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Burning Man Goes Open Source For Cell Phones
coondoggie passes along this excerpt from Network World:
"Today I bring you a story that has it all: a solar-powered, low-cost, open source cellular network that's revolutionizing coverage in underprivileged and off-grid spots. It uses VoIP yet works with existing cell phones. It has pedigreed founders. Best of all, it is part of the sex, drugs and art collectively known as Burning Man. ... The technology starts with the 'they-said-it-couldn't-be-done' open source software, OpenBTS. OpenBTS is built on Linux and distributed via the AGPLv3 license. When used with a software-defined radio such as the Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP), it presents a GSM air interface ("Um") to any standard GSM cell phone, with no modification whatsoever required of the phone. It uses open source Asterisk VoIP software as the PBX to connect calls, though it can be used with other soft switches, too. ... This is the third year its founders have decided to trial-by-fire the system by offering free cell phone service to the 50,000-ish attendees at Burning Man, which begins today in Black Rock City, Nevada. "
Seriously, I'm totally confused by this. Did the burning man attendees actually set the /article/ on fire as well?
I never figured the Burning Man crowd as open source developers. Yeah pretty much just the sex drugs and art crowd. Gotta stay off the drugs man.
"We are just a war away from Amerikastan. When god vs god the undoing of man." Dave Mustaine
I haven't been to Burning Man in a few years, but when I did go it was nice to get away from it all. I suppose I could choose to not use/bring my cell phone - but if other people are still tethered to the ordinary world...? Well - bummer!
What about encryption? How do I know my call is safe, and do I trust the operator of these devices?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
BTW: BurningMan Art Festival is just Right Now !
\o/
- Charly
Sex? Drugs? I saw NOTHING, NOTHING I say *shrugging shoulders*
Have you fscked your local propeller head today?
While cell phones are nifty and I wouldn't want to live day to day without mine, I think this is largely missing the point of Burning Man.
Jherico
What can the average user can do to ensure his security? "Nothing, you're screwed"
Looks like you have to spend thousands to build a working solution. If you were hoping to use GSM phones as cordless phones any time soon, you'd better have buckets of ducats.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Now if only they made it consumer affordable so I could get reception in my basement...
Is this the same Burning Man that claims copyright on any PRIVATE photos taken at their events?
PASS. Horrible IP grab + single Open Source project is still a negative, methinks.
How is Burning Man getting away with using these frequencies without a license?
More important, what happens when half a dozen people in an area with existing service start setting these up and interfering with the big companies who are selling service? We lived through the heyday of CB radio and how unusable it became when the FCC gave up on licensing after an explosion of popularity. Do we have to live through the same thing with our cell phones?
Cool project. Unfortunately the use of AGPL will guarantee no one ever uses it. Too bad. Imagine having a base station where you have to require a partition for the source. Or people with broken cell phones saying you're not providing an equal opportunity to download the software source. Ugh.
Because the money you save will be needed for spending $25k on transmitting hardware (or have a highly qualified electronics engineer spend a couple of months building it for less), a 100 ft guy-wired radio tower with antennas and a crew of climbing riggers, a 150ft $750K telescopic crane with operator, 3 skilled RF engineers to wire it up, 2 people with a degree in CS to set up the software and 5+ days to spare to set it up and debug it, oh and a license.
but at least the software is free
[I]Citation Needed[/I]
lol
FYI,
Some have inquired as to using OpenBTS with FreeSWITCH as well as Asterisk. Alberto Escudero (aka AEP) wrote this wiki page nearly a year ago:
http://wiki.freeswitch.org/wiki/OpenBTS
It's slightly dated but the information is accurate.
-MC
I fear the burning man festival may soon flame out, or at best, morph into an anemic lame-o semblance of it's former self
I think I've been hearing that it's already done that from people who have attended it every year in the last decade. People were probably saying the same thing before then, I just wasn't paying attention.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
On the Current TV documentary last night, the organizers themselves said it had gone from being a counter-culture event to a mainstream cultural event. I still like the idea of a gift economy, but think I think most music festivals operate at least partially on that principle. For any gathering to survive, as the number of attendees goes way up you need to implement some fascist rules just to maintain public safety, e.g. "Don't climb the 100-foot tall artwork" and "Don't stand so close to the Burning Man that it lands on you when it collapses".
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
My Burning Man village built "The Museum of It Was Better Last Year" for exactly this reason.
Burning Man had its brief, shining moment, but when was that...? Circa mid-90's? Now it's a staged pseudo-event the very promotion of which cuts against the grain of what it was supposed to be. I see the jowly middle-aged Marketing Suits queuing up for their Burning Man tickets and I am reminded of the giddy tourists in and around Woodstock, NY paying $25 for a tie-dyed peace-sign T-shirt.
