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Garmin Rino-GPS Show and Tell
jspectre writes: "Garmin, makers of fine GPS products, has a sneak peek of their upcoming Rino (Radios Integrated with Navigation for the Outdoors). A new handheld combination of GPS and 2-way Radio using the common FRS spectrum. In addition to downloadable maps, trip planning, weighing 8.5oz and being waterproof you can "beam" your location to other Rino users while you talk to them. Your location will show up on their GPS display allowing you to navigate to each other. Expected availability, June 2002. Great fun for geocaching parties I'd think."
... or does it only tell you the location of other Rinos, not rhinos?
lysergically yours
Garmin, makers of fine GPS products
I'll be one of the first to say that Garmin's GPS units are pretty good (I personally prefer Magellan), but isn't this poster admitting just a *wee* bit of bias?
One step closer to making a tricorder.
Hacker Media
eParka.com's digital maps are a cool way to visualize GPS mapping technology for free. Supports the entire country (sans alaska) and will support the Garmin GPS...
-Sean
"Slashdot is about legos and staplers." -Cmdr. Taco
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/03/04/115122 3
It's.. it's.. Becoming obsolete!
It's.. it's.. Losing that gleam of desirablilty!
It's.. it's.. Acquired a bit of dust and a scratch i never noticed before!
It's.. it's... Hey, is that a vacuum tube sticking out the back?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I have long longed for a combined GPS/echo sonar. That way I can map my fishing lake in high precision. And, eventually produce ray-traced maps of the lake.
However I have not been able to find any GPS/Sonar combos capable of output to a harddisk.
Any suggestions?
...if it's sending GPS location data over common FRS frequencies the non-Rino FRS users will be treated to wonderful bursts of data-farts over their analog freqs.
We've been discussing the RINOs (and all sorts of other GPS and GPS-related devices) for some time over on the geocaching neck of the woods. (At times, the Magellan/Garmin/Lowrance/etc. debate looks like a distro-fest.)
;)
The RINOs have a quadrifilar (quad-helix) antenna, which means they should have reception up there with the Magellan 300-series and Meridian receivers (and the Garmin GPS V). The poor reception of the Garmin eTrex line will not affect them. (And the Garminites all cry "Yipee!" and no longer have to cower before those of us who have been using Magellans the whole time.)
Anyway, for group caching, the RINOs look really fun. I do most of my geocaching alone, so I'd probably pass on them, though.
RINO usefulness for the existing GPS sports:
- Geocaching: Excellent if in groups.
- Geodashing: Maybe, but not likely.
- Degree Confluences: Same as geodashing.
- Geodrawing: Multi-pen art? Cool.
- MinuteWar: Possibly... occasionally.
So now those AOL IM stalkers we all know about will be able to get at our children that much faster!
So how many lotr would that weigh?
So are there any open source G.P.S. mapping software packages (topographical mapping)?
Will it help me find a job?
pickup not only your voice transmission but also your beamed gps coordinates. normal frs radios they can only pickup your voice and would have to triangulate the signal.
LOL! I haven't read anything that funny in hours!
Of course, if anyone's wondering, GPS receivers determine position by solving a set of equations for the four variables of position (3 dimensions) and time (1 dimension).
There is a really nice (but Shockwave, unfortunately) overview of GPS at Trimble's site.
Finally! Cybiko for adults! Now I don't have to be the creepy old guy talking to pre-teenagers!
For week long hiking trips - it would be nesessary to turn off the FRS feture in order to save battery life. Anybody know if you can?
Kudo's for Garmin for using AA batteries - there are readbly available back country solar chargers out there, and it would be useless if they used YAPBP (Yet Another Propriatary Battery Pack)
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
The same story was posted on the 4th of March by Hemos, see 'Garmin To Marry GPS with FRS/GMRS'.
Al.The Daily ACK - Eclectic posts by yet another hacker
Hardly a sneak peak - Garmin has had that product info page online for weeks (months?).
