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Off the Grid Messenger (github.com/trevorattema)
194 points by velmu on June 29, 2021 | hide | past | favorite | 86 comments



Honestly, I have been fantasizing about a device used purely for text messaging, with multiple connection modes (LoRA, LTE, Wifi, etc) and then just dedicate it to messaging. A small device just to send and receive messages either directly, and/or integrate with popular messaging services, but only messaging.

Something to optimize battery, screen (only really need Eink or something low power), and other aspects for that mode of communication.


It's outdated now but there was the Peek Email device which gets pretty close and is, IMO, beautiful hardware:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peek_(mobile_Internet_device)


Oh that is really nice hardware. But ya, similar to that.

Maybe I will sit down and see if I can design something myself.


ARMAchat.


https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/precursor

I was half-interested in buying a pair of these to try that with. However, an honest assessment of my ability to commit and complete it made me skip it. If this is successful and a second device (or less expensive version of this) comes out I'll reconsider.


Not exactly what you mentioned, but the Punkt MP02 has support for SMS and Signal I believe.

https://www.punkt.ch/en/products/mp02-4g-mobile-phone/


I was looking into a device to use for on-call, intending to get a "dumb phone" that was a trade for a long battery life and a small form factor in exchange for only being able to call and text (which is all I would need anyway for on-call). A lot of "dumb phones" no longer work in the US, or are on the way out. The Punkt MP02 is one of the exceptions that has the specs I want and has 4G support. Unfortunately, while I am sure it is worth every penny, I couldn't afford the $350 price tag.


Have you tried AliExpress. They have loads of phones. Many dumb phones that are really cheap.


Thank you for mentioning this device! I have been wondering if there was a feature phone + signal!


You are pretty much describing pager 2.0. Interesting how the world goes around


It’s the ereader for phones. Sure you can read books on your phone or tablet, but having a separate, dedicated device that is free of other distractions and optimized for the specific task is incredibly useful for a lot of people. But I don’t really see it as technology going around, but more as trial and error for what is better bundled and what isn’t. Like I don’t see the calculator or voice recorder making a huge comeback for your average person.


ya, I can see that. I think its just the overwhelming nature of every little thing going on right now. Having a way to take a break but not completely be off the grid would be nice.


Having a way to take a break but not completely be off the grid would be nice.

A smart watch gets me most of the way there.

I can still get and send text messages to my wife, and look at our shared grocery list, and do simple technology-assisted things. But I'm free of the temptation to look at HN, or doomscroll a news app, or participate in similar over-distractions.


Smartwatches are the opposite for me. It feels so oppressive to have a notification machine actually tethered to my body.


Here you go: https://www.zoleo.com/en-au/satellite-communicator/. It switches seamlessly between wifi cellular and satellite


Reminds me of the 90s when people had beepers, and everyone would send each other long strings of numbers that they knew how to translate into sentences. Beepers were in a way, the original texting device.


I understand your point, here - so don't take offense, please.

The Hellschreiber was invented in the 1920s, and the "protocol" is still in use today. CW transmission of symbols (Morse code, for instance) began around 1913, this is after, of course, spark gap transmitters (such as those used on the Titanic) and telegraph.

I personally cannot understand or use CW/Morse, but i have radios and software that do it for me. There are extremely tiny, battery powered CW radios, usually costing $50-$300. If one can use CW and understand it, that's wireless, telephoneless communication. Hellschreiber, though, requires a display (or clever OCR, due to the way it is transmitted over 3 identical horizontal lines), but a chiclet style keyboard could be used.

Unfortunately i don't know of any consumer-y way to do any of this. APRS(c. 1984) 100% could do tiny, text-only messaging, and in fact does already, but requires licensing. I can send a text message to anyone at an internet connected device with a screen, or anyone, anywhere with a radio that supports it. X.25(1976) also exists, as does PACTOR(1991), both of which in theory don't need much more than a display and a way to input characters.

Back to my point, though, telegraphs have existed since before 1792, and the idea was to be able to see semaphore further away. Electrical telegraphy(1809) was first 35 wires in 35 tubes of acid and the operator had to watch for bubbles in each tube. But about 110 years after that, teletype became more prevalent, and there we have Hellschreiber.


