#+KEYWORDS: freedombox, debian, beaglebone, red matrix, email, web server, home server, internet, censorship, surveillance, social network, irc, jabber
#+DESCRIPTION: Turn the Beaglebone Black into a personal communications server
Mesh networks are useful as a quick way to make a fully decentralised communications system which is not connected to or reliant upon the internet. Think festivals, hacker conferences, onboard ships at sea, disaster/war zones, small business internal office communications, protests, remote areas of the world, temporary "digital blackouts", scientific expeditions and off-world space colonies. The down side is that you can't access any internet content. The upside is that you can securely communicate with anyone on the local mesh. No ISPs. No payments or subscriptions beyond the cost of obtaining the hardware. Systems need to be within wifi range of each other for the mesh to be created. It can be an ultra-convenient way to do purely local communications.
"Client" isn't exactly the right term, but it's a mesh peer with a user interface. These images can be copied to a USB drive, then you can plug it into a laptop/netbook/desktop machine and boot from it. You will probably also need an Atheros USB wifi dongle (the black protruding object on the left side of the netbook in the picture above), because most built-in wifi usually requires proprietary firmware. In the commands below substitute /dev/sdX with the USB drive device, excluding any trailing numbers (eg. /dev/sdb). The USB drive you're copying to will need to be at least 8GB in size.
If you're in an emergency and don't have Atheros wifi dongles then there is also an "insecure" image which contains some proprietary wifi drivers which may work with a wider range of laptops. Proprietary drivers *are not recommended* because they're unsupportable and may be exploitable or contain malicious antifeatures which fundamentally compromise the security of the network. However, the trade-off between security/maintainability and simply having the ability to communicate at all may be a valid one in some situations.
Routers are intended to build network coverage for an area using small and low cost hardware. You can bolt them to walls or leave them on window ledges. They don't have any user interface and their only job is to haul network traffic across the mesh. Copy the image to a microSD card and insert it into the router, plug in an Atheros wifi dongle and power on. That should be all you need to do.
The above picture shows a Beaglebone Black with the image copied onto a microSD card (there's no need to do anything with the internal EMMC). A USB Atheros wifi adaptor with a large antenna is attached and in this case power is from the mains, although it could be from a battery or solar power system capable of supplying 5 volts and maybe 1A (depending upon how active the router is).
It's better not to trust images downloaded from random places on the interwebs. Chances are that unless you are in the web of trust of the above GPG signatures then they don't mean very much to you. If you actually want something trustworthy then build the images from scratch. It will take some time. Here's how to do it.
If you don't have Atheros or free software compatible wifi adapter then you can include proprietary wifi drivers which will work with most laptops. This is *NOT RECOMMENDED* because proprietary drivers are unsupportable and may contain either malware or be exploitable in a way which can't be fixed. However, if you're in an emergency and don't have any Atheros or free software wifi USB dongles then you can use the following command to make the image:
This takes a while. Maybe an hour or so, depending on the speed of your system and the internets. The good news though is that once created you can use the resulting image any number of times, and you don't need to trust some pre-built image.
You can now copy the image to the USB thumb drive, replacing *sdX* with the identifier of the USB thumb drive. Don't include any numbers (so for example use *sdc* instead of *sdc1*).
And wait. Again it will take a while to copy over. When that's done plug it into the laptop or netbook which you want to use on the mesh, power on and set the BIOS to boot from the USB stick.
On first boot you'll be asked to set a username, and then you can open the chat client and select the *users* icon to show the Tox IDs for other users on the mesh. When folks join they will be announced.
Rinse, repeat, for any number of laptops that you want to get onto the mesh or to build out coverage within an area. There are no servers. Just peer-to-peer communications routed through the network which are end-to-end secure after a friend request is accepted. By default the chat client doesn't log anything.
You can also use single board computers (SBCs) such as the BeagleBone Black to make mesh routers which can be bolted to walls or the sides of buildings and consume minimal electrical power, so could be solar or battery powered for short term events such as festivals. To do that use the following command to make the image:
When you first boot from the USB drive the system will create some encryption keys, assign a unique network address to the system and then reboot itself. When that's done you should see a prompt asking for a username. This username just makes it easy for others to initially find you on the mesh and will appear in the list of users.
Ensure that you're within wifi range of at least one other mesh peer (could be a router or client) and then you should see that the Tox chat and users icons appear. Select the users icon and you should see a list of users on the mesh. Select the Tox chat icon and once you are connected you should see the status light turn green. If after a few minutes you don't get the green status light then try closing and re-opening the Tox chat application. Select the plus button to add a friend and then copy and paste in a Tox ID from the users list.
One important point is that by default the microphone is turned off. When doing voice chat you can select the microphone volume with the drop down slider in the top right corner of the screen.
At present video doesn't work reliably, but text and voice chat do work well. In future IPFS or Tahoe-LAFS may be added to create a distributed filesystem for the mesh.