The sats do not determine your position. They are accurately positioned and have synchronized clocks. Your reciever gets a signal from several satelites. From data in the signals, the reciever knows the satelites' locations & the times that the signals were sent. The reciever does all of the calculations to determine position, the satelites don't know where you are, or even that you have recieved their signal.
"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever." --Napoleon Bonaparte
Uh, GPS receivers are just that, receivers. They send no data to the satellites, and they do not operate by making "requests," ala HTTP. By using a standard GPS receiver there is utterly no way the government or anyone else can determine your whereabouts. The only way your position can be transmitted is by using a transmitter like the Rino uses, or something like APRS (Automatic Position Reporting System).
The only thing to be worried about right now would be cell phones incorporating GPS technology that transmit your location, something which the government is considering mandating.
Of course the black helicopters can always find you, GPS or not.
-Vercingetorix
"Necessitas non habet legem." -St. Augustine
"
What nobody seems to want to talk about is the fact that my location is being determined by satellites controlled by the government. Until now it hasn't been an issue because GPS units were anonymous (roughly--if you are the only one in, say, Montana then obviously they know that all the Montana requests are coming from you).
"
GPS receivers do not make requests. The
satelites continually send signals which allow
the receiver to calculate its position. The
satellites have no idea who will be receiving
their signal.
"
However since 9/11 more and more manufacturers have been putting ID chips into their units which makes Big Brother loom large in my mind. How about yours?
"
No. There would have to be a satellite dish on
the GPS receiver for it to send back ID data.
Nice try, karma whore.
--
I can detect karma whores on sight.
They have usernames.
It's my understanding that FRS is governed by _voice-only_ comms (see http://wireless.fcc.gov/prs/famrad.html). MURS and GPRS are allowed to transmit data.
:)
According to my interpretation, what Garmin is trying to do is illegal. That is, unless they get the regs changed for them
in short, a duplicate story, patented, and an old hat in the amateur radio community.
What I want to know is when is a GPS company going to release a GPS for the car that does traffic analysis and automatically can route you around bad traffic spots?
Lets say that (eventually) there is a significant installed base of GPS enabled cars. They each register their location anonymously with a central DB (anonymity could be turned off by the owner remotely for the low-jack, car recovery, option perhaps) and since the central DB would know what the speed limit on your road is (and the presence of stop lights etc...) if could monitor how traffic is flowing all across a local region.
It could then do load balancing of traffic by telling others with the same network where to go and where to not go. If you have a specific destination programmed in it could tell you the quickest way to get there and actually be right because it would tell everyone a different way to get there to avoid congestion.
42 - So long and thanks for all the fish.
Ok, seems like a cool little gadget, but what is the price mate?
There is a lot of kool stuff out there but without a price we cannot start thinking on whether this is something we might start begging the wifey for or not!
I think the ability to transmit your location to another radio is neat. But I'd be interested to see the patent claims on this technology. I can only hope that they're very specific, and refer only to this particular implementation. I can't believe they've patented the idea of transmitting a GPS position to another receiver.
It might be prudent to wait for the europeans to get their version of GPS up (don't know how long this will take). This way you can buy something that can use either or both!
Just a warning I have the garmin eTrex vista which I like a lot but the garmin maps really suck. I got the topo quads only to discover they are missing many roads. If your missing roads its hard to have any sort of trails. I had an email exchange with garmin about this and the rep I was in contact with admited she had tried to use the maps on a AT trip only to find most of the AT was missing. And garmin would not take mapsource the product back. The unit works well with the Delorme maps which are really excellent.
Government is the abdication of your responsibility to a faceless bureaucracy. Anarchy(absence of government)is the a
I can't wait to get one of these. It'll be perfect for hunting in the mountains. Now, we'll be able to know exactly where everyeone is even if someone moves (it happens). I just hope they're not too expensive...