Always nice to see people mention radio stuff on HN.

Just a quick remark, I believe Hellschreiber is transmitted as a single line, just displayed as multiple in order to get around the skew caused by timing differences.


You're correct, although it's not technically "a line" it's a column of "on" or "off" - the receiver is, per the protocol, supposed to output at least one copy of each character. The wiki mentions that having three possible rows allows for deviations in timing, however, three rows also allows for deviation of frequency.

Today's radios, combined with FLOSS (or at least 'source available') software can get timing synchronized within 20ms, including the delay in actually getting the RF out of the 'antenna' - pci latency, soundcard buffer latency, radio soundcard latency (if you're using a radio that connects via USB, see ic-7100 for example). When I use WSJT-X, which is "weak signal" software, i routinely notice less than 1s timing deviation median. WSJT-X relies on the system clock that the software uses to be accurate, as transmissions start at published times - like exactly on the minute boundary, :00. all reception reports include the time delta.

As another data point, slow hell mode uses 30hz of bandwidth, and i have used kiwisdr websites to 'hear myself' nearly everywhere in the world using slow hell mode. No one else is using this mode, so i generally have to use kiwisdr to test different modes, antennas, and radios. Another open source project, iirc.


Great details and history here. Thanks.


I think I'd get 90% of the value from such a device, out of having a regular smartphone, but locked down to running only a single app, that works as follows:

• The app is an email client, so anyone with an email address can reach you through it, and you can send email through it;

• but the email client is a proprietary one, associated with its own special email service provider (so you have a separate email address with them, and if you want to receive your regular email there, you have to set up forwarding);

• and the email servers that this email service provider runs are special, in that they will deliver others' messages sent to your address, to your account's IMAP inbox, only after a 24hr delay; and they will forward the messages you send through the SMTP server, out to the next server in the SMTP chain, only after a 24hr delay.

Given such an app+service, people could still reach me, but nobody could ever reach me synchronously. And I couldn't reach them synchronously, either.

It'd be like the feeling of latency that comes from corresponding using physical letters, but with those letters happening to arrive wherever you are, rather than at a postbox. (I guess most similar to corresponding using letters when you're at a war front. A courier walks up to you and hands you a letter, sent from home 24hrs before.)

Given the delay, there'd be no real point to messaging anyone more than once a day. I'd write an e-letter to each person, updating them on what's been going on with me, and then I'd turn my phone off. No point in wasting battery on it when any message is going to be at least 24hrs old when I receive it. May as well just check it in the evening, or the next day.

If I see or hear something nice, I can take a picture / record a voice memo of it with the smartphone per usual, and include that picture in the letter I write that day.

I could even vlog, I suppose. (Do you call it vlogging if it's done over email instead of over the web?)

I could still subscribe to newsletters.

And I could ask people to forward me clippings of interesting things they find on the web, as if it was 1996.

But doomscrolling on social media? Impossible.

Acting as a remote IT helpdesk oracle to diagnose some failure someone's having? Also impossible.

If someone really needed a specific, single question answered, they could ask me, but only if they don't need the answer urgently. Better to just ask someone else, unless they don't have any better option.

But having an "evergreen" conversation about an interesting topic would still work just fine.

Heck, even participating in a Play By Email (PBEM) tabletop RPG — do people still run those? — would work fine.


You could set all that up pretty easily and just check your email once a day. If you lack the discipline you could set up servers to handle the 24 hour forwarding. An old smartphone or PDA with Wifi could work as well. You could potentially even setup some sort of Dial in if you wanted to really do it old school.


Part of the point is that I also want to precommit to not just changing my email client's IMAP configuration back to my regular email server (so that, importantly, nobody can demand that I do that in order to get some work done.)

So it would really need to be a special single-provider email client app, like Gmail's mobile app is. One that has no ability to talk to any other server than the 24hr-latency one.

And at that point, with an app like that published in real app stores, the 24hr-latency server backing that app would become a real production capital-S Service with lots of users. One I'd rather someone other than me was running.


> importantly, nobody can demand that I do that in order to get some work done.

