High Desert Institute

Cyberpony Express: Siting and Outreach

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by

cjtrowbridge
in

Our third Cyberpony Express workshop is about Siting and Outreach.

There are a number of local organizations and local chapters of larger organizations where natural synergies exist that can help us take this project to the next level.

Intentional Communities

The primary, long-term goal of this project has from the beginning been to connect intentional communities and allow text communication and the distribution of a library of important resources.

We are reaching out to intentional communities who may be interested in becoming a part of the network. If you know a group that may be interested, please reach out!

Community Gardens

Community gardens are the urban analog of intentional communities. A community comes together to set an intention for a space and works to make it happen. These are natural hubs of communication and resource distribution. We have set an initial goal of locating Cyberpony Express nodes at community gardens across the bay area.

We are continuing to reach out to community gardens about this as well as our project to host gardens of endangered plants as well as indigenous entheogens such as white sage and ceremonial tobacco. If you know a community garden that may want to participate, please let us know!

Disaster Preparedness & Response Organizations

Burners Without Borders is a natural partner for the Cyberpony Express because it facilitates disaster preparedness and response. The goals, projects, and priorities of the BWB Global Network are closely aligned with those of the High Desert Institute and the Cyberpony Express.

Additional disaster preparedness and response organizations where obvious synergies exist include:

  • Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES) is a continent-wide network of volunteers who train, certify, and work on building and maintaining amateur radio repeater networks to facilitate resilient communication which does not rely on fragile infrastructure. These operators step in during disasters to enable emergency response to function when the internet, telecom, and cell networks fail.
  • Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Service (RACES) is a similar organization which was created by FEMA and works closely with ARES and other similar organizations.
  • Amateur Radio Relay League (ARRL) is an organization around the construction and operation of repeater networks.

Amateur Radio Clubs

In addition to participating in disaster preparedness and response, local amateur radio clubs are the primary force behind actually building and maintaining the infrastructure that makes repeater networks like ARES and RACES possible.

These clubs typically set up networks of repeaters on mountaintops, on top of tall buildings, on radio towers, etc. These enable long distance communication on licensed frequencies both for voice communication and APRS (packet radio).

This is very close to what we are already doing, so working with them to install Meshtastic repeaters at these kinds of locations would be a huge structural advantage for the network we are building.

Some Local Amateur Radio Clubs:

All of these clubs host frequent events, especially related to helping people train and get certified. Most of them are free, some charge membership dues.

Quick Rant About Membership Dues: As someone who raised over four grand for this project in the last couple weeks, I don’t understand the concept of charging people a fee to be a volunteer in an organization. I would never be a part of an amateur radio group that charges dues. If you have a project that needs to be funded, let’s talk about it, but why would I pay a membership fee in order to be a volunteer on your project?

  • Amateur Radio Club of Alameda: hosts an amateur radio repeater in Alameda.
  • Bay Net: owns and operates an amateur radio repeater network spanning the bay area. Their current network of repeaters includes four repeaters placed on mountain tops around the bay:
    • Palo Alto
    • Oakland Hills
  • Benicia Amateur Radio Club: operates two repeaters in Benicia.
  • Cathay Amateur Radio Club: has a lot of information about amateur radio repeater locations around the bay area:
    • Palo Alto
    • Mountain View
    • Mount Diablo
    • Los Gatos
    • San Jose
    • Oakland Hills
  • Community Emergency Radio Association (CERA) operates amateur radio repeaters across El Dorado County. Their current network of repeaters includes:
    • Coloma
    • Placerville
    • Pollock Pines
    • Cosumnes
    • Oak Hill
  • Coastside Amateur Radio Club: operates an amateur radio repeater in Pacifica.
  • East Bay Amateur Radio Club (W6CUS): recently lost their location and are trying to find a new base of operations to relaunch their organization which has partnered with the Red Cross for decades.
  • Foothills Amateur Radio Society: south peninsula amateur radio club which appears to operate an amateur radio repeater.
  • Half Moon Bay Amateur Radio Club: frankly when I see an organization that has this many officers and also charges these exorbitant membership fees, I ask myself if its even worth mentioning on this list, but they do seem to operate an amateur radio repeater on a nearby mountain top.
  • Livermore Amateur Radio Club: has a lot of information about amateur radio repeaters throughout the bay area and into the central valley.
  • Northern California Contest Club (Livermore): Amateur radio club focused on winning contests around things like long distance communications, complex antenna configurations, etc.
  • Mad Scientist Amateur Radio Club: operates an amateur radio repeater in San Mateo.
  • Marin Amateur Radio Society: operates a network of six amateur radio repeaters:
    • Bahia Ridge (Novato)
    • Mount Tamalpais
      • Middle Peak x2
      • West Peak x2
    • Mount Barnabe (Lagunitas)
  • Milbrae Amateur Radio Club: seems to be active and having regular meetings. Their website seems to indicate that they want to work on deploying more disaster response infrastructure.
  • Mother Lode DX/Contest Club: an amateur radio club in Jackson, CA focused on contests.
  • Mount Diablo Amateur Radio Club: this seems to be one of the biggest, oldest, and most active amateur radio clubs in the area. I have also seen them on Meshtastic so they are already an active part of what we are working on!
    • Their website has a lot of information about existing efforts to build out Meshtastic networks across the bay area and central valley:
      • MDARC operates two Meshtastic Routers on the North peak of Diablo Mountain which you have likely seen in the app. These routers allow reliable connections between San Francisco and Sacramento.
      • BayMe.sh is a mehtastic network with nodes across the Bay area.
      • SacValley Mesh is a meshtastic network with nodes across the broader Sacramento area which connect across Diablo Mountain to the bay.
      • Central Valley Mesh is a work in progress, but there are already lots of nodes deployed.