In partnership with KK6LZB from LNACS, I've put together a highly integrated, ruggedized and powersipping server for use on the regional emergency data network. A single Raspberry Pi 4, safely overclocked in a CoolerMaster Pi Case 40, offers connected users the following digital services:
Mesh Email
Winlink Email
Voice, Video & Text chat
Desktop sharing and video conferencing
VoIP (PBX server)
File creation, storage, sharing and retention
The beta version of this integrated disk image is available on the mesh now. If you'd like to help test or deploy your own build of this, get in touch with me and we'll coordinate getting you an SD card with services pre-installed and generic admin ID and passwords set
KM6SLF
Sure. What equipment would you run it on? We're working on an X86/AMD64 architecture version. I can send either that or the ARM64 version designed for Raspberry Pi 4B.
The image file is too big to host on the internet (~90GB). It would likely exceed most people's residential high speed data plans, and it would definitely greatly exceed any upload limits on my service. The process would be roughly as follows:
Email me the following:
The emcom organization you're associated with,
a logo file if available,
time zone you'll be operating in
Let me know the call sign or desired user ID of the person who will be administering the services. I'll need that to configure the account. I'll set a generic password, so the user will have to change that once they get the service up.
I'll also need you to provide the storage medium you want the image loaded to. It will need to be at least 128GB capacity. I recommend a SATA SSD. If you plan to run a Raspberry Pi in an Argon M.2 case, I can load it to an M.2 SATA drive, which is also a high-performance option. If you'd like, I can also load it to a MicroSD card. You can either send me one you already have, order one and have it shipped to me, or let me know what you'd like and send me the money to purchase it for you.
Once I receive the storage medium I'll flash the disk image to the storage. Work is pretty busy these days (semiconductor industry) so give me a few days. If I have the proper device (X86 or ARM64 device) I'll test it out, and once verified working I'll send it to you. If support is needed, I can jump on a virtual meeting or correspond by phone or email to help get the services set up.
As of right now, if you move forward with this you'd be the first person to get it who wasn't directly involved in its development, so you and your organizations feedback would be greatly appreciated. You can email me at my call sign at gmail.
Could this be implemented as a packer or snsible build so that there wouldn't be a need to transmit the image?
90GB isn't too big to host with a torrent if you could keep a seed up.
I'm interested in learning more about this setup. I want to deploy something similar for our group based in Wellington, New Zealand. Do you have any information about this available online?
After looking at the initial posting I was going to suggest that the a presentation be done about the setup and maybe presented to something like RATPAC. But then I realized that the posting was 2 years old.
Most everything that I see on the list is just a package that can be added to a Raspberry Pi or a Linux machine/VM. MeshChat is not quite there yet for a Linux install, so it must be using version 1.02. The VOIP capabilities is really just an Asterisk server and I would layer MeshPhone on top of it. NextCloud and Citadel are pretty standard, so no problems there. FTP can be configured so no problems there either if you need something beyond what you can do with NextCloud. TeamTalk server should not be a problem either.
That really just leaves pulling the public documents down and installing them as templates in the NextCloud instance. There are probably a couple of other convenient things that could be done.
It should also be noted that it appears that this may be an abandoned project. I don't see any service being announced that looks comparable to what is described. I do some Grandstream phones attached to his nodes, but he is not registered in the MeshPhone WhitePages or have a PBX registered in the MeshPhone network. So maybe a little bit still exists?
73
Gerard, WTØF