Recent content by Arkanet

  1. Arkanet

    I built an offline "internet in a box" for SA: Wikipedia in 4 languages, live GPS maps and 80+ guides with zero signal. There's a live demo. Be brutal

    You're right, and I'd go further: if you know what Kiwix is, you're probably not who this is for, genuinely, go build it, it's a great project. The box is for everyone who never will. What you can't get from Kiwix on a phone though is the maps side: live GPS on offline Southern Africa tiles...
  2. Arkanet

    I built an offline "internet in a box" for SA: Wikipedia in 4 languages, live GPS maps and 80+ guides with zero signal. There's a live demo. Be brutal

    Totally fair, if you're running NAS drives you're exactly the person who'd build this rather than buy it, and that's great. On the bandwidth point though, the pitch was never data cost, it's data absence.
  3. Arkanet

    I built an offline "internet in a box" for SA: Wikipedia in 4 languages, live GPS maps and 80+ guides with zero signal. There's a live demo. Be brutal

    Fair on both. You can, and for city driving Google offline is genuinely good. The differences: you have to download each region in advance while you still have data, the downloads expire after a few weeks unless refreshed, and it's per-phone. Arkanet has the whole of Southern Africa on it...
  4. Arkanet

    I built an offline "internet in a box" for SA: Wikipedia in 4 languages, live GPS maps and 80+ guides with zero signal. There's a live demo. Be brutal

    Going to need middle-out compression for this one 😄
  5. Arkanet

    I built an offline "internet in a box" for SA: Wikipedia in 4 languages, live GPS maps and 80+ guides with zero signal. There's a live demo. Be brutal

    There's been a lot of interest in a comms feature, and Meshtastic integration is genuinely on my list. Being upfront: nothing built yet, current product ships properly first. But it's the direction I'm leaning.
  6. Arkanet

    I built an offline "internet in a box" for SA: Wikipedia in 4 languages, live GPS maps and 80+ guides with zero signal. There's a live demo. Be brutal

    That's a great idea, and hams are exactly who I imagined using this in the bush. The honest constraint is that everything on Arkanet has to be properly licensed for commercial redistribution (public domain, CC BY, ODbL etc), and repeater directories tend to be community databases with murky...
  7. Arkanet

    I built an offline "internet in a box" for SA: Wikipedia in 4 languages, live GPS maps and 80+ guides with zero signal. There's a live demo. Be brutal

    Yes exactly, a lot of effort was made to make this device actually valuable and unique for South Africans: - Wikipedia in English, Afrikaans, isiZulu and isiXhosa - Maps of Southern Africa with cross-border coverage instead of US-centric content - A Beta translation tool between the 6 most...
  8. Arkanet

    I built an offline "internet in a box" for SA: Wikipedia in 4 languages, live GPS maps and 80+ guides with zero signal. There's a live demo. Be brutal

    Haha, I love this so much. I think we might just have to reenact this scene for our socials
  9. Arkanet

    I built an offline "internet in a box" for SA: Wikipedia in 4 languages, live GPS maps and 80+ guides with zero signal. There's a live demo. Be brutal

    None shipped, and that's a gap in the market I'm happy to leave open. Serious answer since others might wonder: the curated content (guides, translations, recipes, maps) contains nothing adult. Wikipedia and other wikis are the full, unfiltered encyclopedias though, same as online, so the usual...
  10. Arkanet

    I built an offline "internet in a box" for SA: Wikipedia in 4 languages, live GPS maps and 80+ guides with zero signal. There's a live demo. Be brutal

    Haha I know you are half-joking, but one of our clients actually bought a "Faraday Bag" off Takealot that he stores his Arkanet in. We haven't done any EMP testing on these bags though, so buy them at your own risk ;)
  11. Arkanet

    I built an offline "internet in a box" for SA: Wikipedia in 4 languages, live GPS maps and 80+ guides with zero signal. There's a live demo. Be brutal

    To answer your question about updates: The feature of this being completely offline means that updates are a bit of a more difficult mechanic. Currently we do offer updates to previous buyers, but it requires a re-download of the image and re-flash the SD card (or you can ask us to ship you a...
  12. Arkanet

    I built an offline "internet in a box" for SA: Wikipedia in 4 languages, live GPS maps and 80+ guides with zero signal. There's a live demo. Be brutal

    Funny, I actually started to get serious about this project after chatting to my sister who lives completely off-grid, and is somewhat of a "prepper" herself!
  13. Arkanet

    I built an offline "internet in a box" for SA: Wikipedia in 4 languages, live GPS maps and 80+ guides with zero signal. There's a live demo. Be brutal

    It's available to buy now if you want to pull the trigger! https://arkanet.co.za/
  14. Arkanet

    I built an offline "internet in a box" for SA: Wikipedia in 4 languages, live GPS maps and 80+ guides with zero signal. There's a live demo. Be brutal

    Hi all Joburg guy here. Over the last while I've been building something in my spare time and it's finally at the point where I can show it off and take a beating from this forum. It started with two annoyances. First, load-shedding taking out fibre and mobile towers at the same time, so even...
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