Public / Pirate Community Radio

Pirate Radio
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In this collaboration with David Elliot, Patrick Tierney, and Tiffany Pan, we proposed a do-it-yourself, decentralized bulletin board system that uses FM radio for transmitting messages received by phone. In addition, each transmitter node in the system is capable to connect with other physically-near nodes in a mesh-network fashion. In this way, the resulting array of low-power radio transmitters can still cover a large area, while rendering localization methods aimed at single, high power transmitters useless.

The system tries to be as cheap as possible using common off the shelf products and open source software. The system is designed to facilitate international connectivity between local communities through the use of Voice over IP. Members of a local community can become more connected by having a pervasive forum to voice their interests and concerns. Multiple communities with related interests can foster a sense of connectedness, even internationally.