A crowd funded Lantern will bring Internet to ‘dark’ places

If you’ve ever stayed in a caravan in places like Wales, UK in the last few years you’ll likely have noticed the lack of Internet connectivity. Outernet however hopes to alleviate the withdrawal somewhat by downloading web pages from a space satellite to a receiver which you connect to via Wi-Fi.

There first consumer device is the Lantern, it acts as a receiver that is sent data from a satellite and the content is stored on it so you can access the information from you computers, similar to how a NAS device works. Websites that will be accessible from the device will be Project Gutenberg which hosts public domain book, Open Source Ecology which hosts designs for various items ranging from tractors to 3D printers, and Wikipedia. In addition to those will be news sites include Deutsche Welle.

Currently the campaign funds stand at $245,119 where as the target was $200,000. They do not appear to have a maximum limit to the amount of devices they are selling so you can still buy one for $99, there are currently 22 days left on the campaign so there’s plenty of time to pick one up.

If this project interests you go and check the Indiegogo campaign page there is a ton of information on the project if you’re sceptical by the project’s feasibility, they also have some interesting graphics there which show what they want to do with the money they raise, they even have plans if they reach $10,000,000 to launch 24 cubesats. At the more realistic goal of $300,000 they plan on making an Android app for their service to accompany a receiver that could appear in the future.

Source: Indiegogo