I am wondering if there is a way to connect an old wifi capable android phone to a node without

utilizing a regular router as a go between?

I know there 'probably' is a way to do it, I just haven't either located it or I am not fully

understanding mesh nodes that well.

Just thinking that this may be a way to entice other hams into checking out hsmm and all.

James W8ISS

No, not unless you write/configure some software for your Android phone. 

You'd need to figure out how to put the Android's wifi into ad-hoc mode, which seems to be difficult to do.  Then you'd need to load OLSR and configure it to connect to broadband-hamnet.  There are probably some other steps I'm not aware of.

Well WX5U,

I am not a part of the development team either and do get this hsmm-mesh confused ALL the

time :)

Now to get serious, I was just wondering if it could be possible because I have been tinkering around

with softphone apps and software and setting up a raspberry pi with asterisk last weekend. Got asterisk

running great as far as I can tell. Even had my cheap repurposed android (no carrier) phone connected

to asterisk with a softphone app. I consider that an amazing accomplishment since I only have started

to go back to school for networking and haven't even gotten to the networking classes.

Consider this to get more users of hsmm - repurposing someones 'outdated' android phone so that they can have continuous coverage and talk as if they were on a two meter repeater? Much like

repurposing the wrt54g's. How many old androids do you have sitting around gathering dust that

could be used?

Now to figure out the five Linksys SPA's I have coming (have gotten three so far) from sales on epay

and get them configured with the four meshed routers and the raspberry pi. Still have to get the

rasp pi loaded with hsmm-pi ware so that I can have that as a stand alone. Will be testing this out

at FD this weekend for the fun and giggles of doing it. Also planning a IR camera onsite that can be

remotely controlled from a users interface.

Currently trying to talk one of the local clubs into using a hsmm link for their ancillary control of their

two meter repeater and give up the POTS line they have that costs them. Same one that I am doing

FD with this year.

James W8ISS

It's a great idea.  

I've heard from a fairly reliable source that Androids are sort of booby trapped to not go into ad-hoc mode.  Maybe someone has figured out a workaround.  The wifiexplorer android app seems to do it, so maybe there is a way.

I'm in WAY over my head here in terms of putting something like that together myself.

A little googling of android OLSR seems promising. 

http://www.olsr.org/?q=olsr_on_android for instance.

Besides just the adhoc issue of Android phones it is also wise to consider that could/would occur with the described scenario.

1) RF Range of handset:  RF Range of a Cell Phone will be limited compared to that of a mesh node. The antenna on board is shielded by the person, phone case, glass, etc. This reduces effective range of a phone.

2) Battery Life:  Normally cellphones turn off the wifi when a user is not touching the phone. To remain an active part of the mesh the phone would need the wifi on at all times. This will kill the battery fast.

Ignoring the battery life and assuming its only connected when a user has their hand on the device. Depending how your connected to the mesh at that point there is the potential to pollute a good portion of the RF space with duplicate information.  Assuming the local node is a high gain unit of some sorts and that the phone is needing to use that unit to receive signals from a far away node it will end up broadcasting the call across the full coverage area of the high power station  that is on the local site as it repeats from the remote node to the local phone.   This would take up RF space from other users for miles on packets that only need to go hundreds of feet. Now if the mesh is a lot of very small very limited coverage nodes than this becomes less of an issue but so far all networks I have seen deployed seem to follow this longer distance model

This same issue of duplicate packets also occur if one uses a pi with a small thumb size dongle and are relying on a node already being local to get out to the world.  At that sort of scenario a hardline, or an AP on channel 11 becomes more useful to keep the mesh channel as clear as possible.

This might seem like overkill to think about right now, but in a few years may be a significant issue if a lot of setups like this pop up.  If they follow a hub and spoke type model like we need to do out here in San Diego with hilltops acting as repeater sites.  A field node (spoke) repeating a packet for the use of a user 200feet away from it  can tie up the channel for the entire area (the hub is hearing the repeat.) While is is perfectly fine when no other path could exist, when we have the ability to move it off channel this becomes something we should do.