rns.recipes

I spent some cycles the last few weeks cleaning up a project I'd started months ago but never released: an RRC app for Android, using Jetpack Compose (like Columba) for a native Android UI.

Eridanus lets you view announced RRC hubs, connect to one, and join rooms to chat. It features auto complete for slash commands and @Nicknames. It also lets you host an RRC hub right from your phone, but you probably shouldn't unless you really need to when away from other infrastructure.

You'll need a shared Reticulum instance running on your phone for Eridanus to use. Developing and maintaining interface configuration UI is complex (and generates a lot of discussion, surprisingly enough), and I am intentionally keeping Eridanus as light as possible. Besides, I figured most people interested in an Android client for RRC today already have at least one of Columba, Sideband, or termux+rnsd running (Columba exposes the shared instance toggle under Settings -> Advanced as of v2.0.0-beta, but only in the RNS-backed python build. I may enable it for the kotlin build after further testing, but it's not there today).

Like Columba (v2 and higher), Eridanus comes in two apk flavors: one that uses Mark's RNS (via Chaquopy) as its backend, and the other that uses reticulum-kt as its backend. Both flavors use a shared implementation of the RRC protocol in kotlin, which like the rest of the Eridanus UI, was developed with AI assistance, so there are likely some bugs to find. Additionally, most of Eridanus was developed several months ago, and the only newer feature I've adopted from rrcd is ACTION, so there might be some other recent things missing.

Anyway, here it is: https://github.com/torlando-tech/eridanus, enjoy!

Some observations. Service via 1.9.4 Sideband, on GOS.

1. I constantly drop and rejoin the room, all the time, and this generates notifications all the time, making it unusable.
2. Several times I put the app on the background, without closing it, I come back to it and it has not only left the room, but the hub, and has no memory of it at all, asking me to enter a hash or check Discovery tab.
   I will wait for a new version to try again.

Just yesterday i thought about RRC for Columba. Will test this right now.

Regarding UI, keep it simple, make it just like nomadnet if possible, straight forward minimalist. Pure chat.

At least, this is what i would like :)

Updated SB to 1.9.5, which has RNS 1.3.5 behind it.
It has been almost 30 minutes without any drop-offs, neither from the room or the hub, both focused and on the background.

aetherlab wrote:

Updated SB to 1.9.5, which has RNS 1.3.5 behind it.
It has been almost 30 minutes without any drop-offs, neither from the room or the hub, both focused and on the background.

I noticed frequent dropping with Columba as the shared instance, and it seemed to be related to being at the edge of my home's wifi range. I haven't watched in real time to confirm, but my working assumption is that it will briefly disconnect when you switch from wifi to 5g or back. I did put logic into eridanus to automatically reconnect to rooms you are actively in upon regaining connectivity since without it, it'd be hard to know you'd lost connection unless you were actively looking at your phone

I still haven't dropped out even once for the last 10 hours! It seems to work smoothly now. :)

That looks pretty promising, though I can't test it yet since I'm using the kt version of Columba. But this makes me wonder if the NomadNet functionality of Columba would also be better off split out into a separate app? It works great as-is, but a dedicated app could allow it to be more front-and-center and maybe more browser-like.

bergie wrote:

That looks pretty promising, though I can't test it yet since I'm using the kt version of Columba. But this makes me wonder if the NomadNet functionality of Columba would also be better off split out into a separate app? It works great as-is, but a dedicated app could allow it to be more front-and-center and maybe more browser-like.

Agree completely. I was hesitant to add it to Columba (and all of the map/location functionality honestly). I do think a more traditional web browser UI would better serve nomadnet. Maybe I'll eventually make a standalone nomadnet app.

We use the map/location features all the time with Meshtastic, and so would likely do the same once we migrate everything to Columba. But admittedly our highly mobile sailboat cruising scenario is not the most common one.

Here's the Meshtastic things we are trying to replace with Reticulum down the line: https://blog.noforeignland.com/off-grid-boat-communications-with-meshtastic/