Cool project, except these aren't really "banned" books. thats a misleading term. In most of these cases, the book isn’t actually banned. Nobody is being arrested for owning it, Amazon isn’t forbidden from selling it, and adults can still read it whenever they want.

What’s really being debated is whether a particular school library, children’s section, or curriculum should include a book. That’s not the same thing as government censorship. Schools and libraries make age-appropriate selection decisions all the time. They don’t carry every book ever published, and not every objectionable book belongs in front of kids just because someone wants to call its removal a “ban.” A single school library deciding not to carry a book because they think it's inappropriate, but that same book being available at the local public library, every book store in town, the internet, etc is not the same as the soviet union literally banning the ownership of books.

“As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth’s final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.”

- Commissioner Pravin Lal, Datalinks

Alpha Centauri pertinent as ever.

Years ago there was PirateBox: flash a small Wifi access point with a custom firmware that's a webserver that hosts a forum/filehost. Their website is dead, but here's a mod of the project; https://www.jasongriffey.net/librarybox/

Although, I dread to think what sort of files one would get when user uploads are allowed.

A hidden “book server” like this could be set up in just about any electronic device with a sufficiently powerful microcontroller. But I think there is something delightfully poetic about using a source of light to spread suppressed knowledge.

I have seen these described as Pirate Boxes before, way back around 2012. The basic idea is a box that throws up a wifi network and web server letting people upload/download files to it, while remaining disconnected from the wider internet. A geographically limited digital sharing library.

Android loves to auto-disconnect you from any Wifi network that doesn't provide Internet. You need to go through a bunch of arcane settings to disable that feature.

I'd be interested in the banned book list. A glance at the socials with the biggest one missing suggests there will be no interesting books on it. Just the ones you can find in "banned books" stands at mainstream bookstores. Absolute mediocrity of thought free of meaningful diversity.

For someone so mindful of efficient software and use of energy, it's showing that images on that post are 5MB PNGs...

Nice, but:

"Since the device is a light bulb, it would be difficult to detect and likely to go unnoticed."

I doubt it would be any harder to shut down than any other public-access WiFi device, just a bit of experimentation with turning off power / devices would find it.

Makes me wonder if credential harvesting is a thing when all these smart bulbs and other IoT devices get thrown away with the Wi-Fi credentials stored on them.

Nice example how far you can come with little initial knowledge, a clear goal, some passion and an inquisitive mind.

Really cool project!

I can't wait until it's formalized enough that I can just buy a $20 light bulb, update it wirelessly somehow, and then have my own little "light bulb library" server.

Great rabbit hole but the flaw is the bulb might not be obvious but the book would be on a network scan someone suspected electronic dead drops.

This project and especially one of the closing notes[1] reminds me of a more mature DIY project to make a mesh node using a simple solar lamp[2]. I love the creativity on display here and I especially appreciate all the links to the other blogs and sites that helped you along the way.

1: > I was talking with a friend about this idea and the storage limitation and he thought it would be cool to have these devices form a mesh network

2: https://meshtastic.org/docs/community/enclosures/rak/harbor-...

As expected, the book examples given were not "banned".

They're usually school libraries that are removing books from their collection that contain explicit material, usually at the request of parents.

So you're the one who can recreate Apollo mission computer :D

oh this is awesome, i've always thought it could be cool to leave always connect hubs around town. ESP32's would be to awkward but a bunch of lightbulbs would blend right in!

Reads like you had fun, keep up the hacking!

P.S main -> mail I think?

Such a satisfying read, really enjoyed this, especially since your skills are definitely beyond mine. The mesh network idea would be incredibly cool!

And it's even better that it's for a good cause as well.

You people never disapoint... Putting a web server in a light bulb, I mean who the hell even thinks of that?!

I can see using this as a form of "geo-caching."

Anyone looking for local-first smart bulbs, plugs, etc with Tasmota or ESPHome I can thoroughly recommend https://www.mylocalbytes.com/ - not affiliated in any way, just a very happy customer.

quite interesting to find hackable hardware in commodity looking smart devices.

advice for the op: the images in the page took half a minute to load (on multigigabit internet not being stressed). might be a routing issue between the server and my isp, but the images could use some optimization.

I'm guessing the website is currently being hugged to death, but the images take a while to load, and I'm on a pretty good connection. Maybe try webp with some decent compression to shrink down the filesize?

I would suspect that the brown potting stuff, among other things, conducts heat away from the components.

I love this idea, thank you for posting it. It can be used for so many interesting projects.

I do hope you'll extend you work by making the lamp broacast the book by using light morse code

It'd be great to set this up to return files over Reticulum or another decentralized mesh protocol, so it doesn't rely on the Internet in any way.

Fahrenheit 451 anyone?

Whatever this is, Tasmota is not the solution.

Has anyone heard of similar work done with smart light bulbs but for Meshtastic nodes?

I think calling them "banned" is so disingenuous. There are actual banned books that are illegal to own in the United States. None of these "banned books" come anywhere close to meeting that criteria.

Very cool project nonetheless!

Why stop there? While meshtastic would require additional hardware, tor entry exit nodes would not. Nor would other mesh protocols… also as for hosting ideas… the text files? Def cad and related models… skies the limit with space the only limiting factor.

Well written. That it was written at all is a strong comment on the state of our world where we have an improbable amount of data, but nothing to read.

I'm surprised there are banned books with 1st amendment exists in America? I'm curious as to what these are. I think its rather silly that books can be banned.

have you you checked out "esp32-s3" which costs $7.12 and has wifi and microsd installed on it [0]. Also esp32-cam is another board with similar specifications.

[0] https://www.seeedstudio.com/XIAO-ESP32S3-p-5627.html

You should add guest-logbook as in 90" and 00" to it :) Or whole fucking BBS system :) THAT would be cool

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In the USA, the books that are banned are for public schools. They talk about topics like (gasp) LGBTQ and sex things!

Now where the USA censors routinely is financial censorship. If you can afford the thing thats fincially banned, the sure, its not banned. But if you cant afford it, youre screwed.

And, if you work for a company, they can fire you for any/no reason, INCLUDING your speech off work.

In the USA, its "freedom of speech" if youre independently wealthy. If not, hope you dont offend power.

Some books deserve to be banned.

I would put Kevin MacDonald's antisemitic trilogy The Culture of Critique, the Turner Diaries ( which calls for mass extermination of non-white groups in the USA ) and Mein Kampf in the realm of books that should be shunned.