OTA Update Hackathon

Progress Report:

Background:

Datacasting is the use of a broadcast signal (radio or TV) to send digital content, typically though not necessarily non-audiovisual. Its simplest form is a unidirectional, one-to-many transmission, but various methods of interactivity (return paths) are possible. Kiwix is a platform for web content to be hosted offline. It can be installed in end-use devices, or in servers on local networks. It employs a compressed file format, (.zim) which provides an index of the compressed file, enabling specific sections to be accessed without extracting the entire file. For example an offline Wikipedia can be browsed one article at a time (by multiple clients, if hosted on a server in a local network). The use of datacasting to update .zim archives would enable free-to-user (and low-cost-to-provider) updating of offline Wikipedias for example in remote schools. This would be particularly valuable in the case of African-language Wikipedias which are relatively small but also relatively fast-growing.

The CTV connection:

Two of Wikimedia-ZA’s board members are also volunteers with a project originated by Cape Town TV to provide offline resources in set-top boxes which allow old (analogue) TVs (or even computer monitor screens) to receive digital broadcasts, as well as becoming home/classroom computing/media centres. The idea of enabling remote updating of offline libraries presupposes a broadcast partner and as a small, agile organisation CTV is a good intermediary, already having an ongoing client relationship with Sentech, South Africa’s parastatal broadcast signal carrier.

The Hackathon:

The achievement of proof-of-concept for detecting, receiving and installing updates in a .zim library is the aim of a hackathon jointly planned by Wikimedia-ZA and CTV. The project stalled after the UCT department of computer science failed to deliver a simulated datacast signal as originally agreed. However, the hackathon organisers themselves are now close to being able to generate such a signal.

The Wikimedia-ZA chapter budgeted and repeatedly rolled over an initial amount of R10 000 (later increased to R15 000) to sponsor the hackathon. Originally, each team would have been given the use of a Raspberry Pi fitted with a TV-hat, but in the meantime global shortages have raised the possible amendment of this plan to include SDR dongles which can connect with any computer by USB port.

The latest version, which is on track, is to attach the hackathon to WikiIndaba in the same way that each Wikimania has an attached hackathon. Potential lack of suitable skills by actual WikiIndaba attendees can be mitigated by teaming them up with remote participants.

Protocol

Participants undertake to acknowledge sources of any software they reuse, and if such software is licensed so as to require that derived software must be similarly licensed to the original, to do so. Any software originating in the hackathon which is not so bound, shall default into the public domain.