1. DAMN: Dirigible Area Metropolitan Network

It's not meant to be practical, it's meant to be Dirigible

After the revolution we might have to run the internet with guys on horses carrying sheets of paper with 56 bytes written on each one. -- Mark Leigh

ThomasKula

During the 28 January 2004 AmesFUG meeting, the topic of local wireless networks came up. This is not an uncommon thing. Somehow the discussion wondered to the small dirigibles that they use at sporting events to fly around and drop t-shirts, etc. into the crowd (I first saw one at a Twins game in the Metrodome). The ideas got munged together until the concept of a fleet of dirigibles, flying around a city, carrying, say, microdrives, carrying information back and forth.

1.1. Key Ideas

Would have to have routes: perhaps a group of neighbors have one or two dirigibles flying around, and less-frequent long-haul dirigibles carried information between smaller neighborhood cluster.
UUCP kind of idea --- information would be hopped closer to it's destination, not always (even infrequently) going direct from source to destination.
Use GPS for navigation.
At each base, use inductance to provide energy to recharge unit/power microdrive. Use iR? maybe for data transfer --- no contact, doesn't have to be head on, won't be interfered by inductance providing energy. If last bit isn't a problem, perhaps Bluetooth. Have low-power (100 ft) beacon so that dirigible can get within GPS precision of base, and then use beacon to get really close.
Microdrive doesn't have to spin except when at base, when it has local power.
UNLESS: dirigible - dirigible transfer? Some sort of homing beacon, protocol for exchanging information.
Dirigible computer doesn't have to have much, maybe some flash for os storage, some interface to controls, gps, ir, etc. PC/104 form factor?
Routes: gps coordinates? Perhaps should be some sort of city map, and it floats above streets --- unlikely to be high towers, etc, above streets.
Altitude? 100 ft?

1.2. Useful Links

http://www.netbsd.org/Misc/embed.html

http://www.linuxdevices.com

http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT2614444132.html

http://slashdot.org/articles/04/07/06/1558259.shtml?tid=137&tid=193

http://www.networkmagazine.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=57701941

http://autopilot.sourceforge.net/

1.3. Related Projects

http://grouplab.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/phidgets/gallery/dartmail.html

Immutable page [current page size 2498 bytes] (last edited 2005-04-27 21:46:52 by ThomasKula)
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