wait. (Score:5, Interesting)
They do this to prevent people from going there, taking pictures, and selling a "BURNERS GONE WILD!" calendar or something like it.
They're preventing *others* from profiting off of photos of burners, not profiting off of them themselves.
This is generally considered a good thing.
Re:Wait. (Score:4, Insightful)
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it's to prevent you from having your wife from finding out what you did there..
Re:Wait. (Score:4, Informative)
It's a non-commercial event. You can't sell food there. You can't sell photos of the event. You can't go take pictures of the human carcass wash or critical tits ride. If there were photographers, these events couldn't happen. There are no "observer" tickets for the event -- it's not a concert.
Why is it that people always bitch about privacy, and about Google putting up photos of their house or their friends online, a non-profit bans this practice and everyone gets up in arms? I've taken numerous pictures at the event, and as long as you don't try to sell them, you don't get hassled.
Especially when the policy's author is was the lead council for the Electronic Freedom Frontier.
Re:Wait. (Score:4, Informative)
How exactly is Burning Man, a for-profit CORPORTION, hosting an event you must BUY tickets to, in any way described as 'non-commercial?'
It's a bunch of dumb hippies paying to get together and do drugs (excuseme, "EXPRESS THEMELVES") in the desert.
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Before you call anyone dumb, please learn to correctly spell words you've chosen to emphasize in caps.
Also, learn a bit more about corporations, both non-profit and for-profit. Black Rock (the LLC) has an "open book" policy of their finances: I suspect you'll find that the main coordinators make far less than your average "non-profit" executive (e.g., Blue Cross, local charities, etc.).
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It's a NON-PROFIT. The tickets are to pay for porta-poties, rent the land, the construction of the man/temple, and pay for the cops the gov't makes them buy.
Their finances are open: if you disagree with the cost, you can drill down and disagree, but they're not making money.
And yes, a bunch of dumb hippies. Like the Sergei Brinn and Larry Page.
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People like complaining.
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spoken like someone who's never been there.
first off there's no food for sale.
There is ice, mainly because that's one item that most people will probably want and can't provide themselves very easily.
Coffee is also available for sale, i have to admit i don't understand that one, but plenty of people provide free coffee for themselves and anyone else. There was a community tea/coffee house around the corner from my tent that offered free coffee/tea every morning. My guess is they use it as a bit of a fundr
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A small (but important) addition: volunteers power the ice ("Camp Arctica") and coffee sales, with the proceeds going to local charities, who have frequently been in need (sometimes dire) of support from any avenue.
Bad license choice (Score:2, Insightful)
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Imagine having a base station where you have to require a partition for the source.
Are you saying that posting the source code on github or posting it on their asterisks server wouldn't qualify??? Are we both even reading the same license [gnu.org], because it doesn't seem like we are. Please tell me which key paragraph/phrase I've missed, assuming I'm the one who's read the license incorrectly.
Or people with broken cell phones saying you're not providing an equal opportunity to download the software source.
Now, I know you're just joking. You really have to work on your humor, a few of the mods actually took your post at face value.
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OpenBTS With FreeSWITCH (Score:3, Informative)
Some have inquired as to using OpenBTS with FreeSWITCH as well as Asterisk. Alberto Escudero (aka AEP) wrote this wiki page nearly a year ago:
http://wiki.freeswitch.org/wiki/OpenBTS [freeswitch.org]
It's slightly dated but the information is accurate.
-MC
Nekkid People (Score:2)
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In their other hand.
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Remember that the most popular guy on the beach is the one who can carry a dozen donuts and a cup of coffee in each hand.
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in their bodbelt: http://podbelt.com/ [podbelt.com]
Networked displays (Score:2)
RMS (Score:2)
Does this mean that RMS can finally use a cellphone?
don't understand the sms part (Score:2)
What about the FCC? (Score:2)
There is no mention of FCC's licensing....I thought you need a license to operate a transmitter over 0.1 watt, or something really low like that. I am sure the FCC goons will put their knees on the neck of this project soon to protect their corporate buddies in the cell phone industry.
