I've had this idea in mind for quite a while, but I spent a long
time thinking about it yesterday while assembling circuit boards.
Basically it seems a neat idea to me to set up a tilde server in a
tree.
Basically grab a Pi Zero, put it in a sealed box alongside a
battery, 5V switch-mode voltage regulator, mobile broadband modem,
and solar charge controller, plus a solar panel on top. Hoist it up
a tree and you've got a tree-top tilde. But to make it interesting,
poke some wide-angle, preferably night-vision capable, cameras out
each side to frequently grab still frames that people can view, as
well as a microphone so that noises from birds and anything else
making a show of itself, can be listened into via a live stream.
Might as well throw in temperature, humidity, etc. sensors to have
an idea of what it feels like up there. Then put it in some remote
location, perferably with a good view, though obviously also with
decent mobile phone reception.
The spot that comes to mind for it would be atop the cliff
overlooking the river crossing that I visited on my last little
country drive. It's state park land according to the map, so
undoubtably there'd be a law against it, but I figure it would be a
fair while before anyone noticed, especially if it were a bit
disguised (though the solar panel makes that hard). Another issue
is that for that spot I'd have to cross a ford and climb up a
very steep 4x4 track every time I needed to attend to it (more
cause to doubt that others would discover it though).
It would probably be wisest to set it up in a less interesting but
more nearby location for starters, while I work out the bugs.
There's few good condidates for that as well.
Obviously for users there's not much technically exciting about
having access to a slow SBC, over a slow internet link, with an
unreliable power supply. However I'd like to think that people
would enjoy the novelty, and also have fun doing things like motion
processing on the camera images to detect animals, as all those
sensor inputs would be open for reading by tilde members. Resources
would need to be limited significantly of course, user-hosted
public content would probably be Gopher-only for this reason.
The main issue is cost. With mobs like Oracle offering free (and
_much_ more powerful than a Pi Zero) VPS access, the cost of
setting up a regular Tilde can potentially be $0, if also using a
free sub-domain from somewhere like afraid.org. On the other hand
for this I'd have to fork out for lots of gear, then commit to
paying some significant (to me) sum each year for the mobile
broadband connection.
The latter issue is confounded by the fact that most providers put
you behind a CGNAT. You can of course use SSH reverse forwarding to
still make the content accessible via another server running on a
VPS, but asthetically it would be nice to be connecting to the
tree-top server directly, and also the odds of losing remote access
are much higher if you're relying on a system like that. There are
providers of fixed-IP mobile broadband SIMs, but this of course
means more $$$.
It would be neat though to have a central server at eg.
treetoptilde.com and then hang a community of tildes off that like
ttt1.treetoptilde.com, ttt2.treetoptilde.com, and so on with trees
finding themselves affixed with tilde-hosting Pis all over the
world. That could also centrally manage the SSH reverse forwarding.
Well, one can dream.
- The Free Thinker, 2022
PS. I realised later that another issue would be the risk of it
catching fire, especially the battery if a Lithium type is used
and it over-heats in the summer. Probably best to keep it
within one's own property and perhaps use a SLA battery on the
ground (due to the weight).
