I always thought it would be good to have information resources on my computer that aren’t internet dependent. What if I’m out in the field doing a POTA and need a reference manual or some medical information? Or my cable modem goes out and I really need to look up an old club newsletter from 2016?
Kiwix is an app for offline reading on the go, remote areas, emergencies, or independent knowledge access. It is a program you can install on your Raspberry Pi, Windows or Mac computer that gives you offline access to resources like Wikipedia, TED, Stack Exchange, or your favorite website (via Zimit) so you can have a library of manuals or other reference materials specific to your needs.
Let’s install Kiwix – to download the program go to https://kiwix.org/en/applications/
Pick the correct version for your computer and install the program.
Upon starting the program and choosing Categories you will see a list of databases you can download, including the entire Wikipedia (110GB with pictures), Urban Prepper, MDWiki Medical Encyclopedia, and more. All great info to have out in the field and off grid.
Let’s look for some Amateur Radio content – I searched all the categories and found a database in StackExchange and then searched for “radio”.
Now I see that it has 8K articles and is only 68MB to download.
If I click on it, I can get more information and an option to download it.
After downloading it, click the option to open the main page.
Now you can scroll through the article entries.
Or search a topic with the search bar, choosing the database(s) you want to search in.
Then you can click on the articles that interest you.
I think all that is cool, but here’s where things can get interesting. You can also download entire websites to have them at you fingertips by using Zimit (https://zimit.kiwix.org/).
Fill in the website and your email. The reason why they need your email is if you close the window you’ll lose the download link. They will send you a link so you can access the file for a week. You can even build your own Zim server, if you want to do everything yourself.
Then click the advanced options button and enter a title and description for future reference to the database. If you want to download everything on the site, under Scope Type, chose any. Files can get big, so be careful which option you pick. Then click Let’s ZIM it!
You might have to wait a while until a slot opens up on the website download server, but then it will start capturing the site.
Once a slot opens up it will begin downloading the site.
Once it is complete – open the .zim file you downloaded in Kiwix.
Next, select it and then press Open Main Page.
Now you will see the site in the Kiwix window and you just click on links like you would normally do in a web browser but everything is local to your computer.
That’s all there is to it. I found some sites online with equipment manuals and have used Zimit to download them so I can have them on my computer. It is great to have a full manual set when you are out in the field
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