E-Dabba
Offline streaming · Android + hardware · Feb — Mar 2017
Streaming assumes bandwidth. Plenty of places have none, or have it expensively. E-Dabba puts the library in the room instead — a small box holding the media, broadcasting its own network, and an Android app that streams from it with no internet involved at all.
How it works
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A box, not a cloud
E-Dabba hardware runs OpenWRT with LibraryBox on top — open-source software on an open-source router firmware. The media sits on the box, not on a server somewhere.
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Its own network
The hardware broadcasts locally. Anyone within range joins it directly, which is why it works where there is no connection to join in the first place.
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Many people at once
Songs, films and TV series streaming to multiple users simultaneously, all served from the same local box.
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The app is the front door
An Android client for browsing and playing what is on the hardware, so the box needs no screen and no interface of its own.
Hyperlocal was the whole idea. Not a smaller internet, but a deliberate substitute for one — a coach, a campus, a village hall, anywhere the content can be brought to the place rather than piped to it.