Very cool device. The dean and doctor discussing the document they've been writing in Creole (context tells us it's probably a local dialect) could be uploaded to the device for everyone else that has them to use is a great reflection of how far this device can reach.
Agree with the other comment, not what I thought the device was going to be initially. Not everything needs a buzzword marketing name so it doesn't need to be like Doctr or something like that, but maybe Medic-in-a-Box or something that conveys this is a medical device.
Amusing name, but if it's not networked in any way, it's not really 'internet', it's just an extract of various sources that's pretty much static in time.
I think a hot swap system would work best. The central office of an aid organisation could just send new drives along with workers delivering food and other supplies.
I imagine you could keep it relatively up-to-date that way.
I love things like this, and I have a number of open wifi networks which could use this, but it seems people have gotten in to the habit of thinking that one service should run on one device, and that's all. It'd be nice if people would say what the software requirements are, regardless of the complexity of setup.
A large omnidirectional antenna could be a decent addition?
The RPi inbuilt module doesn't have the much range, assume the other options are the same, antennas are cheap and even better can be homemade quite easily with instructions and raw materials.
You don't need to use the pi's built-in wireless, but it's a cheap way to get started and covers most use-cases where the users are very near the device. I've got an old Ubiquiti Bullet M2HP mated to a broomstick omni acting as the AP for my IIAB network, and you can hit it from halfway down the block. Further if I get some more height under the 'tenna.
I wish 802.11ah was more common; a low speed long range option would be perfect for lightweight content like this. But until phones have the radios, the use-case just isn't there.
Data hoarder that I am I would like it to scrape more of the site than I actually visit ... in case I missed something when I'm browsing offline later.
Yeah, a "spider this page with depth X" would be a neat addition.
Edit: Though the way it works as a sort of proxy, it seems like you could combine it with something like this, and it would just work: https://github.com/naoak/chrome-site-spider
Would something like this work for single-page applications? Given that most applications today are built entirely through the DOM, would regex matching on embedded scripts be that useful?
I've actually started thinking about how to build a spidering/scraping tool that extracts links/JS, etc from an SPA but would rather not reinvent the wheel if possible.
Nice idea, but as other commenters has pointed out, maybe not the best name. Back in the 90’s when I first connected to the internet, my ISP provided a package called Internet in a Box made by a company called Spry.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBox
Never heard of the company but I think it's much better than what we see otherwise. Like names of food or things that sound like something which has absolutely no relation to the product.
This was my first thought as well! Our first computer came with Spry Internet in a Box in 1996. Mosaic was already aging pretty badly at that point, the early web changed fast.
I hope the advent of machine learning will afford us a way to filter out 50-95% of the laugh tracks in The IT Crowd. I'd love to be able to watch it for more than 5 minutes at a time again.
I like the idea. It would be cool if multiple devices could create a mesh network where students and teachers could communicate with each other without a connection to the global internet
This was my thought exactly. Excuse my naivety, but shouldn't a wifi-enabled pi be able to broadcast and automatically connect to others around it? And as long as they all have unique names shouldn't <piname>:port_number be possible for a simple web sever on them?
Most IIAB installations are single server, but some have indeed implemented a mesh network including long distance links using wifi extenders. Of course this is no longer a low cost project.
IIAB is just scripts for automating installing other software, so it doesn't include content — you download the content separately based on the app you need.
For StackOverflow content, the best way to get it offline is through the Kiwix ZIM files (compressed archive suitable for web content).
What? There's a button to include those sites. I configured mine to include raspberrypi.stackoverflow and a few others.
All the StackOverflow sites are available as Kiwix ZIM files, so if you select the ZIM server to be installed, you can check boxes for whatever content packs you want.
Selling the 32 gig SD card together with an Android app to browse the data seems far better. The majority of the world either has an Android phone (possibly a decade old), or a family member with one.
Have the android app available in the app store and the data downloadable for those who occasionally have internet connectivity (for example visiting a big city), but don't have money for an sd card.
It's unclear what product you're asking that about. The post is from "Internet in a Box" who don't sell anything. Just volunteers that put the software together. They do mention a few things being sold by others that use the work created by "Internet in a Box".
>Selling the 32 gig SD card together with an Android app to browse the data seems far better.
There's a couple of versions of this mentioned. The one used by clinics would fit on that, but it only has medical info. The hardware for the more general purpose one is using a 1TB drive. I assume that's for the Wikipedia + Maps + Literature + Khan Academy content mentioned.
