SPUD, Simple Unified Dashboard for mesh networks

Published: 13 Jun 2011

We are happy to announce the public release of SPUD (SimPle Unified Dashboard). SPUD is yet another attempt to visualize a wireless mesh network running BATMAN and its users.

During the last couple of months we have written a PHP based dashboard that communicates with the BATMAN visualization server and displays real time wireless link status.

SPUD is written in CakePHP (PHP MVC framework) and uses Google Maps API 1.3 for visualization.

SPUD is design to be as simple as possible and to enable teams that install large amount of mesh nodes to visualize their networks quickly. Some of the core features of SPUD are:

Client management: Bulk import of clients from a CSV file, Edit client position with Google Maps, Tracks new clients

Link monitoring: Easy overview of active wireless links, Mesh quality in each direction of a wireless link

Customization: Colors and threshold values for link quality

SPUD code is available at: svn co http://dev.villagetelco.org/svn/villagetelco/spud/trunk/ and the default installation will monitor our demo site in Bo Kaap (Cape Town)

Freedom Fone on Africa Gathering

Published: 12 Dec 2010

IT46 has been invited to Africa Gathering 2010 held in Nairobi, to present the Freedom Fone project. We took the opportunity to combine our most recent large development projects, Freedom Fone and the Village Telco, and demonstrate an integrated solution combining both technologies.

The demonstrator consisted of three Mesh Potatoes equipped with analogue phones. One of the MP's acted as super node and was connected to the Freedom Fone server. The Mesh Potatoes offered a way to communicate with Freedom Fone free of charge. Freedom Fone 1.6.5 OR LTS was installed on a laptop with an OfficeRoute (GSM-SIP gateway) connected via Ethernet. The OfficeRoute hosted three local SIM cards which allowed us to call in to Freedom Fone via the GSM network.

During the course of the day, the Freedom Fone/Village Telco demonstrator was tried out by the participants of the event, which served as a great example of the maturity and reliability of the two products and their interoperability.

Africa Gathering is an initiative about sharing ideas for positive change. To do so, Africa Gathering provides a space to bring technophiles, thinkers, entrepreneurs, innovators and everybody else together to talk about positive change in sustainable development, technology, social networking, health, education, environment and good governance in Africa.