AMPRNet: Amateur Packet Radio Network

Hams are the last to go offline and the first to come back on wherever a natural disaster strikes. They are due to their de-centralized nature incredibly resistant and often function as the first points of contact to provide information on the scope of the damage. Many hams are well prepared for this and have their own backup power, just in case. It's a pity that this 'hobby' (though if you'd walk into some ham shacks that word seems very inadequate) is slowly dying out. Most hams are well past their middle age, and the younger ones tend to work exclusively with bought equipment. Maybe the new 'maker' trend will usher in a new age in which it is considered cool to know how to size an LR circuit and how to wield a soldering iron.

Perhaps in a post-apocalyptic world this will be all that is left of the Internet. Though in a post-apocalyptic world there would be no one there to license the radio spectrum, and so why limit ourselves to HAM radio bands? -- Plus this all overlooks the need for power generation and storage in such a world :)

My brother lives in Alaska, and he just built a home this past summer. No Internet, no phone. Just electricity. He has to fill a 1500 gallon water tank in the town because he&#x27;s up too high to drill a well, there&#x27;s no running water.<p>He&#x27;s not too confident in his heater, and being away from home when it&#x27;s -20C for more than a few hours can do serious damage if the heaters not running. Most people would just use the Internet, but he can&#x27;t. So what do you do?<p>We scripted around APRS raw packets [1] and APRSDroid [2]. He bought some 1WIRE temperature sensors that are plugged into his OpenWRT WAP. The values are served up by apache, and a $10 smartphone from craigslist reads the values and pipes them [3] through APRSDroid. This then goes via the headphone jack to his radio and it gets digipeated a couple times before it hits the &#x27;net.<p>Now he can watch his home temperature while he&#x27;s at work and not get worried. How cool is that?<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.aprs.fi&#x2F;2010&#x2F;03&#x2F;decoded-and-hex-raw-packets-default.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.aprs.fi&#x2F;2010&#x2F;03&#x2F;decoded-and-hex-raw-packets-defa...</a><p>[2] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;aprsdroid.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;aprsdroid.org&#x2F;</a><p>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;sielickin&#x2F;local2aprs" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;sielickin&#x2F;local2aprs</a>