Disaster-Resilient LiFi Network
Off-grid IR mesh that turns street lamps into emergency nodes.
During disasters (floods, earthquakes, cyclones) power grids and mobile networks fail at the same time. Emergency coordination becomes impossible precisely when it's needed most. Battery-powered radios require infrastructure, and internet-dependent systems are the first to go.
The street lamps are already there. Most of them run on solar. The question was whether you could turn them into a communication mesh without modifying the existing infrastructure permanently.
D-LiFi-Proto retrofits solar street lamps with ESP8266 microcontrollers and IR transceivers. Each lamp becomes a mesh node. Messages hop between nodes using gradient-based routing, finding the optimal path through the network in real time, without any central server.
The system operates entirely off-grid. No power grid dependency. No mobile network. Just the solar panels that are already charging the lamps, and line-of-sight IR between nodes.
ESP8266 microcontrollers with IR transceivers clipped to existing lamp fixtures. No permanent modification required.
Gradient-based routing calculates the best path through the mesh dynamically. Nodes that fail simply get routed around.
Each node draws from the lamp's existing solar battery. Works even if the grid is down and the lamp's LED circuit isn't.
Custom hop-based messaging in C. Messages include priority levels so emergency alerts preempt normal traffic.
