The bulletin board software that powers Cyberpony Express, providing resilient store-and-forward messaging across the mesh network.
Cyberpony Express BBS
The Cyberpony Express Bulletin Board Service (BBS) is the digital-postal backbone of the Cyberpony Express project. It is a text-based bulletin board system that operates over the Meshtastic mesh-networking platform, allowing communities to share messages and files when traditional Internet connections are unavailable.
The Pathfinders’ Guild leads this software effort, ensuring the mesh can bridge distant outposts and keep travelers connected even when traditional infrastructure fails.
The Role of the BBS
The BBS acts like an automated phone operator that:
- Provides a menu-driven interface so users can check messages, view public or private threads, and talk to the librarian chatbot by sending single-letter commands.
- Queues and forwards messages between distant parts of the mesh, solving the back-haul problem and allowing nodes that cannot directly hear each other to exchange data.
- Serves as the access point for text-based games (multi-user dungeons) and a librarian chatbot that can answer queries using a local library.
- Runs on low-power hardware so it continues working in disasters; heavy processing is off-loaded to a Raspberry Pi service host.
Key Features
- Store-and-Forward Messaging: Uses a “digital postal service” model where messages are encrypted, sealed, and relayed opportunistically.
- Backhaul via IPFS and Tor: Nodes can synchronize data using IPFS and Tor as a fallback when direct LoRa links are unavailable, without exposing public IP addresses.
- Decentralized & Resilient: No central servers; anyone can host a node, and the network runs entirely off-grid.
This project is hosted in a submodule.
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