I mean, even if you go to great lengths to choose to subscribe to a particular email service that does this and choose to buy a phone that only does this, an employer could still demand you use a regular phone or regular email for correspondence or choose to not hire/work with you. I really can't imagine most people would be like "huh your phone only works in this one very peculiar way, I guess there's just nothing else that can be done about that." They'd just tell you to get a regular email.

To other people there would be little difference between you choosing to use a service and device like this as you only using your email client once every 24 hours. Its ultimately the same thing: you're choosing to put yourself in a position where you can't be reached for 24 hours. Shifting the blame to some 3rd party isn't really effective when you theoretically can change back and sign up for a regular email account at any moment.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not demanding you live your life any particular way. Personally I don't care how you choose to live your life and I agree we could all use some time to detach from our always on always connected communicators. If you only want to be able to communicate by a 24 hour delay, go for it. Just don't expect everyone to suddenly be OK with it because you went out of your way to choose a service provider that facilitates that. I imagine you will encounter a good bit of friction doing it with the way society works right now.


> I really can't imagine most people would be like "huh your phone only works in this one very peculiar way, I guess there's just nothing else that can be done about that."

Think about it like: I'm already on vacation, that my boss three levels up (CEO) approved, including explicitly approving / encouraging-as-company-policy my use of this device/service during my vacation. Now boss-two-levels-up (some VP) is trying to cover their own ass for something they didn't do, by telling me to do urgent work during my vacation. The only way to actually get them to go away in a way that doesn't result in awful office politics happening to me, is to make it technically impossible for me to be reached, or for me to do synchronous work. Thus the device, and the public/institutional knowledge that I'm only reachable through such a delayed mechanism.

That way, rather than me having to make waves (which could get turned around on me, since I'm not there to defend myself), the VP would have to make waves about me not responding — which would expose publicly to the rest of the company the fact that they're trying to make me work on my vacation, and cause the CEO to come down on them. Very likely, they'd realize that, and just give up on the idea of shirking their responsibility off to me.

(This is all hypothetical; I don't even have a boss.)


When I'm on approved and documented vacation time I just quit syncing my work emails and disable push notifications from the chat app. My work machine stays powered off in the bag unless somehow an emergency managed to break in to my life. If for some reason I'm curious about how things are in the office I'll do a manual sync of the email or pop on the chat. No need for a separate device but ultimately the same deal.

This is also a good reason for putting a vacation auto-responder on your email/chat. You then have a documented paper trail that you're not supposed to respond so they can't later argue they thought you were shirking off work.


Oh, a pager 2.0! An omni-pager!

But once you consider an email client, it turns much larger.


Zawinski's Law


That's what the JioPhone does, but only in India :)


Anyone remember the cybiko? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybiko


LGR did a pretty good review/retrospective on that recently: https://youtu.be/38VEBOseAzM


Someone in the comments mentioned that the range is significantly lower in the US version due to FCC regulations. Someone replied "but you can flash the UK version to get better range. (...to which someone replied, "but that would be illegal" :)


Oh man, I either had one, or something similar. Or at least wanting one. I thought it would be cool to have dedicated messaging devices.


> I thought it would be cool to have dedicated messaging devices.

You mean something like phones?


Like walkie-talkies. Phones only work as communication devices in vicinity of the network towers.


Amateur radio can kind do this. In fact there are text message digital modes like APRS. With digipeaters in the area I can send messages from a 5W handheld around the city. You can also then see APRS data online through sites like aprs.fi

The only thing is there's no encryption on amateur radio.


The other "only thing is ..." is that there aren't any devices.

Whatever (text messaging on a HAM band) you want to use, there is not a qwerty (or touchscreen) device that you can use to compose those messages.

You either need to connect a computer to such a device or (I think) there are one or two handheld radios that you can type out messages using multi-tap.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-tap


I like my th-d74 quite a bit. I even use the aprs to sms bridge when I'm out of cell service and in a pinch.


Yeah I agree it's somewhat frustrating there isn't an all in one device with a QWERTY keyboard but I usually Bluetooth pair my phone to my radio and use APRSDroid for a better messaging experience.