Chris
will this beam your location to only the person you want, or to anyone on that freq? I've used FRS radios for caravaning on long trips, and in big cities, or big events, there is a good chance of other people on the frequency. Does this specify who gets your location, or can anyone on that freq see that quantumRiff is standing in the bathroom??
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
You rock. There hasn't had a troll of your calibre on /. since the delightful MEEPT. Keep up the good work.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
To make the functionality complete would be if each device could serve as a relay in a wireless network.
[Assuming relay usage isn't going to chew up your batteries too much] you could relay messages further than the limited range that these devices have for direct point to point contact.
Better, a few "wormholes" with stationary TX/RX that allow you to connect to land lines would be icing on the cake.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
... it will help if you get lost while going to do your interview... :)
--- Sueños del Sur - a webcomic about four young siblings
Do I HAVE to wear it on my nose?
The government doesn't need GPS in your cellphone, your cellphone is constantly beaconing to the towers to keep a carrier channel open for incoming calls, pages etc. By knowing which tower you are talking to and the other towers that can receive your signal they can use triangulation and find you to within a very small distance (100 feet horizontal 20 feet vertical in the case of enhanced 911). With a mobile van equiped with directional antennas they can probably tell where on your body your cellphone is =)
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Well won't they be surprised then. There's a *reason* I got the VibraCall alert feature.
Call me, PLEASE!
-Vercingetorix
"Necessitas non habet legem." -St. Augustine
The more satellites your receiver can see, the more accurate your position is. Some receivers available now make use of the Russian Glonass system AND the GPS system at the same time. So you get better accuracy than GPS.
I don't know if anybody makes an affordable consumer one though-- I have only heard about them through an engineer friend who sometimes does survey work for the state.
Imagine the accuracy and the reliability you could get with all three!
I have it in my car.
The display gets these little pictures like the road signs for road works, and others for traffic speed etc.
It just routes around them, only seems to bother if the traffic is very slow for a long distance though.
I guess it takes the data from the Traffic Master which gets info from the road side traffic sensors and gantrys etc. and pumps it into the (Siemens?) navigation system.
Sorry, don't have many more details, it's like all built in, car's still on warranty, so have not got round to hacking around in it yet.
threadeds blog
"you can "beam" your location to other Rino"
Great gift idea! Could somebody from friends make such a nice present to Osama Bin Laden?
Thank you.
What's this about my fetish for youth in Asia?
ACs 0wn the world
You could make a neat little networking system. Some friends and I have tossed the idea around for a while of a low-bandwidth P2P wireless infrastructure that would automagically relay messages to units outside the range of the transmitting unit.
Since these things know where they are (geographically), they could configure themselves to do the routing in a semi-intelligent way.
The routing would either be a complete nightmare or maybe just a good masters thesis. How about it, science?
-FrankWhat is that, a mountaintop that creeps up on you?
Everyone has a spelling pet peeve. That's mine.
This sounds sweet, but my only question is what OS does it run? RhinocerOS?
--
Some weasel took the cork out of my lunch.
Well, the Don Knotts guy was pretty good too ;-)
Benefon has had GSM/GPS for more than a year now. Check out the Esc!. Features include buddy tracking etc.
Thanks.
One of the biggest debates about this product is the use of FRS/GMRS to transmit data, when the FCC rules for these frequencies is pretty firm on their use for voice only.
One website to refer to on these matters is the Popular Wireless Magazine BBS forums (a UBBS system). The Rino product has come under discussion a few times, including Garmin's petitioning of the FCC to violate the 'voice only communications' rule:
Before the
Federal Communications Commission
Washington, D.C. 20554
In the Matter of
GARMIN INTERNATIONAL, INC.
Request for Waiver of Family Radio Service Rule Sections 95.193(a) and 95.631(d) to Authorize Manufacture, Sale and Use of GPS Transmission Enhanced FRS Units
Request for Waiver of Sections 95.193(a), 95.193(b), and 95.631(d) of the Commission's Rules Governing Permissible Communications in the Family Radio Service
----
More on that thread is located here.
