Sanson Free WiFi

Sanson Free WiFi is supplied to residents and visitors by The Sasnon Community Committee and local businesses and residents.

Antenna Locations

Viv's Kitchen - Home of the famous cream horn
Sanson Club - Our local RSA
The Sanson Playground - Weekend Craft Outdoor furniture
Brooklyne Motels Caravan Park - Peter and Elaine's house
Behind Streetwise Coffeee - Back of Walter's building
Harris Lane Access Point - Jo's house
Spinning Planet Limited - Corner of Fagan and Phillips Streets

The free wifi is avaiable in these areas as long as you have direct line-of-sight to a transmitter.

Download speed is restricted to 2 Mbit which is fine for most Internet usage like Facebook, Internet Banking, Gmail and YouTube.
All information on the WiFi network is anonymous and isolated. No one else on the wifi network can access your data so your connection is safe.
Free wifi is available from 5.30AM to Midinight every day.

How to connect

When you're within range, this will pop up on your phone or computer - if it doesn't, go to your Wireless Settings and choose "sanson-free-wifi". A page will display on your device where you can click "Continue to the Internet". Once clicked you'll have full internet access. No personal information is requested.

No personal data is collected by this service. Here's an example of our Administration panel that just shows general statistics to help monitor the service. Spinning Planet presently manages the system and is an ethical business and respects your privacy and security:

FAMILY SAFETY

To ensure the safety of your children online use the free Google Family Link service: https://safety.google/families/

IN THE NEWS

Feilding-Rangitikei Herald
interview, August 17th, 2021

Interview with Jesse Mulligan
Radio NZ, August 18th, 2021: 1:40PM

TV3's, The Project
August 18th, 2021: 7:20PM

NZ Herald - We supplied the gear so Turangi could have free wifi too
January 27th, 2022

RELIABILITY

There is no guarantee for this service, though, we try to make it as reliable as possible. As we bring on new Access Points with antennas mounted on Businesses and Homes there may be interuptions of not more than an hour.

Apprentice

This project is an extention of what David Pickles started in 2005 and was taken over by Brynn Neilson in 2015. Eventually, someone will have to take over from Brynn. If you'd like to help out and learn how the system works. Please contact us.

Development

New AP will be installed, after recent Covid Lockdown, to the back of the building behind Streetwise Coffee Cart to supply internet access to houses on Hedges Street
Working on new solar powered units to make AP installs quicker
Presently liaisng with Education New Zealand to give schools access to thier resources at non-restricted speeds

Again, none of this is done for profit. We do it because we think it should be done and eveyone should have basic Internet access for education and essential things like Internet banking. Please be patient. we're building and funding this project with money and support from the Sanson Community Committee and local businesses.

community Coverage

What we've done so far is amazing but we want to expand WiFi coverage to include everyone in our rural community. Our small village is in the news because we care about each other, we're a community sharing where we can for the benefit of all of us. Please support local businesses that are helping us do this and be patient as we increase coverage.

If you have any questions, please contact the manager of this community project:

Brynn Neilson

brynn@spinnningplanet.co.nz
Spinning Planet Limited
www.spinningplanet.co.nz
021 176 3629
16 Fagan Street
Sanson, 4817

UPDATE - August 24th, 2023: Sanson now has a Weather Station too. View real-time stats here.

UPDATE - August 3rd, 2023: Sanson has a small satellite base station to help Universities transmit data back to Earth. View real-time stats here.

UPDATE - January 9th, 2023: Have had lots of issues with the Spinning Planet's sanson-free-wifi router going down regularly. Probem is now solved and I've increased download speed to 10 Mbits for the next month as compensation for it taking so long. Sorry for the inconvenience.

UPDATE - November 20th, 2022: The wifi units in Sanson are now end-of-life. Don't worry, they still work but now I'm working on upgrading thier firmware and migrating them to Open Source technology that will allow me to add more transmitters and features. Everything still works but there will be intermitant outages as I test. I'll only do this when there are few users using the system. Remember, sanson-free-wifi is "best effort". There is no garauntee of connection.

UPDATE - September 22nd, 2022: We're experiencing issues. I wil be replacing hardware over the next few days to make it work again. The only reliable Access Point is at Viv's Kitchen.

UPDATE - May 7th, 2022: Sanson now also has a free Satellite Base Station that is offered for free to Universities and researchers. See real-time stats here showing which satellites are connecting.

UPDATE - March 10th, 2022: Turangi has been approved funding to install 4 new antennas to increase their coverage.

UPDATE - January 27th, 2022: We supplied the gear so Turangi could have free wifi to. Find out more.