My zero-to-hero journey deploying a fiber-optic and wireless community mesh

The Tamarind Valley Collective is a unique experiment. 50 families came together pre-pandemic to restore 75 acres of hillside into a food forest and sustainable farm, in small parcels of land privately owned but collectively managed. Our residential village is in one corner so there’s a minimal footprint on the land. It struck us that having 50 internet connections for secondary homes made no sense, so why don’t we have community WiFi? And why not extend it across the entire farm so every corner is connected for telemetry? So we did it.

1. Mapped on OpenStreetMap, down to every single tree. Because you have to know what tree your fiber is hanging from, and where the delicious fruits are.

2. A fiber optic backbone rolled out with maximum jugaad. When the lineman doesn’t come to the field, you take the field to the lineman.

3. A WiFi, BLE and LoRa mesh, for connectivity everywhere and beyond. Remote is when devices outnumber humans.

4. Recycled equipment as far as possible. They don’t get security updates and I have to enable outdated SSH ciphers to connect, but the main kind of bugs here have DNA, not source code.

You can just do things. Easy thing to say, but surprisingly easy to practice too. I’ve documented what I’ve learnt doing this, and I hope you’ll contribute or extend this for your own needs.