Bill Pitz <dakota@billpitz.com> wrote:
: Agreed. It should also be a "self-healing mesh" network between the
: trucks. All trucks could have little magnet mount omnidirectional
: antennas on board. (The excess gear could just be sold on ebay
: afterwards..)
That would be cool - to have all of the trucks in communication
with each other. Almost like a P2P network sort of idea... The
trucks which are also in communication with the router or a
repeater could have some sort of "master" status so that any truck
in communication with a "master" truck could relay its info to that
vehicle to have it relayed to the base. Because the vehicles
generally travel down the trails in groups, chances are, if a
particular truck doesn't have a line of sight connection with a
repeater, a second truck with which it DOES have a line of sight
connection might, or perhaps a third truck that the second truck
has a line of sight connection with would, etc. Going back to
the "master" flag idea, the base station would be at the top of
the heap, which is where all the trucks are trying to send their
data. A truck with a direct connection to the base (via the
node itself or through a repeater) could be perhaps a "level 0
master". A truck without a connection to the base, but with a
connection to a "level 0" vehicle would be a "level 1". Thus,
a vehicle without a direct connection to the base or a level 0
truck but with a connection to a level 1 vehicle would be a
"level 2", and so on. The highest level of connection you
can achieve determines your status in the network, and the
packet routing priority could be set correspondingly. Probably
the best way to do this would be for each vehicle to be able to
have more than one connection at the same time, such that if
the highest level of communication available to it goes away
at any given time, it can immediately redirect traffic to the
second highest level. Each vehicle would be constantly searching
for other vehicles and refreshing their connection status in the
effort to get as close to a direct to base connection as is
possible. Using this sort of method, it would be possible for
telemetry from trucks in absolutely impossible locations to reach
DML HQ because it can essentially jump from truck to truck until
it finds a line of sight connection back home. :-)
Another possible little feature would be to have more than one
type of network - i.e. not just 802.11 but perhaps backup
links which can be activated using different technologies which
might be better able to traverse the terrain. Like, perhaps
RF or even piggybacking onto AM or FM radio waves. Something
along this same idea which might be neat is perhaps certain
trucks could be "backup masters". If such a truck ever found
that its connection back to base was severed (perhaps it is in
a group of 5 trucks, and the last truck which was "level 0" just
went around a bend and lost communication with a repeater, so
now nobody in the group has a path back to DML HQ) it could
dial a cell or satellite modem, either to the Internet to connect
to the server back at DML HQ, or directly to a phone line
connected to a modem on the DML HQ PC. At that point, this
truck becomes a level 0, and data can flow through this alternate
path until somebody in the group is able to establish a WiFi
connection with DML HQ again, at which point the backup master
can sever the modem connection and data flows through the normal
WiFi channels.
Another thing to think about would be what sort of TTL this
data might have. For example, say a truck goes around a corner
and loses communication with everybody. It is still gathering
telemetry, so does it store this data and attempt to send it out
upon reconnection with the network, or does it throw it away? If
it stores it, how long should it do so before the info is
considered to be so stale that it is worthless?
Lots of stuff to think about, but it does sound like lots of fun
too! :-) Back in my college days, a group of my friends and
myself used to think about this sort of stuff and design protocols
etc. all the time. I'm sure we would have had a blast working
on this. :-) Unfortunately, we were often plagued by the
"Creepy Feature Creature" - where we would get so bogged down in
adding ideas and features that the design became so cumbersome
that it was problematic to implement, and the throught of doing
a scaled down version just didn't seem worth it, compared to
what it "could be". :-) So, we didn't get a lot done. ;-)
(As you can probably tell from the spewage that emitted from my
brain even given the very brief consideration I have given the
project, this one would in no way be immune to the Creepy Feature
Creature.) ;-)
--
-Jon-
.-- Jon Steiger ---- jon@dakota-truck.net or jon@jonsteiger.com --.
| 1970 Barracuda - 1990 Dakota 'vert - 1992 Ram 4x4 - 1996 Dakota |
| 1996 Intruder 1400 - 1996 Kolb FireFly - 2001 Ram QC 3500 CTD |
`------------------------------------ http://www.jonsteiger.com --'
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