I had a thought today while I was out at Michael’s shopping for craft supplies for an upcoming project…
While waiting in line for the register, I tried to pull up the Michael’s website to search for relevant coupons I could use to apply to my purchase, and the website was either unavailable, or the signal in-store was so horrible that I couldn’t keep a reliable connection.
Thankfully, the cashier was helpful and applied some coupons to my purchase because I couldn’t bring up the site on my phone.
Here’s where a mesh node would have been perfect, as Daniela and Jorge have been pushing!
If others in the store happened to be connected to the local mesh node managed by the store, they could all retrieve the coupons directly from the store itself, instead of going back out through a local or long-distance tower connection to the live Internet, search the website, use the store locator to find the local coupons, and then back to the device to apply at the register.
I could see the same thing being applicable to supermarkets, malls and other retail and shopping outlets, for things as simple as push messages about sales, discounts, coupons and more.
I haven’t seen anything talking about this aspect of decentralized mesh networks, and BLE nodes isn’t really good enough either, especially in a congested environment like a mall or supermarket.
The other thing that came to mind, was why don’t we have a phone case/battery sled style adapter for the goTenna? Something I can carry with my phone in a single package, vs. the external device I use today. i’m thinking something along the lines of the old Palm OS “Rand McNally” GPS device.
https://the-gadgeteer.com/2000/06/25/streetfinder_gps_for_the_palm_v_review/
I still have mine here in my old gadget archive!
Obviously the goTenna version would be more streamlined and purpose-fit for the phone it’s being used with, but with a slim battery included, it could increase the runtime, and be nearly integrated with the phone.
Thoughts?