The MAZI toolkit/mazizone is running stable on Quintessence. We have been using WordPress successfully as our boat log and research journal. We now intend to look into the NextCloud sharing app and GuestBook app for our home ‘Kingswood’ basin.

All the guides can either be found on GitHub or at the page of our partner University of Thessaly (Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering).

The app is now available! Please download and install for Android phones and tablets.

During the recent dash to prototype the Anchorholds app for Creeknet, we have been chopping up html and processing images to retrofit our fork of Open University project Salsa.

This requires rewriting of the templates to build the first 16 sets of pages with matching images etc. One can’t say it’s been easy collaborative process, even with great services at hand from Sandstorm, so thanks to all concerned for their tireless support and patience.

Overall we were getting on fine with Sandstorm until some gremlins in the Davros share, made the files read only! With time lapping at our heels we made a switch to Google Drive to complete the task but got into a synchronisation battle with one another. In the end we have resolved to build a staging server from where future versions of the app html will be tested. This could all have been handled better, so lessons learned!

We will also be looking into combining the boattr project and the mazizone over the sensors and data collection services.

Sensors

Manage the sensors attached on the Raspberry of the MAZI toolkit.

sudo bash mazi-sense.sh -n sensehat -d 10 -i 2

sudo bash mazi-sense.sh -n sensehat -a

sudo bash mazi-sense.sh -n sensehat -d 10 -i 2 -s

Statistics

sudo apt-get install python-pip
sudo pip install speedtest-cli

sudo sh mazi-stat.sh -t

sudo sh mazi-stat.sh -t -s

sudo sh mazi-stat.sh -r -s -u

Mazi partners from Greece, Switzerland and Germany met with local artists, campaigners and residents from along Creekside.

Many people living on the boats moored at the Theatre Arm of the creek in Lewisham and Brookmarsh Estate in Greenwich face disruption as developer proposals challenge mooring arrangements and stir up anxiety for future security. Veteran mariners aired their concerns and expressed insight into the legal options and tactical steps they have taken to protect themselves.

Rising shore-side land values are driving a scramble for last scraps. Rents continue to speed beyond reach for all but the few.

We visited the Hoy Steps again today to view the condition of the street level area inside the gates and assess the clean up task. After 20 years of restricted access, an accumulation of old wheels, wooden pallets and tangle of Buddleia block the steps. There is also a large amount of scaffolding framing the space which can be used again in any reconstruction plan. High tide at midday prevented us seeing more than half a dozen of the twenty steps that lead down to the muddy shoreline at low tide. A ferry once transported people across the creek to Greenwich at this point. The ‘hoy!’ call out to summon a boat was first heard here hundreds of years ago.

After a well deserved coffee at Hoy Kitchen and visit to the steps we were picked up by Camden for a fantastic river trip aboard a motorised lifeboat, which first took us out onto the Thames before returning us to the nest of houseboats at 4 Creekside.

At the furthest reaches of the tidal creek, Friends of Brookmill Park held their quarterly meeting to map out activities for the rest of spring and early summer. Their re planting program in the formal garden adjacent to Stephen Lawrence centre is proceeding well with fresh lavender beds and new roses. Mariner and beekeeper Julian Kingston will talk about local shipbuilding at a fundraiser event in Brookmill pub on June 7th, space is limited to 30 seats so get your ticket soon!

That’s just a few weeks before the Creeknet Symposium on 20th and 21st June. DIY networks of Deptford Creek host partners from the MAZI project in Germany, Switzerland and Greece to attend this ‘cross pollination event’, all are welcome.

Over a year ago, James and Adnan attended Transmediale media arts festival in Berlin to meet up with old friends living in the city and introduce them to members of the Mazi project attending for the first time. One of the first panels Global Ports still resonates as we edge forward with Creeknet pilot in Deptford. Much like in Port of Hamburg, the PLA (Port of London Authority) conforms a hydrachy of power, governing access to the waterways of the city, monitoring shipping and controlling all but the the weather and tides.

For those who are dependent on the Thames and it’s tributaries for transport,  trade and residence, there are very few resources available to guide use and track changing conditions.  It’s the knowledge of the boating community and their interpretation of PLA bylaws that hold sway here. Resistance, skulks the waters edge, using forgotten inlets, overgrown steps and derelict locks, to retain river access and uphold liberties. Mooring rights and tidal rituals, ebb and flow along the river wall, entangled in mooring chains, revealed as the river bed is drained by tides.

The Thames river wall all the way into Deptford Creek is part of the UK coastline, it’s beaches are monitored and rubbish cleared. Material on the shore clusters much where it was dropped into the water so great collections of red brick, clay pipes, animal bones, oyster shells and drift wood colour the shorelines in alignment to forgotten industry. Warehouses and wharves are fast being replaced by multi-story condos, only a very few remain out of the grasp of developers such as the abandoned squatted restaurant on Odessa Street up river in Rotherhithe, where recent Minesweeper fundraiser was such a success.

