Mesh network based Internet access

Hello all,

The title explains it. I got two LightBlue Beans from Hackaday. I am ordering the nRF24L01+ from ICStation and will also start coding. However, I might take a break because I have to study for finals. Until then, talk to you all later!

As I said in my last project log, I want to cut down on prices since this is for rural and developing communities. Therefore, This project will only need one Bean in the master center, unlike in my previous models, where one other Bean was needed as a repeater for the HTTP requests from the Internet-deprived computers. This keeps the price down as the Bean is $30 which is expensive. The Master center should be set up by other people with more money, so using a Bean there would not be expensive for these operators.

I will update the image to reflect these changes.

Hello all,

I have recently started a project where I try to give Internet access to rural parts of the world. My approach combines Mesh-networks with WiFi and Bluetooth while minimizing the cost.

Basically, there are modules that send HTTP requests through RF to a master center, where the commands are sent to different computers using Bluetooth and WiFi.

Right now, I am working on using a LightBlue Bean (hopefully will get it from Hackaday! ;) ) to receive messages that are HTTP requests, send it to a computer, then the computer processes the requests, sends it to the Bean, and the Bean sends it back to the RF transciever. For now, the RF transciever will be a nRF24L01+ for 2.4 Ghz RF. I will use this library. The data will be sent as serial data. I will use Node-RED to minimize the programming required. I will use the serial node for the Bean. It will save the data into a data file, which will be read by Python. For python, I will use the httplib module. The data, which is the HTML mainly, will be saved into a file that is constantly updated. A node for Node-RED will upload this onto the LightBlue Bean which will send it using the nRF24L01 to the computer requiring computer access.

The receiving end process still needs to be worked out. However, I currently won't be testing this. I hope that I can get the Bean from Hackaday and get the other components for cheap (nRF24L01+ is only a few dollars). I am keeping the budget low as it needs to be cheap since it is meant for rural and developing communities.