Cool idea for next mesh update: be able to send and receive pictures through goTenna mesh!
I think one of the biggest issues is the speed of transmission. Photos are too large to transmit efficiently without causing network congestion and battery drain. (Someone correct me if I’m wrong)
If the photos were small (possibly smaller than MMS photos, it might be a possibility, but at that point what’s the point of sending a photo? It will be too noisy to see.
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It is something they would like to eventually implement.
They currently have a cap on the message size. I think they want to see how the devices utilize the bandwidth then they can determine if they can raise some of those limits.
The current limit 0.000256 megabytes per message.
You can send 5 in a minute or 0.00128 megabytes per minute.
That’s with no overhead which is unrealistic. I don’t know what you would fit into that.
In an emergency situation I can see having to send everybody in the surrounding area a picture of my junk stat!
And that’s exactly the reason to not allow it…the ability to message people off “Shouts” means that the functionality is rife for abuse.
I was being facetious, but you make a point. That would be a consideration.
I figured you were, but it brought up a massive concern within a decentralized network such as this.
I would recommend that it accept images from friends, but that it prompt from others. Something like “X would like to send you an image. Do you accept?”
With more consideration, I don’t see why images are needed in shouts. My two cents, I would only allow images in chats.
SOS messages as well. You would receive and cache every received image not from a blocked party on connected devices but you would not be shown any image that did not come from a friend without accepting it. I’m still not sure if images are practical bandwidth wise but I guess we will see.
Another consideration is that each Mesh unit only has 8 MB of on-board RAM. 3 people relay pictures through one node at the same time and it will max out the RAM.
Maybe allow single hop picture transfer, but no meshing. We’ll probably see audio transfer first as it is less bandwidth intensive than pictures (anyone with an iPhone ever see how much data Facetime Audio doesn’t use?).
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PTT, like Bear offers?
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That’s what I was thinking. The latency is too high for calls, but PTT could definitely work and would firmly put GoTenna Mesh ahead of Beartooth (although it sounds like that bar wasn’t hard to pass).
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Wait, Beartooth was actually released? They keep pushing back the shipping date, at this point Duke Nukem seems more likely to be rebooted.
I don’t know, couldn’t find a clear answer. At least GoTenna had a map of existing users, and that’s what ultimately pushed me to buy them instead. Glad I did, as I also heard later that Beartooth doesn’t hop and isn’t encrypted. But who knows?
No photos, no PTT. Won’t happen with current protocol.
The current Mesh protocol is designed for lightweight, battery conscious propagation of very small amounts of data. There are other products that are better suited to high bandwidth requirements.
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