David Rowe’s Web Site

Free Telephony Project: Free (as in speech) hardware and software for embedded telephony.

The Mesh Potato: The Mesh Potato is a 802.11bg mesh router with a single FXS port. Adjacent mesh potatoes automatically form a peer-peer network, relaying telephone calls without land lines or cell phone towers. The Mesh Potato is designed using open hardware and software and is part of the Village Telco project. Lots of blog posts and progress updates on the Village Telco blog.

Open Source Line Echo Canceller: A very popular high quality line echo canceller for Asterisk that is free as in speech. Works with any Zaptel and DAHDI compatible hardware, from humble X100Ps to multiple PRIs. Removes the need for expensive "hardware" echo cancellation. Part of many Asterisk and Linux distributions and now part of the Linux Kernel!

Codec2: 2400 bit/s Speech Codec. A low bit rate, communications quality speech codec that fills the gap in open source speech coding beneath 5000 bits/s. Applications include digital speech over HF/VHF radio.

Electric Car: My wife and I drive an electric car every day. Our EV has a range of 60km, 100 km/hr top speed, and runs on 96V at 350A peak. We charge our eletric car from our home solar panels. We rarely use our other, internal combustion car anymore, I can’t remember the last time we bought petrol! The conversion and solar panels to "fuel" it cost less than a medium size new car. Lots more information on my EV page.

East Timor OLPC Pilot: I am working with people in my home town of Adelaide and East Timor on a pilot deployment of OLPCs in two Timorsese schools.

Peak Oil: I spend a lot of time researching this subject. IMHO the biggest challenge facing the world today - bigger than climate change.

WiSPCaR: Wifi Station Power Controller And Reporter. A PIC microcontroller gadget using to monitor solar powered remote Wifi stations. Parts cost is around $2!

Low Cost IT for The Blind: The Louder Router is a $200 talking computer for the blind, built around free software and commodity routers.

$10 ATA Project: Cheap telephony for the developing world using a novel $10 Analog Telephone Adaptor (ATA) design and commodity routers.

gEDA gschem/PCB: Perl Scripts for the free gEDA/PCB CAD tools, e.g. automatic updating of PCB footprints, and improved component dragging.