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Comment by leejoramo | Hacker News Reader

Yes, a comparison between goTenna and BearTooth would be good.

I've got a 4 pack of gotenna's, and the hardware seems good, but the android app is pretty bad. Pretty sure a solid Android dev could bang out an app with better functionality in a good solid weekend of hacking (assuming they were using an SDK that abstracted all the BTLE comms).

Android app is missing some great features like automatic group location updates. Right now you have to get location updates manually broadcast to you by each person in the group. Lots of crashes too.

I applied for an SDK but haven't heard anything back in three months. Feels like the project is dead, as there have been no android app updates in that time either.

Hi, the SDK is not dead at all, it's going to come out in 1-2 months, we just have been focusing on encryption which should be coming this week. By the way, the lack of automated group updates is by design, there is very limited bandwidth made available by the FCC and if we allowed everyone to transmit their locations non-stop it would ruin it for everyone. We do have some features coming soon that will help get locations in a smoother fashion. Please standby to see those functions soon.

Glad to hear of it, sorry to come across as harsh. I was (and still am) surprised to not see any updates in the app since I got my devices delivered 3.5 months ago. Strongly recommend you guys kick out the occasional bugfix release without piling up fixes for a big release, helps make the project feel like it has a little momentum.

Your hardware seems to be top notch!

Ahh, good explanation of the group updates functionality. Is this a problem for a small group of 4, every 15 minutes? Seems like not too much bandwidth if you aren't talking about an update ever minute.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DarknetPlan

forum about mesh networks, such as those products.

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