Hi everyone, and welcome to the first post from me! We have had some exciting times behind the scenes getting everything ready, and I am ready to start sharing some of the events with you.
A team from Flinders University and the Village Telco project went to Arkaroola Sanctuary, a magnificentNational Park that is a piece of amazing Australian outback wilderness (now sadly under threat by mining interests), and successfuly tested our Batphone setup. There was coverage by the ABC news team that accompanied us, and we have amazing photos, and Youtube links to come:)
The stunning Flinders Ranges at Arkaroola
It was an incredibly exciting day – there was a helicopter ride (with no sides on the chopper, the MASH theme was ringing in my head on a loop). The terrain was rugged and magnificent – truly inspiring, but also perfect to test the software, as there is no way normal mobile coverage could work there. We had a great team – our backbone and glorious leader, the visionary creator of the project, Dr Paul Gardner-Stephen from Flinders University, (and shoephone fame), David & Rosemary Rowe from the Village Telco project, Dany Rakotopara, the Honours student working on the project since the beginning, Abby Stephens, a 17 year old interested volunteer, (who somehow managed to wrangle us all), Paul no 2, aka the artistic and creative photography type, David Beaumont, necessary second location photography and video creator, and my self, Romana Challans, proving that have wheelchair, will travel. I am joining in via the University, (I am applying to do a Serval based PhD there next year)….
We had an ambitious program of tests (and collection of the essential preordered delciious baked goods from Copley bakery, the amazing Quandong Pies – which lasted a very short time..). Dany, who has contributed so much more than his studies required, completed the tests for the day. This seemed really fitting to all of us who have been lucky enough to work with Dany – and if anyone wants to volunteer enough funds to Serval to allow us to employ Dany full time, please, feel free We managed the final test in the last 1o minutes, with mere minutes to spare, before the hair raisingly fun ride back to the small runway and our plane, which had to be airborne by a certain time (we were, just!), which was an essential element of the success of the day – and many thanks to all the fanatstic team at Adelaide Biplanes.
So, there is much coming up to share with you, and a lot to discuss. This project is based in great part on Open Source software, and I will be expanding on that as we go. Let me know if you have any questions, just use the contact form!
