The Local Community Network (LCN) is a decentralised, offline-first system combining hardware, software, and local networking.

Key Design Principles

  • local Wi-Fi network
  • local data storage
  • local access via browser
  • local llm
  • low power consumption

Data flow

  1. Sensors collect environmental data
  2. Data is processed and stored locally on the Raspberry Pi
  3. The application provides access to data through a local network
  4. Administrators manage content via the backoffice

Hardware Architecture

The system consists of three hardware components:

  • Raspberry Pi (Local Server)
    Hosts the application and creates a local Wi-Fi network

  • Teleagriculture Board Reads and collects the sensor data from the weather sensors and sends them to the raspberry pi.

  • Stevenscreen with Sensors and Wind instruments
    Collect environmental data such as temperature, humidity, air pressure, air quality, wind direction and speed

System Architecture Diagram

Software Architecture

The software stack runs in several seperate docker containers. They are all build from the main minodu repository, which houses a monorepo with all the components:

  • Minodu Backend serves a REST API to access and edit agricultural data, weather data and market information
  • Minodu Forum serves a REST API to interact with the forum
  • Minodu AI Services runs an API to interact with the llm, speech to text and text to speech functionalities
  • Minodu Database serves a mysql database which holds all the shared data of the components
  • Mindu Frontend serves the web frontend to access the minodu services
  • Minodu Backoffice serves the backoffice for the admin to edit the system data

Software Architecture Diagram