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We all have faced network problems when we’re at jam packed festival or concert. No technology until now was present to solve the issue to communicate with your fellow beings at a crowded event without either WiFi internet or network service. But now FireChat is here with a simple solution which seems to be promising and it may become the primary messaging app at music festivals in the coming days.
FireChat is a proprietary mobile app, developed by Open Garden, which uses wireless mesh networking to enable smartphones to connect via Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, or Apple’s Multipeer Connectivity peer-to-peer without an internet connection. Yes, you heard it right. Now whenever you are going for a concert, you can create your own personalized network with your friends to communicate with them without internet. More the number of friends, better the communication as Mesh networks allows the sender to reach out to the receiver’s phone by passing through the nearby friend’s devices. As with traditional Wi-Fi and cell towers the more number of phones means poorer service, whereas Firechat works best with more number of devices in the network. This technology seems to be feasible now because Bluetooth and peer-to-peer Wi-Fi can extend up to 40 to 70 yards, allowing the formation of a network based on peer-to-peer connections.
Now Open Garden, have collaborated with the two-day festival (the Barcardi NH7 Weekender here in India) to use the FireChat app to interact with their fans. By working with the event’s organizers of Only Much Louder (OML), audiences in Pune and Delhi were able to connect through the app to bands like Indian Ocean, The Raghu Dixit Project, and The Reggae Rajahs.Below is the screenshot of their interaction with the fans-
Vijay Nair, CEO of Only Much Louder, organizer of Bacardi NH7 Weekender said: “I am excited that Bacardi NH7 Weekender will be the first festival to enable live interaction through Firechat. It is a great tool for artists to interact with fans and we don’t have to worry about traditional networks failing as they tend to do when large crowds are present.”
FireChat is available on both Android and iPhone. You can download it from here.
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