At this point there are still an number of people who for any reason can’t or don’t want to use a smartphone.
Pushing a 60 year old to understand a completely new paradigm is fine if you are putting the time and energy to assist them until they are proficient, but otherwise they might be better with an old computer and check pages through local wi-fi.
There also enough remote locations where phone connectivity is just bad, and they keep 2G rugged phones around for their main use. In these situation I’d imagine a laptop being easier to use than a second phone just for that.
Get on a plane and then a bus and then a microbus or some kind of informal rural transit, go as far as you can into the mountains or the desert or the jungle and take with you one of these and a mikrotik router and a source of solar power. You won't be able to get much of a cell signal - or it's slow or expensive - and community access to Wikipedia and health-care information could be the most useful treasure you bring with you, without needing to worry about the kind of devices they run.
If you think a smart phone lasts 10 years in the hands of poor people, you are extremely optimistic.
From what I can tell, even here in South Africa's townships they are using fairly new Samsung, Huawei etc smart phones (always with a broken screen - this happens without exception), albeit cheap ones.
Even my gardener has a Samsung 10 something. Not entirely sure how he can afford it, but I suspect he borrowed a lot of money to afford it. Having next to nothing, the smart phones becomes your communication channel and your media center, news and.. hopefully learning.
You'd be surprised how many poor smart phone users exists in all of Africa. And 3G or better is almost everywhere now.
The pricing has come down and that is truly bridging the digital divide.
There’s a lot of African countries where that isn’t the case. I recently did some work for a mobile based game targeting a number of African countries and we had to support WAP and SMS.
India is another country where poorer regions wouldn’t have good cell coverage with most people without phones (let alone smart phones).
If you live in a region that can have luxuries like a gardener, then you’re likely already more affluent than those who this project is targeting.
My point was that this project isn't even targetting my gardener or his neighbors. They all have smart phones with Internet access. One more physical asset is a liability to them. Something else that can be stolen.
> Not entirely sure how he can afford it, but I suspect he borrowed a lot of money to afford it
There's a gray/black market for second hand phones whose provenance is...questionable. As someone who involuntarily contributed a phone to this surprisingly international parallel supply chain, the sellers are probably not selling at Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price.
> always with a broken screen - this happens without exception
Are the devices super-low end? Users underestimate how sensitive they are to breakage? Regularly thrown? Broken units that are usable end up there for export or?
In such places, everything has a tough life. Possessions are not taken care of very well, due to a number of reasons. Phones are regularly dropped. If you are lucky enough to own a car, it will be full of dents within 3 months.
I have seen a IIAB device used in a school in a remote area (one IIAB for several clients on the WLAN, old PCs with wired network, phones, and tablets).
The IIAB scripts, https://github.com/iiab/iiab/tree/master/roles , make setting up such servers very easy (including best FOSS apps, wifi hot spot, networking, and web admin interface). You just need to bring one beefy hard disk and you suddenly have access to all of Khan Academy, wikipedia in dozens of languages, and all kinds of other collections of educational and reference materials.
Of course nothing prevents you for copying content over to individual mobile phones and tablets (like takeout), but centralized setup of a "learning resources hotspot" that people can connect to is very efficient first start.
Related: see related info about installing Kolibri and Kiwix in this comment (these are two of the apps that are available via the IIAB install scripts) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26137100
That's the use-case I set mine up for, just for fun. Unplug my cable modem and see how long I can still be productive.
With a local copy of most StackOverflow sites and Wikipedia, I'm pretty well equipped for a certain set of problems.
Next up, I need to figure out how to wield the various github-mirror-an-entire-org scripts I've found, to keep a local copy of Adafruit's github, since their code and libraries power a lot of the hardware I have sitting around. And then maybe a mirror of Seeed Studio's wiki and whatever else I can find.
I like the idea as part of our power outage prep kit - running on a single Raspberry Pi means it can run off one of those ubiquitous power banks that can be safely charged from our small generator.
We have 20 years on this. I get in the 90's it would have seemed like a quick win. But it didn't work. This inability to move on is frustrating.
If you care , which most people don't. But if you do, what you want on them is porn and copyright TV. If you don't understand why I can't really help you, it's a pretty simple idea.
You can't do that obviously, so how do you do it by proxy?
That is the solution to find.
One simple idea, find places without internet, find a cafe and sell them Starlink. You charity sets it up for free, they pay something per month. Report what happens. I'd bet it'd be very cost effective. Unfortunately it is boring and people don't get to feel good about themselves, so it won't get funded, so perhaps it's just as dumb.
