We at Rhizomatica are running the High-frequency Emergency and Rural Multimedia Exchange System (HERMES) already for some years, based on P2P connections in a star topology, using UUCP. Now it is time to move forward. This workshop is focused on the next generation HERMES network stack, which hopefully will allow for worldwide deployment of the network.
HERMES project provides a software stack (and hardware integration) for very-long distance telecommunication on HF band. Our focus currently are isolated communities (in terms of telecommunication access), especially in Amazon rain forest communities and Central Africa.
Our current setup uses a proprietary P2P HF software-modem (called VARA) and UUCP on top of it, basically for email exchange, and ad-hoc file transfer and remote command execution.
Our next-generation system will use an open-source modem (called Mercury) we are developing, together new upper network layers, which we are still evaluating (for eg., NNCP and Reticulum). We aim to expand the network world wide, for providing accessibility anywhere in the world through HF, and towards this goal, we'll carry this discussion / workshop for evaluation which would be the best options to take.
We are taking a couple of radios (sBitx v3) for a full chain demonstration, and also a fully functional board (without the enclosure) to donate to anyone who wants to play with HF telecom.