Why not a satalite messenger? I'm doing a lot of solo travel in remote areas with limited to no cell service. My Inreach Mini pairs to my phone and then I can text whomever I want and turn on location tracking when I want people to know where I am.

It's worked really well and I've abused the unlimited plan chatting with a few close people while lonely in the woods.


Perhaps, but that doesn't mean phones are not "dedicated", though.


My phone is more of a portable web browser that can send messages.


I was talking more about those that used to be decent self-defense weapons.


I loved mine!


I had one!


Could anyone knowledgeable about radio tell me what's the pros/cons of this over something like APRS [0]? I guess for pros this wouldn't require a ham radio license and it's encrypted, but APRS is possible out of the box for certain radios?

[0] http://www.aprs.org/aprs-messaging.html


I do agree that APRS seems a better fit, especially since you have control over antenna design/placement as well as power levels, meaning you could go farther.

In the pro category, though, this device is pocketable, and I don't think there are very many APRS-enabled radios that easily fit into jeans pocket (I'd love to be proven wrong). You could cobble together something -- a Baofeng UV3R+ or especially a BF-T1 easily fits into a pocket, but that's just the radio. You need an audio cable/TNC and a phone to make it an APRS setup.


Kenwood th-d74a has everything built in to do just this, I have used it for a while with APRS auto sending location on the go, sending through APRS to SMS and to email addresses


Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't encryption for APRS (and amateur radio in general) illegal [1]?

So if you are going for encrypted platform might as well use a less regulated frequency range.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packet_radio


Amateur Radio gets access to a large chunk of the radio spectrum for free. In exchange, they are expected to provide a pool of those knowledgeable in the art of communication in the event of conflict or emergency.

Amateur Frequencies can not be used for commercial use, nor can communications be encrypted. There are a wide variety of modes in use, from old fashioned Morse code through all the latest SDR driven techniques.


You are correct... cannot encrypt anything voice or data on any Amateur Radio frequencies.


This is obscene isn't it?

So you can't talk to anyone privately , everything has to through some NSA infected, zerodayed, hyper complex backdoored software/hardware?

Seems to me like the "powers that be", doesn't want anyone to be able to talk to eachother without them knowing.


No lol it's because amateur radio is not for people to have private discussions on, it's a public RF space for hobby usage.

You can have encrypted discussions all you want on private usage frequency allocations.


The main reason that Amateur Radio has survived world wide is that it is largely self policing, which means that it has almost zero regulatory overhead.

But for Self Regulation to work, all ham communications must be in the clear.

Once encryption was allowed it would take only a short time for commercial users to completely swamp the ham bands.


That's a fair point.


APRS has the huge advantage of existing repeaters and igates all over the country.

But has the disadvantage a bit higher barrier to entry (ham radio license required), and cannot be encrypted.


Ohh I didn't think about the existing infrastructure that's there for APRS, too.


Several radios have built in APRS messaging, but it’s extremely frustrating to use as non have implemented predictive text entry.

That said, the SX1276 covers both 2m and 70cm, and has FSK mode, so this project has the hardware to do APRS, though I don’t see schematics on how the RF chain is implemented.


When I want to actually send messages on APRS, I usually pair my Kenwood D74A to my phone by Bluetooth and use APRSDroid to operate. That way I can leave my radio clipped to my bag/in the car/on a table and have the same kind of keyboard as my phone.


I’d be all over that HT if they would enable DMR. It has all the hardware to do it, and you’d get Kenwood quality in a DMR. Right now I have an Anytone (Chinese crap) for DMR and Yeasu for Fusion.


This Nokia e63 reminds me of the time when phones used to be so much fun and there was a lot of variety. All the phones are essentially the same now.

When Phones Were Fun – And Nokia Was Crazy : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOZi-7V11k8


Unihertz still makes fun phones. I've been using a Jelly 2 [0] and I'm getting the Titan Pocket [1] in September (assuming it ships. They were right on schedule with the Jelly 2). I don't use my phone much outside of phone calls, text and casual browsing so I can't speak much to how well they work with more mainstream apps, but they work well for me.

[0] https://www.unihertz.com/jelly-2.html

[1] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jellyphone/titan-pocket...


