Swarm M138 Modem | Hacker News Reader

Swarm M138 Modem

swarm.space

141 pointskristianpaul110 comments

Good comparison between Swarm and Iridium SBD from 2022. Latency on Swarm transmissions can be very high.

https://nootropicdesign.com/projectlab/2022/07/30/swarm-vs-i...

I read your comment on latency and thought "eh, can't be so bad, most of the applications for this will be near-real-time alerting for equipment failure and physical intrusion, and those applications can cope with a few seconds extra latency." By goodness, I was some distance out -- according to that link, the average latency on Swarm is about 40 minutes, and it can be as much as two hours.

With that level of latency, I really am struggling to think what this could be useful for. Historic environmental monitoring, OK. What else?

"Historic" is a extreme for a 40 minute latency. Maybe we could call it non-emergency environmental monitoring.

Also, remote facility tampering monitoring or remote system monitoring. If it's going to take you 2 days to get to a place to address an issue, 40 minutes to get notified seems fine.

I’ve been wanting to set up something like this for a remote cabin to turn on the heat some hours before we arrive when it’s really cold. But even $5/month seems like too much for us. If it was pay per use, that’d be great.

I was excited by helium but it seemed too difficult to setup. Wasn’t surprised to find out that nobody was actually using it for, you know, data.

If you already have bought and maintain a vacation cabin, is $60/yr really that much?

It’s a real dump with messy ownership, I assure you. It’s actually for future planning in case we sort out the ownership and install a heat source that isnt just the wood stove.

Personally I would say no, given that you could do other things via that link that are not just convenience, e.g. intrusion alert.

I do this by calling the full-timer living on the same cul-de-sac as the family cabin. Maybe costs me a beer if he drops in to say hi.

So the family cabin has landline connectivity too then, or cellular coverage.

the first, it could, the second .. certainly not at&t which i can only get a single bar of if i stand on a certain spot.

Current website says:

"Those experimental payloads have helped the company improve its overall latency, so now it can guarantee latency at under one hour (meaning a Swarm satellite passes overhead any given point on Earth at least once an hour)"

A lot of the use cases are interesting. There's e.g. automated weight tracking of cows in pastures as a use case.

I've seen these sorts of latencies on truck tracking satellite networks. Because the trucks upload timestamped records in databursts the latency isn't an issue. They're used more for accounting than anything else.

Note, this service is capped to 192 byte message roughly once an hour. Even assuming driver rest period doesn't need data, is 384 bytes enough to summarize an hour of driving?

A lat/long for every 5 minutes would work out to exactly 192 bytes, and you could definitely compress this by storing only delta values with fewer bits. But really you would probably drop it back to every 10 minutes so you could add in fuel level,vehicle ID, driver ID, and a few other bits of data.

40 minute latency is fine for a ton of use cases where you'd want connectivity in the middle of nowhere. Things like reporting the state of remote pump stations on long pipelines, or data acquisition from animal trackers for example - in those cases you're comparing latency to the time it takes to send someone out in a 4x4 and grab data, not an LTE connection to the mobile network.

[Edited to add the pump stations are probably a bad example, as my understanding is that it's pretty routine now to run fibre along the pipe for things data reporting]

Their data plan of 750 192-byte packets per month stretched out: you get to send 25 packets per day. Extremely niched use cases, e.g. rescue beacon or weather/radiation monitoring far out in nowhere.

I mostly agree. But on second thought, you can pack a lot of encoded data into 192 bytes. Say you had like 20 cameras all hooked up to a local server doing local ML object detection and running Home Assistant monitoring a bunch of binary sensors (doors, flood, motion). You could then have 1 bit be a flag for your top 100 objects and 92 binary sensors and get 25 reports of what's going on per day. Could be useful for remote cottage monitoring or something.

I guess if you have enough power to run a ML server, cameras, and remote sensors, you probably have normal internet though, eh?

You can probably do a lot better than your estimation with some clever coding schemes.

Your scheme is only optimal if each flag has an independent 50% chance of being set or unset.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Succinct_data_structure for some examples.

bits != bytes. There’s room for 8 times that ;)

OH DANG! Nice. Psh yeah you can run a whole facility operation off that kind of bandwidth.

I'm imagining a small, lone device mounted to a post somewhere in the wilderness. Probably solar powered.

This could work for alerting/notifications in such a case.

A larger sensor array installation probably has enough power and space available for better options.

Depends how many seconds per day you use them :)

$60 / year for the connectivity, that is, $5 / mo. Compared to almost any other solution, it's peanuts, even in an urban environment where other options abound.

