Monitor Air Quality and FOSDEM:
- https://paul.walko.org/blog/2026_01_25-meshtastic-fosdem-part1.html
- https://paul.walko.org/blog/2026-02-07_fosdem-part2.html
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Discussion
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> By far, the biggest hurdle was distribution of the monitoring nodes. FOSDEM staff did not allow us to place nodes without someone (such as devroom managers) watching over them at all times, otherwise we would’ve liked to place them Friday evening before the conference started.
what a bizarre stipulation
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In the past we found rogue access points inside our conference harvesting Google logins. So we are skeptical of any devices without a clear owner...
@gsuberland From the organizers point of view, they have no idea how hacked together the monitoring nodes are so it makes sense that they are concerned about them having some issue. Especially when there are 20+ of them, there is some chance (although very small) of electrical/fire risks.
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@bigmapscaver that seems very very questionable justification for a low power device, given the quantity of random devices with much higher power targets and stuff like lithium cells there are around.
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@bigmapscaver I'm not saying that it's malicious in any way, of course, it's just a very arbitrary line to draw given the nature of the event. I truly can't imagine us having anything approaching that rule at any of the events I'm involved with.
@bigmapscaver @gsuberland yeah I mean while I was there, we hosted one on our booth, and as the website's pictures show, random 3D-printed box with random large LiIon cell inside. I don't know what kind of agreements the FOSDEM organizers have with the uni hosting them, but I can totally see "OK, you can bring any device you want, but make it *belong* and be *observed* by someone" being rather reasonable. I mean, on any other uni day, in the evening a janitor would have gone through rooms and …
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@bigmapscaver @gsuberland collected stuff that was left in the halls, so I feel "please don't leave unattended networked battery devices around while there's no one watching at night" is kinda hm, OK, that's what you'd expect from any other public building as well.
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@funkylab @bigmapscaver the batteries I guess do make *some* sense to keep an eye on (this is one of the reasons I went with USB-C on ours for EMF) but if they're fused, which they appear to be based on the pictures, it's a bit overkill.
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@gsuberland @bigmapscaver sure, but large event, far too few volunteers… do you really want to start arguing with people with much flimsier devices?
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