Mobile Wireless at Tempe Presidential Debate

badcataz writes "Presidential debate goers in Tempe, Arizona might find a strange looking electric vehicle providing wireless service. WAZ Tempe has modified and Italian Electic car to extend their downtown Tempe network using a 1 Watt Tropos 5110 wireless mesh node."

Comments

I'll take one

[erick99]

From an article linked to the original article:

The electric carts are manufactured in Italy by the World Alternative Transportation Technologies Corpration (W.A.T.T. Corp). This particular model is called "Teener E". It is a small, enclosed two passenger electric vehicle powered by rechargable batteris and driven by an electric motor. It can climb up to 18% grade steep hills. It's speed does not exceed 35 mph and has a range of 50 miles. Full battery recharge is 4 hours. It complies with all Federal Motor Safety Standards (ie. seatbelt, roll cage, emergency brakes, etc.)

The WiFi transmit/receiver unit on the cart has range of 1 mile (1.6 km) compare to standard WiFi equipment of 300 - 500 ft. It runs on Linux operating system, able to auto-recognize and auto-configure into local WiFi mesh. Various businesses in downtown Tempe area have given permission to Nasco's group to install WiFi units on their properties.

Nasco is also in contact with city of Tempe to further WiFi coverage, hopefully in next few years the city will be complete wireless.

Now that is an example of folks working well together for a common good. I wish my town would do that. But, they will not even allow a single cell site so we barely have cellular phone service out here much less wifi. Oh, well, to some, the lack of cell phone service is seen as a benefit.

Here is another interesting article about Tropos: Mesh could be the solution to a proposed $1 billion wireless municipal network for New York City emergency workers.

Or, otherwise known as...

[datastalker]

...the electronics van for prompting George W. Bush. ;)

Re:It'll be jammed.

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

The roads should also be removed for 50 miles all around the debate location. Roads let people bring in bombs.

So does the sky. And pipes. And birds. European Swallows with coconut shaped bombs, oh my!

Nice

[FiReaNGeL]

They actually use these as substitutes when parts of their WiFi network go down... Fast, mobile, cute and powerfull, can we ask for something more? :)

Italian reliability

[SuperBanana]

Heh, an electric Italian car. Where to begin...do you need to remove the passenger seat to charge it?

Well, on the bright side, at least it wasn't made by Lucas. If it had been, the wifi unit would only work if the handbrake light was blown and the left turn signal was on.

But, dear god, don't pull the handbrake!

Re:If they had a ham license....

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I believe you might be aware that a problem with that is that you could not legally use any form of encryption over that signal, be it in the hardware layer like WEP & WPA or in the application layer like SSH or HTTPS. Once you do email, either you are either sending your password in plain text or you are technically breaking the terms of the ham licence.

Re:uh, any -reliable- sources?

[darekana]

Not sure if this counts as reliable but:
http://cryptome.org/bush-bulge.htm

So, Bush wasn't wired after all

[Space Coyote]

I guess the square thing under his jacket is his 802.11 antenna.