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I thought the same thing, but they apparently have an Special Temporary Authority (STA) granted: http://openbts.sourceforge.net/FieldTest3/STAGrant.pdf [sourceforge.net]
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There's certainly a lot of overlap between the techie crowd and the hippie crowd. Steve Jobs, for example, experimented with LSD.
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so LSD is a requirement for an RDF?
That actually makes sense.
Re:I may have read that one wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
There's certainly a lot of overlap between the techie crowd and the hippie crowd. Steve Jobs, for example, experimented with LSD.
Jobs never has been been really a techie though, he is more of a hipster businessman.
Re:I may have read that one wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
Not a techie? He worked as a technician for Atari, and worked on the design for the motherboard for Breakout. You also don't successfully manage a technology company like Apple without having a grasp of technology.
Of course, Woz was far more adept at hardware, which brings a lot of people to make the claim that Jobs is just a businessman.
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"Design" like his design influence in the Mac hardware? "...look at the memory chips. That's ugly. The lines are too close together" [folklore.org]
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Yikes!
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Or Ballmer, while we're at it.
Burning Man: Disneyland for Marketing Suits (Score:5, Insightful)
Burning Man had its brief, shining moment, but when was that...? Circa mid-90's? Now it's a staged pseudo-event the very promotion of which cuts against the grain of what it was supposed to be. I see the jowly middle-aged Marketing Suits queuing up for their Burning Man tickets and I am reminded of the giddy tourists in and around Woodstock, NY paying $25 for a tie-dyed peace-sign T-shirt.
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Doesn't mean it can't still be awesome.
Some of those marketing suits probably did some pretty wild stuff in their younger days, before settling down to make some serious money.
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Maybe it's an outlet for any remaining desire to not "act like suits".
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Already commented so I can't mod you up, but I'm sure you're right. I've never personally been aware of BM as anything but a corporate mess milking money from the wannabe hippies. They're literally paying THE MAN as a way to show what hippies they are! WTF.
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These days you can actually just buy a package, they drive an RV out there for you, they ferry you out to it in a plush, air conditioned SUV, they cook for you, they do everything but find you drugs and sluts. And most of those guys have plenty of experience with the former and can use it to get the latter. I have heard that arrests are up at burning man already, they have attractive female cops undercover asking for drugs. I thought that was entrapment... but I wouldn't go to burning man at this point anyw
Re:I may have read that one wrong (Score:4, Informative)
Steve Jobs was a coke dealer.
No, it was John Scully and Pepsi
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I think what he's trying to say is that he was Steve Jobs best customer.
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I'm wondering how this is different from the GSM network at Hacking At Random [har2009.org], which is most definitely an Open Source as well as anarchistic art crowd. Quite likely some drugs too (considering it's Dutch). Not a lot of sex, though.
Anyway, HAR had its own GSM network last year. Probably not solar powered, but very likely open source. You'd get a new phone number, however, which wasn't really what I wanted. (Unfortunately my iPhone had absolutely no reception there. Excellent wifi, but no phone calls.)
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Somewhere in between reading it wrong and it being written wrong. AFAIK OpenBTS has nothing to do with Burning Man except that Burning Man is using their software.
Re:I may have read that one wrong (Score:4, Interesting)
After reading their regulations section however I feel freer out here in the network than in that caged city.
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What about encryption? How do I know my call is safe, and do I trust the operator of these devices?
In a crowd of 50,000 people I'm not sure that call safety and call security are the most reasonable things to be concerned about...
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They're in the middle of the desert. It's not like there are 50K people crammed into a tiny area.
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They're in the middle of the desert. It's not like there are 50K people crammed into a tiny area.
Sure, there is a fair bit of space available, but for the popular acts (especially performing arts) the crowd density can get rather high. After all, Burning Man isn't just MOMA spread out randomly across the desert.
