Village Intranet

Last week, the advance team mapped out the 400 houses to be wired up and provided with electricity through the installation of solar panels. This week the installation will start.  Guided by the digital map created, with each village identified by different colours.  Houses closesly clustered will share a mini-grid.  Dispersed houses - the majority - will get an independent system.  

The households will be provided with several LED lights for illumination, a charger for mobile phones, and a small radio powered by rechargeable batteries. 

In the mean time, the team is also developing an intranet for the villages.  A wireless local area network will be setup, powered by batteries charged by solar panels, of course.  Attached to the network is a file server filled with a library of electronic resources such as movies, teaching material for mathematics, …, all open source material.

Repeaters will be set up, in line of sight, throughout the village for wider coverage.  Anyone with a mobile phone will be able to access the library through the intranet. For free.  Without having to pay for access to the Internet. 

Data loggers will monitor usage and health of the network. Data will be transmitted to Hong Kong through a SIM card.

Various components of the intranet, including hardware and software, are being finalised, debugged, and tested at the hotel.  To be deployed in the village alongside the solar panel systems for the households. 

The Computing team is essentially doing tow projects.  The household solar panel system and the intranet.  It is amazingly ambitious.  It is possible due to the tremendous drive and wealth of skills of KL and YZ.  We feel so blessed to have them in our teaching team.