If this is what it is, then I'm totally wrong. This is a really good idea. A wireless hotspot, anyone can setup to distribute terabytes of material to others, preferably with a charge/login option.
Years ago we did this with a wireless access point 'Login for free movies" in our apartment. But couldn't (at the time) work out an easy way to distribute the AVI's once randoms connected.
To do this, what's vital is cafe owners and teachers and students can buy this product and easily dump stuff on. A movies section, comics section, a books section they can make pretty, they need ownership in their collations.
Their FAQ is on OLPC's site which had a horrific attitude of not allowing others to use their products and locking them down.
Once you pay someone to set IIAB up, giving them Starlink would be around the same price. IIAB has to be open and easy to buy.
> They cite examples of it working
Where? The Dominican Republic video was 4 years ago. Is it up and running? These things are easy to send in a team for and have running for a few months. I would be surprised if one was running for more than a year without an expat there.
Yes, what very, very poor rural schools and hospitals in the heart of Africa really want is porn and not access to teaching aids and medical databases.
They have a lot of flat garbage that if you really want you can just put on your phone, I can see those.
A database (For Africa as you mention) is a big deal, it's queryable store of info. It's rare to see these open source (or CC) Does it use MySql? MSAccess? How hard is it to set up?
I don't think they will have any. Databases need to be updated, it's easier to add 4G if they are needed.
Chemwatch did a pretty good setup with CD that did the 3 month updates. In the developed world is still ran into problems with being up to date enough, I think most would be online now. And it cost money because it's a hard thing to do.
You can't just say, they will 'run datavbases on the IIAB' That's an ongoing commitment that needs to be supported. Else it becomes another bricked device in the NGO graveyard.
This is why I want to know the name so I understand what you think IIAB does.
You seem to think these communities can skip the internet development of the Developed West which was - Academia -> Porn -> Shopping -> Illegal Movies -> Legal streaming movies-> Getting close to formal education
But I'm not getting this leap you think it can do.
When I read the headline, I had an alternate vision of this.
A super hardened computer, drop proof, waterproof, weatherproof, sandproof, rated for at least 20 years of
use.
No moveable parts and everything stored on PROM.
It would come with a kit to use any power source
possible
That should be able to survive in remote village with
no supervision required for a long time.
I did not imagine a PI with a plastic case and a standard harddrive.
Clearly the rugged one would cost magnitudes more and
things like WordPress and other programs like it would
not be possible on rugged version either.
I would think that as a plus not a minus.
If a village fills up a blog or some other such software with large amounts of data and the harddrive crashes its gone.
Does not come with a backup as far asI can see
I think that's a little unfair. The focus here is on the software. Yes, the examples show it running on a pi, but they don't limit it to that. It should also be able to run on your hypothetical rugged box.
There's absolutely nothing preventing you from building your IIAB into precisely such an enclosure with such a power supply. IIAB is a set of scripts to load the software onto such a box, and they also have a cheap hardware recipe that'll get you going for the 99.9994% of situations where being sandproof is not important.
But you can use those very same scripts to install the content on your sandproof ultramachine. What's the gripe?
The complaints about the name for a free product, created by a charity, that aims to help the deeply poor and remote because it "conflicts" with an inside joke from a cult BBC comedy that wrapped up 8 years ago are, at best, a bit silly.
There were several name complaints and several jokes and they formed the bulk of the initial comments. The complaint that triggered me to write this comment has been deleted since I made my comment and it looks like a couple of others have been deleted as well.
145 comments
[ 0.26 ms ] story [ 328 ms ] threadIt's basically wikipedia and other things on an access point, right?
Anyways, amazing initiative!
Agree with the other comment, not what I thought the device was going to be initially. Not everything needs a buzzword marketing name so it doesn't need to be like Doctr or something like that, but maybe Medic-in-a-Box or something that conveys this is a medical device.
I imagine you could keep it relatively up-to-date that way.
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/IIAB/FAQ#What_OS_should_I_use.3F
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/IIAB/FAQ#What_services_.28IIAB_app...
The RPi inbuilt module doesn't have the much range, assume the other options are the same, antennas are cheap and even better can be homemade quite easily with instructions and raw materials.
You don't need to use the pi's built-in wireless, but it's a cheap way to get started and covers most use-cases where the users are very near the device. I've got an old Ubiquiti Bullet M2HP mated to a broomstick omni acting as the AP for my IIAB network, and you can hit it from halfway down the block. Further if I get some more height under the 'tenna.
