[OLPC India] XO Connectivity - some ideas

[Arjun Sarwal]

Ankur,

I agree that GSM and CDMA networks have large penetration in India.
It might be interesting to look into cost of GPRS services , by data usage
or by per time basis. I don't avail of GPRS services and couldn't easily
find any pages that point to plans/costs too -- but if you could just give a
general idea of the cost, that'd be great.
Also, it'd be interesting to know about GPRS service costs in other
countries too ...

thanks
Arjun





>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 5
> Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2008 13:22:47 -0800 (PST)
> From: Ankur Verma <ankur_18d at yahoo.com>
> Subject: XO Connectivity: Some Ideas
> To: Olpc India Mailing List <India at lists.laptop.org>,
>        devel at lists.laptop.org
> Message-ID: <821084.34266.qm at web33905.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> Hello,
>  I found out that XO uses SoC Wireless Adapter for providing networking
> locally. In the present system 56k modem with fixed telephone line
> connection or WiFi connection is provided for network connectivity. One
> laptop connected via USB to a GSM/GPRS Modem could serve as a mesh portal
> point. The XOs present in the mesh could access the internet from this XO.
>  Otherwise, External Mobile Phone (GPRS enabled) can be connected to the
> XO via infrared (IrDA), Bluetooth (Not a feasible option! It may cause
> disturbance with WiFi) or via a USB cable.
>  Some Advantages that I thought of:
>
>
>   In today?s fast paced world where everyone is running short of time,
> parents generally do not have time to keep check over their ward?s
> activities which may lead to falling in the bad company or indulge in
> undesirable activities. Parents can get location information from their
> child? laptop after sending a request to it.
>   Sol: Parents can directly SMS (as in rural areas internet is not
> available) through even a cheap mobile (which is available) to the School
> server where a running application would find the location of the laptop in
> the mesh and reply the parent back with a SMS.
>
>
>   Students in the schools can write their queries on laptop and then send
> them via SMS to teachers at distant places even after school hours which
> would result in a better and cheap way of communication.
>  Sol: On mesh network Student can send SMS to teacher?s mobile regarding
> any query one has.
>
>
>   Many of the students remain uninformed of important notices and
> circulars etc. issued by the institution authorities and thus face problems,
> leading to waste of time and energy. Teacher can send real-time messages to
> students providing them information regarding all happenings (e.g. results
> notification, attendance record, assessment deadlines, feedback from tutors
> and other urgent administrative details) on their laptops. Sol. Teachers
> when away from their students can send urgent messages to mesh portal point
> via their mobiles.
>   Wireless Internet can be achieved without any distance constraint by
> incorporating GSM/GPRS Modem. This enables the student to attend online
> classes and tutorials without any distance limitation.
>   GSM/GPRS Modem can also serve the purpose of internet in areas where no
> internet facility is available, but GSM coverage is there.  (E.g. Remote
> Rural areas, which are the targets where we want to, deploy XO).
>  Design and Development:
>
>  For interfacing external GSM/GPRS Modem, we need to communicate to it via
> Serial Port programming. A Driver is already available in Fedora 4 for
> PL2303, a chip used to convert USB to Serial. We just need to put SIM card
> into GPRS Phone, then plug it. If / dev/ttyUSB0 is there, that means Fedora
> recognized this Modem. Then using minicom, we can test the connection using
> Hayes AT commands. The GPRS Modem setup finished! And then Internet could be
> shared among the mesh nodes.
>
>  Further, for Sending and Receiving SMS, an application needs to be built,
> starting from low level details by using AT Commands for communicating with
> the GSM modem. Apart from this, GSM Modem could also be interfaced with the
> school server giving it all the networking capabilities and then via
> wireless all the laptops could get internet connectivity.
>
>  Please give me your views and suggestions regarding it. I would be very
> interested in contributing to it. Earlier, I had worked for OLPC as Summer
> of Content Intern.
>  I had put what I explained above on this page along with some more
> elaboration.
>
>  Ankur Verma
>  Junior, Undergraduate Student
> Electronics and Communication Engineering,
> NSIT, New Delhi
> Website: http://ankur.nsit.googlepages.com/
>
>
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