There definitely should be a lot of market for for such an extremely low-end kind of connectivity, with small hourly updates. Weather / water / fire monitoring stations, maybe even pipelines (as a fallback for the usual wires / fiber), a backup emergency link for trucks / cars / watercraft / small aircraft / drones. The built-in GPS is extra helpful.

No, this may be huge.

I wish that there was some kind of a lifetime connectivity plan. You buy a modem with a one-time fee, it has a unique ID, and you get to send/receive data at a low bit rate for the life of the modem (or until the satellite service is discontinued).

IMO that would make IoT devices a lot more attractive. The device works for years and you never even have to worry about setting up an account to pay a bill.

https://blues.io/products/notecard/

Checkout https://www.particle.io/, they have a pretty nice free plan that includes cellular data

If you're willing to be in the footprint of mobile phone operators, a mvno like this [1] can get you to pennies per MB, pay for use. If the T-Mobile/Starlink plan works out, you might even get LTE via satellite.

[1] https://www.thingsmobile.com/business

Would this be a good fit for shipping containers?

I assume that most of the shipping process is already tracked, but if the error rate is anything like airports and checked luggage, I can see why someone might want this.

Although, I suppose if the actual ships have internet service, then airtags may be good enough even in this case.

Having worked in that type of space. We tried for years to get some sort of thing to work like this for shipping containers. As the space is huge and a decent ROI. The problem we had was battery life and endurance. At best we were getting 2-3 years in really good conditions. For some items that works great. But for others not so much. Usually very high/low temps and stacked under 10 other containers and 0 signal and bashed around in a shipping yard. You can not put it in the container as it degrades the signal too much. On the outside it is a harsh env. Tough space to work in. There are companies out there that have other solutions that worked better than what we had.

> You can not put it in the container as it degrades the signal too much. On the outside it is a harsh env.

My first thought was to put the device itself inside but the antenna outside. But I suppose there are reasons why that won't work either?

We went down that route. Your 'easy to install' is now drilling/cutting holes into the container. Then hope your cable does not act as a wick. Cost to install is now dramatically higher. Remember the shipping on these things is razor thin. The shipping company makes it up in volume. So if you go and add 500+ onto install they look for other solutions. The best one I saw was a giant bar code spray painted on the side of the thing and then make it up in the software back end. Low cost, easy to fix and fairly long lasting. Downside is no realtime tracking. Plus the stacking issue is a big issue.

    put the antenna outside

I don't work in this industry, but container ships carry from 1,000-14,000 containers at a time. Your container is likely to be in the middle of an absolutely massive stack of containers so even if you make your shipping container have great reception, it's still going to be buried under millions of tons of steel and god-knows-what-else.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container_ship#Size_categories

I'm not entirely sure it's necessary, either. Presumably the shipping company knows which boatyard/truck/ship has your container, where that boatyard/truck/ship is, and there is some sort of liability/insurance in place and I don't know that entire containers get lost with the same frequency as individual packages. (Those in the know, please correct me!)

> I don't know that entire containers get lost with the same frequency as individual packages.

There are some that fall overboard[1]. I'm sure it's not huge compared to the global volume shipped, but the risk is there.

---

1. https://www.supplychainbrain.com/articles/33002-shipping-con...

While it's certainly not a negligible problem if your container goes overboard, seems nearly negligible as a whole! The linked article seems to suggest that it's a few thousand containers per year out of 226 million. Pretty darn good.

I would love to know more about the industry in general. When you ship a container, what kind of tracking information do you get? Etc. Theoretically it's relatively easy (not easy but... relatively easy) for shipping companies to provide that info (they know that container X is on ship Y and presumably know where ship Y is and when it's expected in port) but, I don't know how that industry works.

I do know that there are a lot of sensors you can attach to individual packages that let you know if your packages have exceeded g-force, temperature, or orientation thresholds during shipping. They're not necessarily wireless or satellite enabled, but when the package arrives, they make it possible to verify that the package has remained within acceptable limits during transit. I imagine at least some of that tech is used in the container shipping industry as well. Maybe.

> I would love to know more about the industry in general. When you ship a container, what kind of tracking information do you get? Etc. Theoretically it's relatively easy (not easy but... relatively easy) for shipping companies to provide that info (they know that container X is on ship Y and presumably know where ship Y is and when it's expected in port) but, I don't know how that industry works.

I haven't worked in the industry, but I have worked for FedEx for a short time. I have to imagine there are at least some similarities.