As a licensed GMRS user, I do worry what devices like this can do to the spectrum when they get popular. If it's implemented right, though, they'll be an incredibly useful tool.
Amateur radio has had a system called APRS for a while. This protocol, based on AX.25, periodically broadcasts the user's callsign and present coordinates. It's a really cool system; it's fun to watch a computer track the APRS coordinates of everyone in the city.
-John
(KG4RUO)
While it's nice to see Garmin's continues
signs of innovation - I can see parents &
day-care workers (of kids & oldies) hand-
ing one of these to each of the people in
the charge, so that anyone wandering off
can be found earlier.
But - wait... there's more!
Noting the complaint from a poster, who
is saddled with a now-obsolete eTrax, I
just thought I'd remind people of some
of the other features that (I bet) will
sooner or later work their way into the
Rino family (or future successors).
Have a look at UI-View (recently reviewed
in the Feb 2002 issue of QST magazine;
published by ARRL)
Kenwood has dual-band (144 & 440 MHz)
Amateur handheld (radio) handhelds &
higher powered mobiles that have GPS
interfaces.
UI-View firmware is also in the radio.
Of course, a small computer is a nice
(but optional) addon to the radio+gps
Now, COMING FEATURES include telemetry
(read: Weather Data from distant auto-
matic gov't & private weather stations)
Also: each radio can act as a digipeater
(so you can get position &/or weather
data from farther away than your radio
reaches by itself)
Short messaging & broadcasts (to all)
are also in the UI-View feature-list.
Details are available (in the file areas
of) UI-View Announce &/or UI-View eGroups
(Yahoo!'s)
There is a Win32-compatible Help file
that tells it all...
A 16-bit trial version provides -all-
of the above features; registering it
allows you to run the 32-bit version,
which also connects a -fixed- station
node to the Internet (or, for special
applications, in high-use areas, pos-
sibly an Intranet...?)
Let's all look into UI-View, start de-
manding (of Garmin) that they "skip"
a few steps in the development chain,
and fewer of us will feel like the
posting eTrax owner, in future...
Great. Just what I need. Now my wife won't only know where I am, she can tell me to get the hell OUT of there as well.
Ham radio folks have been doing this trick for years, it's called APRS.
I would have to say, a much better survival tool, were one planning a safari to the heart of darkness would be this item on ebay, one of which I have recently acquired for myself.
The auction vendor describes this particular model as follows:
Yes. This is really made from a bull's nut sack. Call it what you will; bull ball bag -- scrotum sack. It is still the same. This is really a fascinating item. I showed it to my 16 yr old niece and she took it to the movie with her last night when she went to see 'Blade II.' She and the bag both enjoyed the movie.
This must have come from a quite large bull. It is 9 inches tall and over 6 inches in diameter. Yes. It is sanitary. Apparently treated, but still has plenty of hair. A great place to keep your family jewels, or just a few things like lipstick, cell phone, or money to carry to school, the mall, or work. One thing for sure, you will alway get questions from strangers "Nice bag. What is it made of?"
I always get similar comments when sporting mine, though I must say, I prefer my Christian Dior model, simply because it has a much more supple, silky texture.
-------------------
I am a highly intelligent squirrel
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/03/04/115122 3&mode=thread
While they do share interstitial freqs with FRS, GMRS-capable radios require an FCC license in the US (fee ~$75 last time I checked). These are NOT FRS radios.
While there hasn't been any official statement, the unofficial consensus is that Uncle Sam turned off SA to stunt the development of the European system. SA turns off - Much less need for an alternative.
If that was their goal, it was a success. The European program got hurt badly by the deactivation of SA.
Now, by the time it gets off the ground, the next generation of civilian GPS will be available. (I believe that there will be support for civilian dual-frequency - The current batch of satellites doesn't support it though, so it'll be quite a while.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?