Hi everyone!
My name is James, and I discovered goTeanna in the aftermath of Hurricane Irma. I read an article in the news about how Puerto Rico citizens were using goTenna Mesh to connect communities without electricity so relief workers could coordinate their efforts. Living in Florida, I also experience the effects of hurricanes, so I immediately saw a need for a mesh network in my city, Tampa.
I bought a pair, convinced a friend of mine to buy a pair, and we built a small mesh network in a square city block to test communication between our office buildings. It worked well and the portability of the Mesh devices made them ideal for quick deployment.
It’s a great idea, and I would love to start building out a system that can cover more substantial and more significant swaths of land. Currently, I’m thinking about ways that we could use rechargeable battery packs or solar chargers to have semi-permanent/permanent goTenna Mesh nodes scattered around the city. I’d also like to look into adding prepaid mobile phones with text message allotments so the mesh network could have cellular text message exit nodes to be able to reach people on cell networks. I want to come up with a standard “node” package that could quickly be built/deployed/maintained for rapid network building.
On a personal front, I’m a systems engineer for a software company in Tampa, and I’m married to a wonderful lady named Anneke (pronounced like “Monica,” but with an A sound instead of an M sound at the beginning"). She fully supports my geeky interests, and we can combine deploying/managing goTenna Mesh nodes and one of our favorite hobbies, Geocaching.
So, that being said, is anyone in the Tampa area interested in helping to Mesh Tampa? It’ll be fun! I promise!
Sincerely,
James