At FedEx, you're supposed to scan each package "received" at the warehouse. And then scan it again when it's loaded onto a truck.

But when you have so many packages to deal with, sometimes boxes go onto the wrong truck. Sometimes boxes go onto the right truck, but they don't get scanned.

Sometimes boxes are mislabeled. Or misrouted.

Sometimes the recipient goes out of business. Or moves.

Sometimes the label is unreadable.

Sometimes there are multiple different addresses on the box.

I'm sure all that stuff happens to containers as well. Especially when the largest ships are above 14000 TEU.

Can the container not be the antenna?

Couldn't you package it up in a waterproof enclosure that is then glued inside the corrugations on the outside of a container? It might still be damaged, but it seems like it should usually survive. Power is definitely an issue, but you can pack a handful of D cells in there and run it in ultra-low power mode to stretch them out.

Of course if someone wants to do something nefarious they'll be able to just bash your device with a hammer to disable it, but that's true no matter where it is mounted.

The more batteries you add the more the cost you add. You also need a bigger enclosure. Someone to put it together, etc. Low power mode for the devices works to a point. But eventually the battery just gives out (age or usage). Which means you have to have someone go out and touch the thing. You need more power to go further with the radio so more batteries. The dudes working the docks probably are not allowed to do it. So you have to send a team out there to fix them up. Oh and that device is 'dead' so good luck finding it in the 20k+ containers in the current yard. You can prevent that to a point with scheduled maintenance. But again you are now pull containers out of service waiting for 'the guy' and your guy waiting for him to show up too, and that is costing money and time.

Malicious abuse is usually found fairly quickly in that industry and usually obvious it is happening. It is accidental and environmental that are the bigger problems. The more you harden for the environment the higher the cost on build, install, and replacement.

There are several key factors that go into making 10,000 of something. I can make 1-2 wickedly hardened items as prototypes. But make 10k of them takes a different set of skills and cost factors. Then you have to pay guys decent rates to go out and install/maintain them. Remember the guys running these companies are very cost sensitive. You can literally wipe out their whole margin on one container if you cost too much.

Endpoint tracking/scanning which they use the majority of the time is shockingly effective. Not perfect but very effective. Tracking the vehicle the item is on is usually more cost effective. For some loads it makes sense to track it that sensitively but most of the time it does not matter. Our cost budget for just materials (no manufacture) was 20-50 dollars a unit. We could not get anywhere near that. Just the radio was most of the budget let alone the cables, board, ics and case and battery. So the project was shelved. There are companies out there that make these sorts of things. But their costs are usually 500-3000 per unit plus install/ongoing costs.

Tracking of shipping containers does sound like a reasonable fit, yes. Oceanic buoys for scientific research, where satellite cover applies, would be another good example.

As noted in other comments, shipping container stacks are a brutal RF environment. Have spent quite a bit of time with Iridium SBD in various applications and it is rather sensitive to the surrounding environment. The wider and less obstructed the view of the sky from the antenna, the better.

From a simplistic view - the satellite is flying over and dragging a beam a few kilometers wide over your antenna. The more time it has hitting the antenna, the higher chance you'll be able to get your messages up/down before it have moved on.

If your antenna is buried under a stack of metal and has a pencil thin view of space - you're not going to be getting a lot of data across.

The limit of 60 bytes of down link is really what threw me off. For IoT sensors out in the wild that I've worked with we've still wanted the ability to remotely update their firmware. A 14kb firmware is do-able for a lot of systems, but if that update fails you don't get to retry for a month unless your firmware is incredibly tiny...

For systems that I've worked with that have firmware that small or even smaller have had power budgets in the <50mA/hour range... This modem uses up to a full amp at 3.3V (presumably only while transmitting but I'd bet its receive mode still busts that power budget in under a minute).

I can't think of the use cases for these modems that use that little data and have that much of a power draw...

I think they could potentially make this cheaper for larger deployments with multicast-like down link packets.

So if someone has 10,000 devices to update, this might be doable with one stream.

Wouldn't help a hobbyist or small batch IOT device.

Why does it need always-on receive? Any number of data acquisition apps can just wake-up on a set schedule, power that modem on, send their data, and get any action/responses at the same time then power everything back down. So the W/h numbers could still be quite trivial.

And presumably much of the power is as you mention transmit, because its talking to a satellite, not a device 1/2 a mile away.

> I can't think of the use cases for these modems that use that little data and have that much of a power draw...

Large asset tracking.