I wish 802.11ah was more common; a low speed long range option would be perfect for lightweight content like this. But until phones have the radios, the use-case just isn't there.
It brought to mind El Paquete Semanal, Cuba's sneakernet culture drop: https://blog.cloudflare.com/the-cuban-cdn/
Https://github.com/i5ik/22120
Ah, wow, that's a very cool way to build up the content.
Edit: Though the way it works as a sort of proxy, it seems like you could combine it with something like this, and it would just work: https://github.com/naoak/chrome-site-spider
I've actually started thinking about how to build a spidering/scraping tool that extracts links/JS, etc from an SPA but would rather not reinvent the wheel if possible.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webaroo
Well forget it then, it might as well have been a billion years ago. Internet in a Box is an ideal name - describes exactly what it does.
I'll just put this here https://youtu.be/FBw-Z8ULwcc
"On your marks, get set...we're riding on the Internet"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDbyYGrswtg
The IT Crowd popularised "have you tried turning it off and on again"
there's thinking along this line, just needs some muscle behind the implementation
For StackOverflow content, the best way to get it offline is through the Kiwix ZIM files (compressed archive suitable for web content).
IIAB will install kiwix-serve by default, then you need to download the relevant ZIM files from here: https://wiki.kiwix.org/wiki/Content_in_all_languages (search for the ones with stackexchange.com )
All the StackOverflow sites are available as Kiwix ZIM files, so if you select the ZIM server to be installed, you can check boxes for whatever content packs you want.
Selling the 32 gig SD card together with an Android app to browse the data seems far better. The majority of the world either has an Android phone (possibly a decade old), or a family member with one.
Have the android app available in the app store and the data downloadable for those who occasionally have internet connectivity (for example visiting a big city), but don't have money for an sd card.
It's unclear what product you're asking that about. The post is from "Internet in a Box" who don't sell anything. Just volunteers that put the software together. They do mention a few things being sold by others that use the work created by "Internet in a Box".
>Selling the 32 gig SD card together with an Android app to browse the data seems far better.
There's a couple of versions of this mentioned. The one used by clinics would fit on that, but it only has medical info. The hardware for the more general purpose one is using a 1TB drive. I assume that's for the Wikipedia + Maps + Literature + Khan Academy content mentioned.
Pushing a 60 year old to understand a completely new paradigm is fine if you are putting the time and energy to assist them until they are proficient, but otherwise they might be better with an old computer and check pages through local wi-fi.
There also enough remote locations where phone connectivity is just bad, and they keep 2G rugged phones around for their main use. In these situation I’d imagine a laptop being easier to use than a second phone just for that.
From what I can tell, even here in South Africa's townships they are using fairly new Samsung, Huawei etc smart phones (always with a broken screen - this happens without exception), albeit cheap ones.
Even my gardener has a Samsung 10 something. Not entirely sure how he can afford it, but I suspect he borrowed a lot of money to afford it. Having next to nothing, the smart phones becomes your communication channel and your media center, news and.. hopefully learning.
You'd be surprised how many poor smart phone users exists in all of Africa. And 3G or better is almost everywhere now.
The pricing has come down and that is truly bridging the digital divide.
India is another country where poorer regions wouldn’t have good cell coverage with most people without phones (let alone smart phones).
If you live in a region that can have luxuries like a gardener, then you’re likely already more affluent than those who this project is targeting.
There's a gray/black market for second hand phones whose provenance is...questionable. As someone who involuntarily contributed a phone to this surprisingly international parallel supply chain, the sellers are probably not selling at Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price.
Are the devices super-low end? Users underestimate how sensitive they are to breakage? Regularly thrown? Broken units that are usable end up there for export or?
I have seen a IIAB device used in a school in a remote area (one IIAB for several clients on the WLAN, old PCs with wired network, phones, and tablets).
The IIAB scripts, https://github.com/iiab/iiab/tree/master/roles , make setting up such servers very easy (including best FOSS apps, wifi hot spot, networking, and web admin interface). You just need to bring one beefy hard disk and you suddenly have access to all of Khan Academy, wikipedia in dozens of languages, and all kinds of other collections of educational and reference materials.
Of course nothing prevents you for copying content over to individual mobile phones and tablets (like takeout), but centralized setup of a "learning resources hotspot" that people can connect to is very efficient first start.
Related: see related info about installing Kolibri and Kiwix in this comment (these are two of the apps that are available via the IIAB install scripts) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26137100
With a local copy of most StackOverflow sites and Wikipedia, I'm pretty well equipped for a certain set of problems.