Hopefully the Jelly 2 works a lot better than the Jelly Pro.

I bought one last year for work as I was finding it too stressful to use my personal phone for on-call, something that I could easily carry anywhere and cheap enough that I didn't mind it thrown in a drawer when I wasn't on-call.

What I found is that the Jelly Pro's performance was so bad that apps often couldn't send notifications properly, even for the stock Dialer app. You'd have to open the app and then you'd receive notifications that you missed 5 calls. This happened so frequently I couldn't use it as an on-call device. I had all the OS updates installed as well, and no non-stock apps installed.


I haven't had any issues like that. I severely underestimated the difficulty of typing on a touchscreen that small though. Portrait mode is impossible, landscape is usable but it's all keyboard, nothing else is really visible, which is why I decided to try the Titan so soon after getting the Jelly 2.


What Nokia got right that no phone ever seemed to after was being able to turn on the torch strictly with buttons. Can do it entirely by touch without flutzing with the GUI.

I think it was to hold the bottom left and top right key and ON it goes.


Great video, but god those intense focus blur effects gave me a headache.


Keep wondering if a smartphone maker will build in a point to point radio system like goTenna [1] or Beartooth [2].

Ideally everyone would agree on a standard and you can just text message / share location with anyone in range and mesh back to the cell network, one can hope.

1. https://gotenna.com

2. https://beartooth.com


Are there any commercially available devices like this?


There is meshtastic, which is open source and uses pretty cheap hardware:

https://meshtastic.letstalkthis.com/


That’s not what I would consider ‘commercially available’ - it’s a project with software and some hardware recommendations to build it yourself.

I’d pay decent money for an actual off-the-shelf, working set of these.


Same. this is what has kept me with the various analog family radio service devices. I just need p2p texting within one neighborhood. Anything on top is a bonus. But I don't have confidence in my building skills, and the GoTennas are too expensive. Anyone offer a meshtastic build out service? ;)


If it helps, the T-Beam (first link in hardware section) has meshtastic pre-installed. But yes, it's still sort of a kit since you need to solder the 4 pins for the display and bring your own 18650 battery (and 3D print a case if you like).


It's close, you can buy hardware commercially with it pre-installed. So you can just buy a working set of them.

But they aren't 100% finished hardware, no cases and such.


Yes, I forget what it’s called. It connects to your cellphone over bluetooth and then creates a mesh network with other people’s radio devices to text each other in the wilderness. Also, if one person has cell service it can route texts out through them.

It had a kickstarter and then later they shifted more to forest fire fighters and search and rescue. I will edit this comment if I remember what its called.

Its called goTenna

Here’s a few things you may be interested in https://www.tripsavvy.com/gadgets-for-backcountry-communicat...


Not exactly the same, but goTenna Mesh delivers similar functionality.

It connects to your phone via Bluetooth then transmits data via UHF to a mesh network of devices.


Alternatively, if you want to get global coverage, there's https://www.bivystick.com/bivy-stick-satellite-communicator/

Disclosure: I worked on an implementation of the Android-side Bluetooth stack for this. It's... decent.


It reminds of this project[0] using lora protocol and custom icb. The advantage of using lora is that it can go up to 25 miles and uses 1/10th of an amp when in use so it can last for years.

[0]:https://makezine.com/projects/armachat-lora-communicator?vgo...


This just looks amazing, really sad there is just NO way I'll ever be able to solder this myself hehe. This would be a very interesting kickstarter project.


Agreed!



I'm fascinated by off the grid solutions. Does this need any special hardware to run? Considering phones have radio/wifi equipment, is it possible to create a software only solution that can install and run off any phone?


The end of the second paragraph:

> an ISM LoRA radio


I don't know much about this. Is this pretty much mandatory for such an off the grid solution or could the radio equipment in the average phone also play the role, maybe with different effectiveness?


> The e63 doesn't support touch and TouchGFX doesn't work with keypads or buttons so interfacing the keypad to the GUI engine was not a trivial exercise.

I found this amusing, considering my keyboard runs on a pair of STM32 blackpills


This reminds me of Zipit Z2.


AN0M v2? :) :)




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