You could snapshot the internal state of an Atari 2600 25x a day! Such a wealth of bytes.

> Extremely niched use cases, e.g. rescue beacon or weather/radiation monitoring far out in nowhere.

That's if you're using it as the only channel (i.e. your data plane). It still works fine as a control plane or a signaling channel, e.g. so you know your remote sensor now has 100GiB of data ready to be collected.

That said, even as a data channel, you can pack a lot of information into a 192 byte packet; and 4800 bytes per day is plenty for some use cases - including one that's been rattling in my mind for years and the best solution I had come up with was a fixed-wing drone loitering over a site and exchanging data over a 2.4/5Ghz link

Their twitter account sometimes talks about customers. https://twitter.com/SwarmInternet/

Here's the most recent one they posted: https://www.shapetechnology.co.nz/doc-deploys-remote-shape-e...

That's the worst data plan since SMS texts cost $0.10. At that data price they can give away the hardware for free.

Huh? Per month, sending 750 texts @$0.1 would cost $75, vs $5 for 750 Swarm messages ($60 p.a./12)

$200ea @q1: https://www.sparkfun.com/products/21287

> 37-138 MHz (downlink), 148-150 MHz (uplink)

Makes me wonder how this deals with local noise. There's rather a lot of extant traffic in that range already and its worst in populated areas; even rural tho there's going to be things wandering by that speak loud in that range.

Might be using a digital mode designed for weak signal communications. I'm not familiar with what might be used commercially but in amateur radio FT8 is popular and amazing. I live in a neighborhood with ~900 homes, restrictions on antennas, and quite a high noise floor. On 20m wavelength (granted, quite different from the 2m λ of this modem) with a center fed dipole antenna (SWR 1.5) that is 2m off the ground (not good for long distance because the ground reflects most of the radiated energy is up rather than out) and transmitting at 100 watts, I can send and receive messages 17700km (11000 miles). Using regular analog voice instead of FT8, I get about 3200km (2000 miles) with the same setup. Those distances are on the surface of the earth. The actual radio signal is traveling a bit further because it bounces between Earth and ionosphere as it travels. For this modem, the signal would be traveling line-of-sight and probably less than 1000km?

> restrictions on antennas

Assuming you’re in USA, what you need is a tower with “An antenna that is designed to receive local television broadcast signals.”

https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/installing-consumer-own...

Interesting :)

Could you try with QRP 5watts to see how far you can reach? 11K miles on 100w is not that impressive?

It’s impressive, to me at least, given the antenna is in an NVIS configuration (configured for distances of ~1k miles) and given that anything below S7 is in the noise. I have tried QRP and cannot reach overseas with this antenna placement.

We are in 2023, yet web developers still think that hijacking scrolling functionality of a web browser is a good thing.

You spelled "web designers" wrong.

Title could say "Swarm M138 1kbps Satellite Modem for IoT"

with latency up to 1 hour

Seems incredibly expensive on a per packet/kb basis. Trying to understand what the target market is. I could understand using it for remote telemetry and location tracking purposes for expensive construction equipment or something, but not for most consumer applications.

Yes, that's clearly the market it's aimed at - remote, low data rate sensors. 750 packets per month is about one per hour. Ideal if you want to report the weather from the top of a mountain or the middle of the Pacific.

You mentioned mountains, and I was thinking this might work well for seismic instruments placed in remote locations if the data plan is enough to transmit this kind of data.

It is meant to be cost competitive with Iridium’s Short Burst Data service I believe. Compared to Iridium it is incredibly cheap for similar service.

Once you start thinking with "kilo"bytes in the denominator, you're in the wrong ballpark. There are tons of applications for remote insitu sensors which don't send much data, or often. Game cameras, equipment trackers, sensors, numerous other applications would use this. For me this is the world of custom electronics, true bare metal systems (no OS but what you write for yourself) and tiny battery packs. A 5$/month data plan is amazing for what this includes.

Expensive? There is no cheaper option.

This is likely competing with the Iridium 9603 modem, which offers relatively inexpensive service for their Short Burst Data protocol. If you're interested in this stuff, I highly recommend the RockBLOCK line of products from Rock7. It's only about $200, with around $20/month for service.

I've used this for a few projects, and I've been really happy with the service. I even helped write a nodejs driver for it (https://github.com/dudewheresmycode/node-iridium-sbd).

Is Omnitracs still around? They had a very similar data model for trucking companies. I seem to recall they were quite a bit more expensive, and the terminals were much larger.

