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Draft application — not yet submitted. English translation of the Dutch original.

Neighbourhood net: open access and communication without internet

Draft application — SIDN Fund, Pioneers, Strong internet

The problem

More and more basic facilities in a neighbourhood — access, alerts, contact with neighbours — depend on the internet or the mobile network, and thus on one supplier and one network. In an outage, everything fails at once. Commercial solutions for, for example, gate access rely on 2G/3G (being phased out), 4G or a cloud app. There is no open, simple alternative that residents can manage themselves.

The solution and what is new about it

• Local first, internet as an extra: a gateway links the neighbourhood network to the internet when available; without it, everything in the street keeps working.
• Modern security for small devices: each device proves itself with a signature on a one-time challenge; access credentials are signed by the residents' organisation itself (a PGP-like chain of trust) and can be revoked per person.
• Reticulum as the connection layer: addresses are keys, traffic is encrypted by default, and LoRa and internet are combined seamlessly.
• Reusable: the same set-up fits any shared gate, barrier or neighbourhood facility, and at the same time carries a neighbourhood network for emergency communication.

Impact in the Netherlands

Thousands of back alleys, courtyards and residential yards in the Netherlands have a shared gate; even here, six similar foundations exist side by side. Every neighbourhood that uses the toolkit gains a piece of its own resilient infrastructure — exactly what “a strong internet” means at the smallest scale. All software, firmware and documentation will be published under an open licence.

Test bed and team

The Stichting Beheer Rijstrook Rietvaart VI is the test bed: a small, close-knit group of residents, whose neighbours in 2025 already jointly funded a neighbourhood AED through the Dutch Heart Foundation's BuurtAED scheme, on the initiative of one of the residents, with own contributions in the order of € 100 per household. Development is led by ir. Jan B. Rhebergen, data scientist and experienced administrator of self-hosted infrastructure (Matrix, Nextcloud, exploration of a LoRa emergency network with radio amateurs). The gate installation is connected and checked annually by the regular maintenance company.

Results

1. Open firmware for the LoRa fob and the gate button (challenge-response, revocable).
2. Open software for the gate controller and the gateway (Reticulum, log, management).
3. A build and management guide for residents' organisations, including security and GDPR.
4. A field report after six months of use: reliability, range, ease of use.

Budget (draft)

Funding mix: own investment by SBRR VI ≈ € 1,800 (gate controller, gateway, radio link — also the test-bed infrastructure), the neighbourhood part applied for at the Municipality of Zoetermeer, the social neighbourhood programme at the Oranje Fonds. This application covers the open development and publication.