Re:Encryption? (Score:5, Informative)
Have you ever been? It is the population density of a city, modulo the multistory units (except for the nuts who do build those). I don't know what the plan this year is (I'm missing it this year, sniff), but last year, the camp radius was 2100 feet [burningman.com], putting the vast bulk of those 50K people in a 1-mile diameter area. Not many people camp in "deep playa" (the burner term for the area outside of the radial roads but inside the trash perimeter).
Back on topic, there's been signal there for at least the last three years, but it became useless once the gates opened and the hordes descended. My take is that cell service during the main event is going to be a net negative, but it is inevitable. It will become something akin to the ongoing war on glow sticks - a bunch of us will mercilessly mock glow-stuck cellphone users and try to shame them into putting the fucking things down and be present, and it mostly won't work.
Those of us who do LNT (Leave No Trace, the massive cleanup effort post event) will get to ground score cellphones, though. People lose everything else.
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You think that's bad? Right now you are surrounded by almost 7 billion people!
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Amen.
How do you know that now? (Score:2)
It's not as if most carriers have a reputation for really caring about customer privacy...
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If you're worried about call security you shouldn't trust the regular cell network, let alone some ad-hoc network setup for a hippie crowd. Regardless of the carrier you should provide your own end-to-end encryption if security is a concern.
Re:License? (Score:4, Informative)
The FCC grants them a temporary experimental license because they can't cause much interference out in the middle of the desert. If you fire up OpenBTS anywhere in civilization you're probably breaking the law. Fortunately the equipment is a bit more expensive than CB radio and the carriers have a real incentive to crack down on interferers, so I doubt there will be too many problems in the real world.
First: Inform yourself. Then: Post. (Score:2)
I am interested in how the people around OpenBTS got licences for 26c3 in Berlin and Fosdem 2010 in Brussels (the licence for Brussels came too late, they could not actually _use_ it. They will in 2011, though).
It's possible to get licences in the middle of civilization.
Re:License? (Score:5, Informative)
Ummm, I'm confused. The frequencies that GSM uses are licensed by the FCC to specific operators. The phones are used under the control of the operator, who has a license for each and every cell site.
It's the confusion born from not RTFAing.
GSM operates on licensed bandwidth, so for any U.S. installation, the OpenBTS crew always obtains a FCC license and works with the local carrier to coordinate frequency use. When attendees get into range and power up their phones, the system sends them a text that says "Reply to this message with your phone number and you can send and receive text messages and make voice calls."
I'm guessing the person who modded you up didn't RTFA either.
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This is /..
When I see "open source" I assume that there can be no "licensing fee". My bad.
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Do you seriously not understand the difference between a software license and a license to use radio spectrum? Buying a completely GPL'd car (hardware and software open sourced/specced) would not mean that you don't need a "driver's license" to drive on public roads since there can't be "Licensing fee" for GPL software...
Re:License? (Score:4, Informative)
Their FAQ, http://pagalegba2010.wikispaces.com/FAQ [wikispaces.com], has a link to the experimental FCC license: http://openbts.sourceforge.net/FieldTest3/STAGrant.pdf [sourceforge.net]
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Also, re: "crew of climbing riggers, a 150ft $750K telescopic crane with operator, 3 skilled RF engineers to wire it up, 2 people with a degree in CS to set up the software and 5+ days to spare to set it up and debug it"... They sent one of these to Haiti and it was set up and running in about an hour in a hospital which used it for two weeks until their regu
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All you need is a $700 USRP radio with the $275 RFX900 transceiver daughterboard and your are in business.
The software is quite simple to get operating with several step by step how-to guides around the net. As for all that effort in setting up a tower, ham's do it in an afternoon all the time and don't spend all the cash you speak of. As for the license, experimental licenses are cheep and easy to obtain. One could run license free in the 900mhz ISM band (USA) that overlaps 900mhz GSM used elsewhere in the
Re:watch out for cops (Score:4, Insightful)
I fear the burning man festival may soon flame out, or at best, morph into an anemic lame-o semblance of it's former self
I think I've been hearing that it's already done that from people who have attended it every year in the last decade. People were probably saying the same thing before then, I just wasn't paying attention.
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