Transmits and receives 2-way data via Swarm’s satellite network. Designed to be embedded into a third-party IoT device. Data delivered via a REST API or Webhook to any cloud service.

Seems like Mini-PCI Express is a bit overkill for this, wonder why they chose that form factor instead of like direct-serial (for embedding) with a usb-serial for all the rest.

> wonder why they chose that form factor instead of like direct-serial

Because MiniPCIe is a common formfactor for cellular modems, so this could be swapped in to existing devices with no hardware changes and minimal software changes.

The slot carries not only a lane of PCIe but also a channel of USB 2.0 and SIM connections. Most cellular modems entirely ignore the PCIe and just use it in USB mode, which I assume this is doing as well.

Personally I'd have chosen M.2 as MiniPCIe is outdated, but I also would not at all be surprised to find that the industrial IoT world they're targeting has kept using the deprecated standard because some major vendor got a great deal on MiniPCIe connectors when the mainstream computing world switched to M.2.

Considering how many devices designed well after the introduction of MicroUSB or even USB-C I still come across with MiniUSB connectors I feel like that's a common thing in the niche computing device world, intentionally and knowingly making new things using the obsolete connector to save a few cents per unit.

The vast majority of industrial/embedded hardware is still on mPCIe. I have only started seeing M.2 in these applications in the last few years, believe it or not.

It is using direct 3.3V serial for embedding, the mini PCIe is just used for the ubiquitous, effective, cheap, and low profile connector.

It doesn't actually have any PCIe lanes, it has power, ground, the aforementioned 3.3V serial, a transmit/receive indicator, and a single (!) GPIO.

I'm not 100% sure, but I suspect if you tried to plug it into an mSATA slot either it or the laptop would be damaged.

Edit: Here's the pinout of the Swarm modem:

https://i.imgur.com/VQvDrEa.png

Here's the pinout of a mini PCIe card:

https://i.imgur.com/YJIyJ86.png

And here's the pinout of mini PCIe/mSATA (numbered from bottom to top, which makes it slightly more challenging to compare):

https://i.imgur.com/7yL3FW4.png

The ground connections all line up, and the 3.0 to 5.0V input, 1000 mA rated VDD on the Swarm is connected to 3V3. The Swarm UART is connected to REFCLK+ and REFCLK- on the PCIe bus, and the GPIO drives LED_WWAN. Should be no problem!

I suppose that it would be really cool if they provided an I2C/2-wire/SMB communication interface on pins 30 and 32 so hypothetically you could connect it to a computer.

Because MiniPCIe also provides a USB channel in addition to PCIe which is what this modem uses.

Would this need to be attached to an amplifier and large (at least quarter wave) antenna in order to transmit to satellites? Why VHF? Wouldn't upper UHF be a better choice for transmission to satellites?

Based off the kit SparkFun sells, I don't think it needs an amp: https://www.sparkfun.com/products/21287

Why would upper UHF be better?

Not to stray off topic does anybody know anything about Beidu SMS service? How would this compare to Swarm? They have integrated into their GPS satellites.

https://www.communicationstoday.co.in/beidou-navigation-sate...

Seems very cool. To see the pricing I had to go add a z-index to your '.overlay' to get it to show up.

Swarm was bought by SpaceX a couple of years ago.

I hope we get some affordable alternatives that provide enough bandwidth for 1-2 detailed weather reports per day soon. I can't believe Iridium Go is still the best option.

I can't wait til my smart TV ships with this modem; it won't even nag me into connecting it to the internet before it can harvest my watching habits and GPS location /s

Data plans are expensive if you send more than a few bytes. Any good alternatives to satellite connections in remote areas? Maybe radio?

Ham radio, depending on application.

You can get a couple of miles out of LoRa. The radios are pretty cheap. Though if your sensor is miles and miles from things maybe a bit of an issue stringing these things out (with solar panels and backup batteries etc) could be a pain.

https://hackaday.com/2020/02/26/lora-mesh-network-with-off-t...

What kind of use cases is this useful for?

Moving sensors of low bandwidth?

BTW, is it possible to use the Apple Mesh network as an Apple Tag does? Or from the API perspective is a kernel side interface?

i don't think the airtag uses a mesh network per say. it's more like someone elses phone sees an airtag and reports the phone's gps position/timestamp/airtagid back to apple over whatever data connection it has. That's certainly how 'Tile' works. It's not like it's hopping phone to phone to get back to you.

Not available everywhere yet, is it regulatory reasons or coverage? What satellites does it work with?