The burning of the Minsweeper and subsequent loss of mooring access at Brookmarsh Yard in Greenwich, point to an inevitability that will end occupation of these reaches by  the many barges and boats currently resident. Lengthy negotiations and legal actions by boaters to retain land access and not often ended well.

Adnan installs the MAZI box on the roof of Quintessence. So far we had been running the MAZI zone from our living room (inside the LEGO box). Now it goes out of the lego box into a weather proof casing.

Installation boattr antenna

Installation boattr antenna

Installation boattr antenna

Installation boattr antenna

Installation boattr antenna

Installation boattr antenna

Installation boattr antenna

Installation boattr antenna

Installation boattr antenna

Installation boattr antenna

Installation boattr antenna

This research project on the boat looks into the development of the boattr prototype in collaboration with MAZI (for “together” in Greek), a Horizon2020 research project. Boattr connects narrow boats to the ‘Internet-of-Things’ and allows for open wireless mesh-networking within the narrow boat community, by using affordable microcomputers. The main goal of this project is to provide technology and knowledge that aims to 1) empower those narrow boats who are in physical proximity, to shape their hybrid urban space, together, according to the specificities of the respective local environment, and 2) foster participation, conviviality, and location-based collective awareness of the canals. The boattr prototype will build on the MAZI toolkit and the capabilities offered by Do-It-Yourself networking infrastructures – low-cost off-the-shelf hardware and wireless technologies – that allow small communities or individuals to deploy local communication networks that are fully owned by local actors, including all generated data. These DIY networks could cover from a small square (e.g., using a Raspberry Pi) to a city neighbourhood (e.g., the Commotion Construction Kit used at the RedHook WiFi initiative) or even a whole city (e.g., guifi.net, awmn.net, freifunk.net), and in the case of boattr the UK canal network.
Interactive Dissemination over the MAZI webportal will offer a chance for personal interaction in academic, socio-economic (and possibly selected commercial) conferences, EU organised events and conferences and trade fairs and exhibitions, and most importantly with policy bodies, regulatory and funding bodies that decide on research and innovation in water and waste between EU countries. The interactive channel of dissemination is intended for target groups with a high level of information need and involvement and it therefore provides information tailored to highly targeted audiences (in the case of the boattr project the ‘narrow boat’ community). The interactive channel is expected to be the most efficient means for community building and have the highest impact on dissemination and exploitation.

MAZI is a confirmed (accepted) Horizon2020 research project with which Coventry University could potentially partner up by supporting the boattr research project. MAZI will run until 2019, allowing for future development and deployment of the boattr prototype (once established by the end of 2016 or beginning of 2017). Having acquired a partner status with the MAZI project will allow for boattr to disseminate and promote its activities, via the partners’ networks of databases, if applicable to some partners in their countries including accessing networks in other international regions. The MAZI consortium members have considerable experience in marketing such events and projects both directly and through leading international events, disseminating information to targeted audiences through both online and off-line channels, and recruiting qualified participants to the brainstorming, networking workshops and international conferences. In summary: 1) Roadmap and Recommendations, White Paper and Continuity Plan, Brainstorming reports, results of the clustering activities and the documentation presented in events will all be made available through the MAZI portal. 2) MAZI partners will use their databases for targeted mail-shots to inform EU researchers about project activities and workshops, events and conferences; 3) Articles, email announcements and electronic newsletters will be carried out to maximise visibility of the boattr objectives, results and developments.

The boattr DIY infrastructures offer a unique rich set of special characteristics and affordances for offering local services to the narrow boat community, outside the public Internet: the ownership and control of the whole design process that promotes independence and grassroots innovation rather than loss of control and fear of data shadows; the de facto physical proximity of those connected without the need for disclosing private location information, such as GPS coordinates, to third parties; the easy and inclusive access through the use of a local captive portal launched automatically when one joins the network; the option for anonymous interactions; and the materiality of the network itself. The prototype will integrate existing FLOSS software, from very simple applications to sophisticated distributed solutions (like those under development by the P2Pvalue project, mobile sensing devices, and recent developments in open data and open hardware), allowing it to be appropriated by different non-expert users according to their respective context and use case; it will offer a wide unique variety of customization options.

The boattr project already receives in kind contributions from Deckspace medialab in form of access to the medialab’s server farm (on root level); from the MAZI project in the form of access to the MAZI toolkit, databases & network; and privately in the form of access to two narrow boats as case study for the boattr prototype. Other funding opportunities to be pursued are Horizon2020 (CAPS), Leverhulme Trust, as well as the Heritage Lottery Fund. Ideally the boattr/MAZI project would partner up with the Canal and River Trust, a charity, which is entrusted to care for 2,000 miles of waterways in England and Wales, which are often over 200 years old (an enormous network of bridges, embankments, towpaths, aqueducts, docks and reservoirs and more). The waterways provide an unfenced, ‘no turnstiles’ opportunity to interact with history and nature next to soothing water.