The Serval Project

25/09/2020

Well, that took longer than intended, but we finally have Serval Rhizome store-and-forward traffic able to flow over the intergrated data modem in Codan Envoy HF radios. This means it is now possible to setup islands of Serval Mesh networks that could be on, well, islands, separated by hundreds of kilometres, and be able to provide a text-messaging service that is dependent on no cellular or satellite infrastructure, and without cost for users. This will be useful for those places where cellular coverage is unlikely to get any time soon, and/or where people are unable to afford or access it, even if it is in principle available. Messages take between about 1 and 5 minutes to deliver, depending on message size and a variety of other factors, as the following graph shows. Daily message capacity is between about 850 and 3,500 messages per day -- more than enough to support casual and official communications for isolated village communities of a few hundred people. More info over at the blog: http://servalpaul.blogspot.com/2020/09/chasing-down-last-lbard-hf-tx-queue.html

Next step is to finish the LoRa radio integration, so then we can have long-range HF links, and UHF LoRa or RFD900 links for the shorter distances.

16/02/2019

Note that for the time being, the Serval Mesh app is not available from Google Play, because we purposely target a really old version of Android, so that you can run it on quite old devices. For now, you can get it direct from http://developer.servalproject.org/files/chat/ which has the latest builds (or http://developer.servalproject.org/files/ if you want the old versions).

24/12/2018

Our hearts go out to all those affected by the recent tradgedy in Indonesia near Anak Krakatau. This is an issue dear to our hears, with our own friends in Vanuatu recently having a narrow escape from the tsunami that was there last recently. There are hundreds of millions of people at risk from these kinds of events, and we need to find ways to provide robust, long-lasting and cost-effective early warning systems so that we can lessen the risk.

15/11/2018

Proof-of-concept port of Seval to iOS made first light today. Interoperates with Android version, and connects to Mesh Extenders nicely. https://servalpaul.blogspot.com/2018/11/serval-chat-ios-port-finally-emerges.html

13/11/2018

We are just wrapping up the proof-of-concept of a new technology for tsunami, bush-fire and other hazard early-warning delivery to even the most isolated locations. Very excited about the prospect. We believe we have reduced the cost by around 100x compared to the traditional approach -- hopefully enough to make blanket provision of tsunami-early warning throughout the Indo-Pacific Ring of Fire.
https://servalpaul.blogspot.com/2018/11/slashing-cost-of-tsunami-and-bushfire.html

06/11/2018

Over the past year or so, we have been quietly working away on a low-cost solution for tsunami and other hazard warning. Today our work was covered in the Australian media:

The new system uses cheap, simple satellite receivers and airhorns to deliver a warning system for $200 instead of $10,000 — if they can get funding for further trials.

05/04/2018

Today we setup an indoor test network of Mesh Extenders, designed to make it easy for us to reproduce and verify fixing of bugs identified in the field. The result is a multi-hop UHF network, with a few good links, and one rather dodgy one, which is great for simulating real-life conditions. We have already used it to confirm that some recent bug fixing has been effective at solving a message delivery bug we hit in Vanuatu.

After the successful bug hunting last week, this week I have turned my attention to setting up to easily verify whether the bugs have been ...

01/04/2018

A number of nasty bugs that we encountered during testing in Vanuatu have been found and fixed. Outdoor testing with real hardware will hopefully resume at the Uni this week, in preparation for updating the units in Vanuatu and re-testing performance there.

During our trips to Vanuatu last year we identified a number of bugs with LBARD, which have been sitting on the queue to be fixed for a whil...

22/03/2018

A few people have asked for prototype Mesh Extenders lately. In response, we are sounding out the demand for us to get a small (= expensive unit price) production run of the current generation of prototypes. To be clear: This is for EXPERIMENTAL units (and the price reflect that). We will make a separate announcement of commercial availability when the time is right.

A quick post in response to a few enquiries we have had recently, where folks have been asking about getting their hands on some prototype S...

22/02/2018

It's been a while since the last news, but we are ramping back up for 2018, working on satellite broadcast, HF radio integration, and generally getting the Mesh Extenders ready for general use. Also, we are very happy to announce that there is a group working on porting the Serval Mesh to Ubuntu Touch phones -- which might once again offer the chance for ad-hoc Wi-Fi communications between phones.

It's a been a while since the last post, in part due to summer holidays here in Australia, and in part due to various other things taking my...

05/11/2017

On the way back to Vanuatu for the next field trip in support of our pilot there. Focus this time will hopefully be on shaking down and optimising the UHF radio performance between Mesh Extenders.

18/10/2017

Just finished visiting our friends at NZ Red Cross to transfer knowledge on how to flash Mesh Extenders in preparation for their eventual use by NZ RC's IT&Telecommunications Emergency Response Unit (IT&T ERU).

I am briefly in Wellington, NZ, visiting NZ Red Cross on my way to the Global Humanitarian Technology Conference where we have a bunch of pa...