sardine5

This is the only thing that makes sense in my head (distributed sensing and global surveillance). Would also be interested if it's feasible with beam forming to inject traffic into WiFi/Cell networks.

Christopher Harborne - not just a libertarian freedom loving crypto guy, but also the largest single shareholder of QinetiQ, a pretty notable UK Defence company.

Thanks! The protocol it uses does allow broadcasting to a subset of the group - I haven't hooked that up to the UI yet, but it's on the todo list (after CodedPhy and IP fallback).

Re. Messages - if you're not in range, as long as you don't leave the call, it'll send as soon as you reconnect. Messages are not currently persisted to a database though (- unsure if that's a feature or not?). I'd wanted to hold off on that until I was sure I'd covered everything I needed for the schema - they're currently encoded with ITA-2 (which is why some punctuation and emoticons go missing) - but I've made some improvements to the protocol, and intend to move to UTF-8 for broader character/language support.

The current protocol is very much designed to work around all the ways streaming audio really isn't a good fit for Bluetooth LE GATT. It does things which don't really make sense for messages, so I'm intending to separate messages from the live call.

The current focus is trying to make it play a little better with wireless headphones though. I started the app back in the days when phones had 3.5mm headphone jacks. If you've an Android phone and can use LE Audio headphones - they work much better, but wired headphones work best.

You can do a surprising amount with a low throughput connection though. I've been playing with Google's Lyra V2 codec - it chews up a fair bit of CPU, but 3.2kbps over a CodedPhy link sounds fine.

I'd stayed away from WiFi Direct because Android and iOS don't play nicely with it - but looks like the EU has forced Apple to support WiFi Aware in iOS 26. It still looks like it would require A LOT of manual pairing through the system UI if you join a group with new people though. I really wanted to keep the single password (or qr code scan/NFC tap) to join.

We've got Openrun Pros - wind can be a problem, but if you cover the mics with a head band, it actually works pretty well. (To act as a crude wind muff)

I actually have this kind of working on a branch - really don't fancy hosting any infrastructure myself though - so I was intending it to be a Windows service or docker container you have to setup and pair with. Once you've done that - the endpoint is included in any group you create, and treated as an extra node in the graph. If available and lower latency than other routes, it'll be used.

Was trying to keep things simple though - the separate server seemed a step too far for most people I talked to about it.

It's AES128 encrypted with a key derived from the group password.

I possibly live more remote than you do - but mobile data isn't really a thing (in the UK at least) you can rely on continuously when you're cycling, or visiting the supermarket and you've lost your partner near the cheese aisle...

It's somewhat device dependant - but between her Pixel 6 and my Pixel 7 - if we've got line of sight and the handset's not being held to our body (so in a handlebar mount or saddle bag) - 50-75m? I've been victim to the recent Microsoft layoffs, so have a bit of time to work on it at the moment - looking at adding longer range CodedPhy support this week (though that would only be available on Android)

It works best if there's 3 phones though - as it can route via the other if a link drops.

A bit different, as it's mainly for voice - but I made an app 'Murmur : Bluetooth Group Calls' - that lets you hold group voice calls and message via a mesh of Bluetooth LE connections. It's available on Android and iOS. https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/murmur-bluetooth-group-calls/i...

Doesn't really get any downloads, so not sure there's much demand for this - but I use it with some shokz bone conducting headphones for talking to my wife when we're cycling (also for wrangling our two small girls)

Not sure that's fair - the battery packs come with a 5 year warranty. If you increase the 'full range' - you're increasing the odds you'll need to claim on that, which needs paying for.