MeshChat

Decentralize and democratize communication, without AI or Blockhain. Half the buzzwords, twice the challenge.

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Andrei [11:59 AM]

Inspiration

Communication is the lifeblood of any city. When disaster strikes, either natural or man-made, the arteries of communication can be severed. Current centralized approaches to providing communication networks are not resilient enough in these situations.

What it does

We wanted to create a grassroots application that democratizes communication by decentralizing it and making it widely available and affordable for those who need it most. Our project involved creating a messaging application that functions by creating a resilient intranet via a mesh network of blue tooth connected mobile devices. To complement this goal, we also explored the problem from a geospatial information point-of-view: creating a prototype of a functionality to plot devices in real time on a map and visualize clusters of connected devices.

How we built it

Application: java and android studio, bluetooth api, caffeine GIS visualization: python, osm, folium, caffeine

Challenges we ran into

Almost giving up.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Not giving up.

What we learned

  • How to use OpenStreetMaps and Folium;
  • Dynamic programming approaches for efficient clustering;
  • Bluetooth Client/Server Architecture

What's next for MeshChat

To complete the mesh network functionality, we need to add the following feature: Every user should share a ledger containing all geographical neighbours with the rest of the network. This would be the basis of transmitting messages across the network.

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