Where do naked people carry their phones?
It's not as if most carriers have a reputation for really caring about customer privacy...
Tweet, tweet.
It would be interesting to use the network to coordinate light and fire displays across the playa.
Does this mean that RMS can finally use a cellphone?
-- Cheers!
how do you relay sms messages to/from the handset? do you have to setup a gateway with an existing SMS provider?
There is no mention of FCC's licensing....I thought you need a license to operate a transmitter over 0.1 watt, or something really low like that. I am sure the FCC goons will put their knees on the neck of this project soon to protect their corporate buddies in the cell phone industry.
I am interested in how the people around OpenBTS got licences for 26c3 in Berlin and Fosdem 2010 in Brussels (the licence for Brussels came too late, they could not actually _use_ it. They will in 2011, though).
It's possible to get licences in the middle of civilization.
The gift economy in Black Rock City is amazing. You just walk around and people give you stuff, food, drinks, strange art, random blinky lights, compliments even. Besides the standard cup and water supply I also carried a bottle of vodka, a bag of nuts, sunblock/moisturizing lotion, and sanitary wipes - they were all personally useful and made great gifts. You hunker down in some random camp to wait out a dust storm and whip out your nuts and vodka and say hello, next thing you know someone else has mixers and another person is cooking you lunch. That's the incredible thing about the gift economy, it brings people together in this unique way. Without the expectation of economic exchange the entire culture of the city is transformed at a fundamental level that you really can't grok until you've existed within it for a few days. One of the most amazing behaviors that emerges from this fundamental change is that people become much more willing to help each other. There's this group dynamic that develops where random strangers will suddenly team up to accomplish things for each other. You might overhear two strangers talking about how much they want bacon and remember a bacon themed camp on the other side of the city, you mention it to them and another stranger says they just came from there and the camp is only making bacon for 30 more minutes, there's no way you can get across the city in time, except another stranger who overhears says their neighbor has an artcar who can give everyone a lift. Next thing you know you're riding a pirate ship across the playa with 10 new friends en route to bacon.
The public safety rules are fairly minimal and entirely rational. Last year there was an art installation which was very obviously a potential safety hazard, that was actually the entire purpose of it as the theme of that year was evolution. Many people dumb enough to take the risk suffered minor injury, many others laughed at the idiots. The rate and severity of the injuries were insufficient to force people to not take the risk, if you were stupid enough to do it you were free enough to do it. That's generally how Burning Man is, people will probably warn you when you are putting yourself in danger, and they will help extricate you from danger if necessary, but they will respect your right to express yourself however you see fit.
Ummm, I'm confused. The frequencies that GSM uses are licensed by the FCC to specific operators. The phones are used under the control of the operator, who has a license for each and every cell site.
This group, (The OpenBTS project) has permission from the carrier with the license for the area (who doesn't happen to have a cell covering the site) to use the band there.
Additionally (as others have pointed out), they have a specific short-term ("experimental") license to perform this test during the period including the festival and the runup to it. This license includes the right to stimulate the cellphones into operation.
The group also provides emergency service to disasters that have taken out the cellular infrastructure, until the carriers can get it back up, and makes low-cost base station equipment designs (using off-the-shelf hardware) available to third-world countries. ($10k and dropping.) The burning-man event gives them an annual opportunity to do an acid test on their latest software and hardware.
Just what you'd expect: The FCC hunts 'em down and shuts 'em down if they're strong enough to be noticed and especially if they interfere with the license holding service provider for that area and band.
Unlike WiFi, but like broadcast radio, the DSM protocols don't support sharing a given band in a given area. The license holders carefully design their cell site arrangements so their own cells don't step on each other (and nearby neighbors near the edge of their area). If you set up an unlicensed homebrew minicell on band that's in use and don't do it inside a shielded box, you'll trash the licensed service and be in deep kimchi, just as if you wiped out a broadcast station with your pirate radio.
Which is why the OpenBTS project was careful to get permission from the licensed carrier and a license from the FCC to run the Burning Man cell site.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
It often strikes me as an interesting thing that we have no social mechanism for turning down a technical capability, even when we largely believe it's a bad idea. If a gadget exists, we have to have it, like it or not...
This is me writing on the subject of cellphones at burning man, back in 2005: MORE_OR_LESS
It often strikes me as an interesting thing that we have no social mechanism for turning down a technical capability, even when we largely believe it's a bad idea.
Sure we have mechanisms for turning down a technical capability.
It's called "personal choice".
\
Freedom means each person gets to make that choice for his/her SELF.
"Social Mechanism?" You mean "way for a group to impose its choices on those who disagree with them", don't you?
The closest you have in a free society is persuasion. And others get to argue the other way, or just ignore you. When persuasion becomes social pressure to conform, freedom is replaced by groupthink.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
^this