Yesterday evening was the kickoff meeting for the Seattle Meshnet project, which aims to set up a free, decentralized, community-operated data network across Seattle. About a dozen people met up at ALTSpace to kick ideas around and see how to get things moving. There was an immediate technical consensus on the idea of using CJDNS and Ubiquiti Nanostations, so the next step is to lay out a map and start putting up antennas.

I’m not sure how involved I will personally be with the hardware end of this project, but I’d like to participate even if I don’t help develop the architecture. This is something that ought to exist. I’m hoping to get ALTSpace on board with it; I think we could get permission from the building owner to set up an antenna pole in our courtyard.

After the Meshnet meeting I walked over to Offspring for another meeting, this one discussing a different sort of web: Kevin’s building a human-sized spiderweb installation for SEAF, using steel cable and custom-machined aluminum clamp nodes. I’m going to help out by developing a lighting system: an array of accelerometer-driven LEDs will make the web respond to movement, with little sparkles like dewdrops.

I didn’t get the prototypes assembled in time to show at the meeting, but it was easy enough to see how the parts would fit together and to test-fit them with Kevin’s sample nodes. It was useful; I’ve got a whole new batch of prototype parts on order from Digikey now.