Next up, I need to figure out how to wield the various github-mirror-an-entire-org scripts I've found, to keep a local copy of Adafruit's github, since their code and libraries power a lot of the hardware I have sitting around. And then maybe a mirror of Seeed Studio's wiki and whatever else I can find.
then this: https://blog.thelifeofkenneth.com/2018/01/off-grid-raspbian-... but I'll need to add more disk space.
You can pick and choose categories to some degree (e.g. I’m downloading some to get the videos as well), but I think this leads to some redundancy.
134gb for stackoverflow, but it's from 2019. This guy does sql files, but viewing is another story: https://www.brentozar.com/archive/2015/10/how-to-download-th...
There are torrent links here: https://wiki.kiwix.org/wiki/Content_in_all_languages but I think in iOS, you're stuck downloading over http.
We have 20 years on this. I get in the 90's it would have seemed like a quick win. But it didn't work. This inability to move on is frustrating.
If you care , which most people don't. But if you do, what you want on them is porn and copyright TV. If you don't understand why I can't really help you, it's a pretty simple idea.
You can't do that obviously, so how do you do it by proxy?
That is the solution to find.
One simple idea, find places without internet, find a cafe and sell them Starlink. You charity sets it up for free, they pay something per month. Report what happens. I'd bet it'd be very cost effective. Unfortunately it is boring and people don't get to feel good about themselves, so it won't get funded, so perhaps it's just as dumb.
Are you just saying that actual free internet access would be better? Sure, that's true, but not practical everywhere.
Official Sneakernet is terrabytes of TV (Government 'sanctioned' without porn or politics) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Paquete_Semanal
If this is what it is, then I'm totally wrong. This is a really good idea. A wireless hotspot, anyone can setup to distribute terabytes of material to others, preferably with a charge/login option.
Years ago we did this with a wireless access point 'Login for free movies" in our apartment. But couldn't (at the time) work out an easy way to distribute the AVI's once randoms connected.
Wikipedia not clear IIAB is this and I didn't see it from the web site - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet-in-a-Box
To do this, what's vital is cafe owners and teachers and students can buy this product and easily dump stuff on. A movies section, comics section, a books section they can make pretty, they need ownership in their collations.
Their FAQ is on OLPC's site which had a horrific attitude of not allowing others to use their products and locking them down.
Once you pay someone to set IIAB up, giving them Starlink would be around the same price. IIAB has to be open and easy to buy.
> They cite examples of it working
Where? The Dominican Republic video was 4 years ago. Is it up and running? These things are easy to send in a team for and have running for a few months. I would be surprised if one was running for more than a year without an expat there.
> See Mexico's live demo and these medical examples used by clinics in Asia and Africa especially, as hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation (Wikipedia).
They have a lot of flat garbage that if you really want you can just put on your phone, I can see those.
A database (For Africa as you mention) is a big deal, it's queryable store of info. It's rare to see these open source (or CC) Does it use MySql? MSAccess? How hard is it to set up?
I don't think they will have any. Databases need to be updated, it's easier to add 4G if they are needed.
Chemwatch did a pretty good setup with CD that did the 3 month updates. In the developed world is still ran into problems with being up to date enough, I think most would be online now. And it cost money because it's a hard thing to do.
You can't just say, they will 'run datavbases on the IIAB' That's an ongoing commitment that needs to be supported. Else it becomes another bricked device in the NGO graveyard.
Have you read the article? It has links.
https://www.google.com/search?q=database+site%3Ainternet-in-...
This is why I want to know the name so I understand what you think IIAB does.
You seem to think these communities can skip the internet development of the Developed West which was - Academia -> Porn -> Shopping -> Illegal Movies -> Legal streaming movies-> Getting close to formal education
But I'm not getting this leap you think it can do.
A super hardened computer, drop proof, waterproof, weatherproof, sandproof, rated for at least 20 years of use.
No moveable parts and everything stored on PROM.
It would come with a kit to use any power source possible
That should be able to survive in remote village with no supervision required for a long time.
I did not imagine a PI with a plastic case and a standard harddrive.
Clearly the rugged one would cost magnitudes more and things like WordPress and other programs like it would not be possible on rugged version either.
I would think that as a plus not a minus.
If a village fills up a blog or some other such software with large amounts of data and the harddrive crashes its gone. Does not come with a backup as far asI can see
But you can use those very same scripts to install the content on your sandproof ultramachine. What's the gripe?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_IT_Crowd
https://youtu.be/Rt0spqQtMKg