I’m not familiar with Canadian suppliers, sorry. I have bought directly from them in the past, but I’m not sure about shipping to Canada.

Yes, you have many options. It depends on how much “from scratch” you want to go.

The simplest method is to purchase a module with the radio transceiver + microcontroller, flash it, and assemble it. If you don’t want any sensors, you can for example purchase from RAK the kit a kit with a ‘RAK19003’ base board + ‘RAK4631’ module (nRF52840 micro-controller + SX1262 transciever) . For Canada, you would pick the 900 MHz version that operates in the 915 MHz band. (https://store.rakwireless.com/products/wisblock-meshtastic-starter-kit?variant=43884035113158)

For an enclosure, you can look up ‘Project box’ or 3D print a case.

If you want to go even more “from scratch”, you can buy a module without a micro-controller (Waveshare core1262, Ra-01SH, Wio-SX1262), and interface with these using a micro-controller via SPI. At this layer it starts to become more of a hassle if you want to implement Meshtastic, because you will need to either copy an existing configuration, or modify the firmware so that it matches the way that your electronics are connected.

Then, if you do not want to purchase a module, you would buy the transciever directly (for example, the SX1262), and assemble your own module. You can look up the schematic of the basic modules to get an idea of what this looks like. For example, you can see the Waveshare Core1262 schematic here: https://files.waveshare.com/upload/c/c1/CoreSX1262_Sch.pdf

If you do not want to rely on an already existing LoRa transciever, but instead use a more general radio transciever, that is also possible. But, more expensive, and is unlikely to match performance. This is something that one might want to do if you already have an SDR transciever connected to raspberry pi and want to use it to interface with LoRa (still, it is much easier to connect a LoRa device over USB). I would not recommend building a meshtastic device from more general transcievers.

About the immortality of the crab

They are banned

Not really, no

Since my work involves sensors, I set up a continuous testing setup on a raspberry pi and got its IP whitelisted. I ssh into it when something is annoying to do in the Windows laptop.

I’m surviving, and definetly not the fittest.

I think that the TinyTapeout concept is super cool (https://tinytapeout.com/). In the past, it was not really feasible to design and manufacture a semiconductor device as a hobbyist… Unless maybe an extremely wealthy one.

Now, we have open source design tools, open process design kit, and the ability but small part of a manufactured wafer.

There are also now multi-project wafer runs for photonic chips at reasonable prices for startup/academia. I think these developments are pretty cool.

Thanks a lot for the examples! I have been looking through these, and, as far as I can tell:

1. In SSL stripping, the site would appear to your client as HTTP, not HTTPS. If that’s the case, I think SSL stripping is blocked when using ‘HTTPS-Only’ mode
2. For DNS spoofing, the visited site would show up as insecure because they would not be able to generate a valid certificate for the target website

I still have not had the chance to look into leaky metadata. But, generally, I think metadata issues can in part be addressed by not generating much metadata.

Probably the biggest vulnerability is the captive portal. There is no way to verify you’re connecting to an official Starbucks router. I think that when connecting to a public router it is wise to assume that it is malicious.

I’m curious about an example that comes to your mind as you say this. In your view, what is a privacy risk associated with public WiFi use that is not easily mitigated?

Just saw this thread! https://www.reddit.com/r/Amsterdam/comments/1qhiry2/northern_light_in_amsterdam/

Cool! Unfortunately it is not visible out of my window, and just saw this right as I am going to sleep… I imagine I would need to travel at least to the edge of the city to maaaybe get to see it, right? Or are these views really possible from within a city?

Wow! Never seen this one before. It’s amazing!

868 MHz is right

For dBi and directionality, it depends on terrain and goals. In MeshCore you can ask the signal to follow specific router paths, and so you may or may not want an omnidirectional antenna depending on how you want the signal to travel.

Most common antennas that you will find use wither SMA or N connectors. For outdoor use, N connectors are allegedly better in terms of water resistance. If you are making your own enclosure, you can find both SMA-IPEX and N-IPEX connectors with an O-ring which prevent water from entering the hole through which the connector threads come out. The inside of the enclosure is protected equally well for SMA and N, it is just the connector portion which remains exposed, so over months/years the connector may corrode and N-type may last longer. The Heltec T114 is probably shipped out with an SMA-IPEX cable with no O-ring.

I use this one: N-type connector, 8 dBi, omidirectional:

https://nl.aliexpress.com/item/1005007463706065.html

Thanks :)

It depends. In my experience: in an academic laboratory I have been able to use common sense.

For example, gloves go on when working with strong acids/bases. The statement:

gloves apparently only give researchers a false sense of security that can dull the sense of touch and prevent you from recognizing chemical exposure

Does not apply as much when you are working with such corrosive agents, because you really should never be in a position where spilling 4 M HCl into your hands would go unnoticed.

When working with large quantitites of oils, even if non-hazardous, gloves go on and they will probably get oil in them.

When working with cell cultures, the goal is often to not contaminate the cultures. Some people prefer to wash their hands thoroughly and not use gloves, and they have been working at it for many years and they seem to do just fine. It’s a risk mitigation strategy - if the cultures have antibiotics and fungicides, risk is already not too high.

In an industry setting it is different. Companies often comply with specific standards and health and safety regulations. While the individual can use common sense, the people in charge of ascertaining compliance (sometimes ‘EHS’, Environment, health and safety personnel) aren’t necessarily chemists themselves, nor should they need to be aware of the identity of the transparent liquid in the flask that you are holding. So, generic rules are often set in place not only because of their practical utility but also to simplify enforcement. In some cases external auditors can come in (announced or not) and verify compliance - this, again is much simpler when the rule is ‘lab coat behind yellow line, gloves always on when touching a container with a liquid’ than having to interview each person to understand what they were touching without gloves and to understand their philosophy of why they chose to do so.

I have experienced issues both over tor and over clearnet. The tor front-end exists on its own server, but it connects to the mander server. So, the server that hosts the front-end via Tor will see the exit node connecting to it, and then the mander server gets the requests via that Tor server. Ultimately some bandwidth is used for both servers because the data travels from mander, to the tor front-end, and then to the exit node. There is also another server that hosts and serves the images.

What I see is not a bandwidth problem, though. It seems like the database queries are the bottleneck. There is a limited number of connections to the database, and some of the queries are complex and use a lot of CPU. It is the intense searching through the database what appears to throttle the website.

By hand. We are only two people, and we usually clean after we cook/eat. When one is cleaning only 2 plates + a pot/pan at a time, it is easy to use little water. Spray of soap, metal scrub, sponge scrub, and then turn the tap on to rinse for a few seconds. Utensils get individually scrubbed and then all rinsed together for a few seconds.

Maybe when we have kids a dish washer will make sense.

AGUCUAGCAUAC

I have been happy with my Garmin. It is functional without having to connect to anything, and data can be easily exported to a computer for more advanced processing. It is a handy GPS receiver that lets me monitor heart rate and log running metrics.