Sneak Peek: Your Personal Reticulum Hopspot
Started by KenAKAFrosty ·
Made something that I think a LOT of you are going to like.
In fact it's cracking so much new ground at once, that trying to explain it in writing would be extremely difficult and it'd be a long read.
Instead, if a picture's worth a thousand words, then a video will cover that same ground in a reasonable time. And it's wayyyy cooler to see the interactions this way!
Looking forward to seeing the feedback, especially for specific use cases this can help with (or where it'd need to close a gap to be helpful still)!
One obvious question remains: whats the slop factor of your project? :P
Where is the link to the code? Feedback can be given upon assessing the code and trying it out in real conditions. Not by looking at a video.
Anonymous wrote:
One obvious question remains: whats the slop factor of your project? :P
A fair question! Once it's released in a few weeks, each reader is welcome to come to their own conclusions about that. For what it's worth, the very first item of the CONTRIBUTING.md directly addresses slop, specifically:
Ownership. Contributors own their submissions.
AI tools (and other assistance like pair programming, web snippets, etc.) are welcome, but slop is slop regardless of how it was produced.
How you wield your tools is still under your control, and what you submit is yours.
aetherlab wrote:
Where is the link to the code? Feedback can be given upon assessing the code and trying it out in real conditions. Not by looking at a video.
A few weeks for public release. I understand the nature of your message, and it's a good standard to have for scrutiny; please just bear with me. These last few weeks are mainly for the developers like yourself as I'm focused on improving the consumer-side API, DX, docs, examples, etc.
KenAKAFrosty wrote:
Made something that I think a LOT of you are going to like.
In fact it's cracking so much new ground at once, that trying to explain it in writing would be extremely difficult and it'd be a long read.
Instead, if a picture's worth a thousand words, then a video will cover that same ground in a reasonable time. And it's wayyyy cooler to see the interactions this way!
Looking forward to seeing the feedback, especially for specific use cases this can help with (or where it'd need to close a gap to be helpful still)!
Judging from the video alone, this seems super nice! Like, immensely super nice ;) ...and again, almost exactly what I have in mind as well. I'm really looking forward, especially to solar powered transport nodes.
I'm very interested to see how you solved (or rather mitigated) all the constraints that those MCUs bring, be it space or cpu power.
Also interested in seeing where and how you deviated from the python code.
Until then, all I can say is "Congrats!". If the code is good as well, I think you achieved something amazing.
Puint wrote:
KenAKAFrosty wrote:
> Made something that I think a LOT of you are going to like.
>
> In fact it's cracking so much new ground at once, that trying to explain it in writing would be extremely difficult and it'd be a long read.
>
> Instead, if a picture's worth a thousand words, then a video will cover that same ground in a reasonable time. And it's wayyyy cooler to see the interactions this way!
>
> https://youtu.be/eoKUD9it3Mg
>
>
> Looking forward to seeing the feedback, especially for specific use cases this can help with (or where it'd need to close a gap to be helpful still)!Judging from the video alone, this seems super nice! Like, immensely super nice ;) ...and again, almost exactly what I have in mind as well. I'm really looking forward, especially to solar powered transport nodes.
I'm very interested to see how you solved (or rather mitigated) all the constraints that those MCUs bring, be it space or cpu power.
Also interested in seeing where and how you deviated from the python code.
Until then, all I can say is "Congrats!". If the code is good as well, I think you achieved something amazing.
Thank you for the kind words, Puint! There were definitely tons of challenges with the constraints but I'm looking forward to showing that and talking about / nerding out about it 🤓.
And all of this only marks the beginning. There will be plenty of continued improvements and fixes needed over time. I'd be thankful to have quality help from those who care about their craft, too. Since you mentioned wanting & working on something similar but just with limited free time, your efforts and insights may be able to be a big help on this project!
Anyway, thank you again and I'm excitd to get this live in a few weeks!
Super cool! just a bit confused about why you're not sharing the code, but regardless super cool!
Code?
:D Yeah, right, just like the code for RNSMetrics... Nowhere to be seen!
test, ignore ;)
I have a good feeling that this project will be well worth the wait. I'm planning to use it to set up some solar nodes around my city. Hopefully it won't be too difficult to port to different hardware. :)
I think my only question right now is what license it'll be published under?
Why hide the fact that you're just using AI and vibe-coding, and now using AI to clean up the slop before you present it?
It's better to be transparent than to try to pretend.
One of the points of an early demo video is to gauge interest.
Some things might seem super valuable to the community in our own heads; but once put out to the community, we might find there's no interest at all. Or that the interest is adjacent and the project should steer towards that adjacency.
In that regard, this video & thread have helped tremendously!
Even the unnecessarily abrasive comments from a few of you: You still clearly cared enough to post in here, after all. Despite a thread explicitly prefaced "Sneak Peek: ", and a reasonable timeline of a few weeks stated both in the video and in this thread, you cared so much that you were upset the code wasn't immediately available. That's a strong indicator.
And at the same time, those interactions are concerning for what it implies the community of Reticulum builders wants to be.
Think about this for a moment, from an outsider's perspective.
They see someone who's been around for a few months, engaged with the community during that time, has warmly presented a demo for an upcoming contribution to RNS's ecosystem. And it's met quite negatively by some of you with what I can only describe as hysteria.
Have we lost the plot this much?
Has your vitriol toward certain types of trees permanently blinded you to the forest?