Swarm was bought by SpaceX a year or two ago. They were originally launching their own micro satellite constellation. Not sure how it works since SpaceX bought them.

I knew they were part of SpaceX now (though it's not obvious from the website), but didn't realize they were bought.

It's a completely different band from Starlink satellites though, but I suppose new satellites can incorporate additional hardware (not sure what the antenna design would be though... VHF wavelengths are way bigger...).

Swarm operates as a wholly owned subsidiary as far as I can tell. It wasn't fully integrated into SpaceX.

They still use Swarm's own satellites. And Swarm still launches additional satellites. They last launched 12 satellites on January 3rd on a Falcon 9 launch.

I think it's purely FCC like regulation/certification, at least from what I've read in the device description. Also, they have an "asset tracking device" that claims to have world coverage.

  Swarm provide global coverage over all regions, but there are regulatory restrictions for specific countries.

  The current list of approved countries / regions for the M138 Modem is: USA, Antarctica, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, Georgia, Germany, Greenland, Iceland, Ireland, New Zealand, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom and International Waters (12 nautical miles offshore).

  Swarm continues to grow this list of approved countries as quickly as possible. Customers will receive regular updates on approved regions through the Swarm newsletter.

Maybe I'm just paranoid but coupled to a GPS sensor, seems like a stalker's wet dream.

Sure, but it's easy to be a stalker these days.

This has up to 2 hour latency, 25 packets/day, and other pretty serious restrictions that make it probably a bad choice, although definitely a viable one.

scrolling is wonky

What happens to the data service in the event of societal collapse and ground control systems are offline indefinitely? Will subscribers instantly lose data service or will they have access until they reach the end of their paid subscription?

Obviously it's doomed, but I can't imagine the line of thinking under which this is a useful question.

Most likely situation is being cancelled for political reasons. Some guy you didn't vote for decides to start a war with another guy you didn't vote for, so you get shut down.

And you're comparing the loss of your swarm modem to an artillery shell popping your house like a balloon? Not to even mention nukes.

I do find it to be an oddly interesting thought though. What services would continue without interruption until they failed?

Probably all the ones which could be reasonably maintained.

I think in the event of ‘societal collapse’ people would have bigger problems with trying to feed themselves than if some satellites or twitter went offline.

After a societal collapse there's probably still a need for valuable infrastructure such as power grid, etc which would require comms - and due to reduced manpower (or other hazardous conditions outside), satellite-based comms might actually become preferable to terrestrial/wire-based comms.

Big problem is that all the satellite services need ground stations that need power and likely depend on the internet. It would be good if they worked without internet but that would take work that won’t be done without incentives.

Ham radio would be fallback. The problem is that the technology is old and the bandwidth is limited. Long distance radio is in HF band, and the whole band is slightly bigger than Wifi channel. It also isn’t reliable cause depends on the ionosphere. It would be like going back 30 years.

Sure, but I doubt “survive zombie apocalypse” is a line item on any private satellite provider’s execution plan.

I’m sure they have a BCDR plan, and I’m sure it says something like “in case of everything going down, we have bigger problems on our hands”.

We never had an “apocalypse” scenario, but we had an “all of our dependent services are permanently down” to which the response was :shrug:

Coordinating with loved ones that are scattered around a region. Lora radio is one option but the range is limited.

I’m disappointed that LTE Direct didn’t take off. It sounds like it has to be builtin to firmware or even requires hardware changes, and manufacturers didn’t add it. Probably cause couldn’t see way to make money.

It would be perfect for short-range comms, replacing walkie-talkies and messaging. It would work with phones that people already have.

For mid-range, cell towers on hilltops with link to other places would work. Except I heard cell towers need a lot of network infrastructure to work. And may consume too much power to work off solar. Simple solar-powered, self-contained cell sites would be useful for disasters and other events.

Farming in remote areas. Cities are death traps when a full scale war happens and they lose supplies, it's the same story every time. A typical picture is of some city dweller trading their valuable jewelry for some potatoes. Most recently it happened between Crimea and Rostov-on-Don, for example Mariupol.

Also every time there's a major war between roughly equal forces people rediscover all kinds of things: there aren't nearly enough munitions, there aren't enough bunkers, trenches are overpowered defensive structures, we need more water and food and fuel, air dominance or at least air denial is critical, tanks and mechanized/armour units are actually very good, etc. etc.

Do you have a use case where Swarm's data service is going to be top-of-mind in event of societal collapse, above getting food or fighting your neighbors for fuel?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com