Blog

News and field reports

The BosNets stand under the Samsun AFAD canopy.

Four days at AFAD's drone search competition

We were in Samsun from 17 to 20 August. Search and rescue teams from all 81 provinces looked for hidden objects by drone, and for four days we watched how those locations travelled from the field to the coordination centre.

Read the post
Diagram of the hybrid model: through the server with coverage, device to device without.

Hybrid and bridge communication

What does it mean to work over the internet where there is coverage and over the devices’ own network where there is none? And how does one person inside coverage connect an entire team that is outside it?

Read the post
Diagram comparing a centralised network with a mesh network.

What is a mesh network?

A network where devices connect directly to each other instead of to a centre. How it differs from a mobile network, why it gets stronger as it gets busier, and where its limits are, explained with diagrams.

Read the post
Illustration of the three steps triggered by pressing the emergency button.

The emergency button: one press, the whole team knows

In field operations the worst case is not getting injured, it is being unable to tell anyone. What happens when the physical button on the device is pressed?

Read the post
The BosApp network map screen and the steps of location tracking.

See where your team is without asking "where are you?"

How do you follow team positions in the field with no coverage? The team on a map, periodic location broadcasting, offline maps and routing.

Read the post
Illustration of end-to-end encrypted data transfer.

A private, closed communication network

What end-to-end encryption actually means, what independence from outside infrastructure buys you, and how an organisation runs its own communication network.

Read the post
Illustration of the Bluetooth link and how the mesh network grows.

How to reach your team without a base station

How do you set up team communication where the network has collapsed or coverage never existed? A chain that works in three steps.

Read the post
Two BosMag devices signalling to each other.

What is BosNets? Communication that works when the network is down

In the February earthquakes, 2,800 of the 6,350 base stations in the region went out of service within seconds. Why does the network vanish exactly then, and what does BosNets put in its place?

Read the post