Have we forgotten the fact that it's normal for projects to be in a WIP state while showing early demos?
Have we forgotten that it can be downright irresponsible to put out code to the public too hastily (especially when networking is involved)?
Can we appreciate the irony of being so paranoid of slop, that you're criticizing the practice of taking the extra time & care to review and refine the code before public release? (You know, the kind of thing that is, by its very nature, the antithesis of being sloppy?)
...
I'm not discouraged by this at all, and I'll be delivering on what I've promised regardless.
But what do you think the message is to someone who's viewing this on the sidelines, excited about Reticulum, thinking about contributing towards the ecosystem, but is already nervous about the reception (as most people would be)?
How do you think communicating this way will encourage or discourage their efforts?
I'd like to think we all deeply care about the future of Reticulum.
Our very presence in this forum is a testament to that.
It's also a reminder that we are still the early ones right now.
We are all in this together, and there's a LOT of work that still needs to be done. Let's encourage contributions instead of the opposite.
There are healthy ways to communicate, "This is interesting but I am carrying very large reservations until I see the code myself".
Those moments matter.
To the lurkers; to those who quietly give it a heart or a +1; to those who are encouraging even if apprehensive; to those who ask clarifying questions: a BIG thanks to you! I truly believe you will really like what's in store.
One final point for context, because I've failed at making this clearer within this thread:
Bear in mind that this public release isn't just the Hopspot firmware, it's also the entire port of Reticulum, including mobile & desktop hosts on top of embedded. This is an SDK/framework/library for developers, first and foremost. It's licensed MIT/Apache, btw; thank you for asking about that, I totally forgot to make that clear too.
In addition to that, this first release will also provide the ready-to-go version of said Reticulum for embedded, pre-packaged as the Hopspot firmware for various embedded targets. It's not only an application unto its own right, but will also serve as an example of how to build applications on top of this port.
This is why, along with code review & refinement, extra documentation and examples are equally critical to have ready before released. There's little point in releasing a tool with no direction on how to wield it (or worse, a misleading direction via hasty examples).
I want thank you all for your interest, and I'm excited about the future of Reticulum!
I hope you are, too.
Chill. Our behaviour is not drawn from thin air. It is more than a couple of years of people deciding to pop out of the woods and take the posture of creators of the bigger and better RNS version of itself. It has been 99% slop and utter crap and failure, accompanied by nearly billion chat lines of stupid conversations. Every good thing in this world has been engulfed in utter bullshit of exceeding thickness, and if you have any remotely clear idea in what kind of world you live in, this should be very obvious to you. It's a tough place, nothing personal. Others before you have set the stage for this welcoming. If you got what it takes to make a real difference and truly advance and improve RNS, and you are for real, this is truly great, and no one will ever say otherwise. Goddamn, I will be truly happy and grateful you are here! Let's first see this with our own eyes. No one is discouraging contributions. We are just weary of the opposite. Pep talk is worthless. Good code, good hardware and solid practices are priceless. I truly wish you success with the project and will welcome it being a solid, well designed and useful tool, that will advance Reticulum further.
Outsider makes X thing with possibly too big of a scope but that could flourish into a cool project when some of the issues are addressed
Insiders have legitimate concerns but vocalizes them in a pretentious way overly aggressive way
Outsider gets overly defensive and takes it personally way more than they should
Many such the case
For the Wi-Fi interface, would it be possible to have settings similar to the LoRa interface, where you chose a frequency and bandwidth, and all other devices with the same settings could communicate? I believe this could be useful when running a point-to-point 2.4GHz connection between two embedded devices, allowing for simpler setup and reduced overhead. Obviously not high priority, but maybe an idea for the future.
I did a bit of reading and I think what I'm asking for is an interface that transmits Reticulum packets over raw 802.11 frames, effectively eliminating the data link layer.
cobalt32 wrote:
I did a bit of reading and I think what I'm asking for is an interface that transmits Reticulum packets over raw 802.11 frames, effectively eliminating the data link layer.
Oh yes top of mind; hard part is most platforms don't really give you that kind of monitor mode levl control. The more likely paths are either IBSS or the wifi mesh stuff (with the actual mesh features turned off since Reticulum takes that on above this layer). But that needs some more exploration; i suspect it'll be just as tricky on most common platforms.
GOOD NEWS is the WifiAware/NAN support is ready for ANdroid. Might be able to have iOS by release; if not, can come pretty shortly after. This is the mobile story for direct wifi talking, all blessed by the OS and great for Reticulum's case
Also! There is one special case I have in mind (that I don't want to mention until I've confirmed with hardware, which is on the way) - but it won't be exactly what you're thinking of; this would be on specific hardware, but would use the IBSS or mesh technique most likely.
Related, on my list but might not happen until post-release: take a little netgear travel router (i found one at a thrift store) and see if that's a case where we can do raw frame stuff. And if so, then we can probably just do vendor action frames and align with ESP-NOW, actually letting it "speak" ESP-NOW, and conceptually just using raw wifi directly, just like you're asking. THis could be really ripe! Just need more time in a day haha
From what I can read the Weave interface for Reticulum will use the 2.4 GHz WiFi layer directly. Would it make sense to leverage this rather than having a different implementation?
I mean the same can be achieved with a pi zero 2w/4b/5 and no ai codium... but cool nonetheless i hope this gets more updates once its released as many ai projects tend to get dropped immediately after release or they use ai to do their updates for them.