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Handheld Dispatches From (Towards) The North Pole
David D'Angelo writes: "Thomas and Tina Sjogren have take the IPAQ to a new level. You may have read about them on Slashdot in February as they successfully made it to the South Pole. After that they recuperated for two weeks and have been skiing towards the North Pole for over two months and publishing daily dispatches with pictures straight to the web with the help of a Compaq IPAQ and an Iridium Sat phone. They are currently using their backup system as Tina fell through the ice into Arctic waters and damaged one IPAQ. The IPAQs are 3870s with Ericsson Bluetooth technology built in. This communication package is the only system of its type out there. Despite failing upon being submersed, the first unit was able to withstand temperatures well below -30 degrees Centigrade. Check them out as they are now skiing over 10 hours racing the melting ice to the Pole."
Someone falls through the ice, and they are worried about an iPaq? Well at last they have their priorities straight. No way Tina was running any sort of Linux distro.
after two weeks of rest, they began
skiing from the south pole to the north ?
Impressive indeed. No wonder the IPAQ
got wet in the process.
Google passes Turing test : see my journal
I think what everyone really wants to know is exactly how far can you overclock an IPAQ when all the components are at -30 C.
They should've taken these as well.
rant/
This just underscores a long time bitch of mine - when the heck are we going to see reasonably tough electronics? Every watch I've ever owned has been waterproof; why the heck can't they start building other stuff that way?
I understand that a PDA is a bit tougher to waterproof than a watch (I design waterproof electronics for a day job), but it's about time somebody made an attempt. I've just started using my Palm as a flight log for my paragliding - my old logbook was stolen along with my truck; the advantage with the palm is that it gets backed up all the time. And it's smaller than my old logbook. Plus a whole lot of other good stuff - navigational programs, books to read while I'm waiting for conditions to improve, etc. I use an aluminum case, and it has survived several violent crashes so far (no paragliding related ones yet!), but it certainly wouldn't have surved a drop in the creek I had to ford last weekend.
So come on guys, get with the program. Not every pda user lives in a cube.
/rant
the first unit was able to withstand temperatures well below -30 degrees Centigrade
...). I would start the car when it was -25C, then ran back inside the house. The headlights would NOT work. When the car warmed up, the circuit would warm up, and the headlights would go on. Really handy :-)
It withstood the temperature, but it did not run at that temperature. Most chip have an upper and lower operating temperature. -30C is too cold to run at.
I once built a curcuit that operated my headlights (fog lamps, running lamps,
- - - - - - - - - - -
I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
http://www.bonington.com/piclib/life_5.htm
The team uploaded photos and text reports to the website using some custom Newton software. And all that was on a 20Mhz ARM 610.
->www.chuma.org, ranting and Newtons, what more could you want?
Course speaking as an ex-Compaq employee who supported these
it should be noted its free advertising for HP.. the ones who laid us off.
wich is odd... because HP is keeping the CPQ IpaQ line, but canceling there own HP Jornada line of handhelds.. oh well.
The More Knowledge you have the Luckier you Get- J.R. Ewing
At around the same time we see reasonably tough nerds to use them. :)
I'm curious. I know what bluetooth is and how it works, and what it was designed for.
But...
Can anyone point to any actual useful uses it's been put to so far?
Note: Internet access for a laptop is NOT a useful purpose. 802.11 is much better suited for such things. The same goes for handhelds.
I mean uses like your cellphone talking to your pda talking to your laptop; pdas able to exchange information just by being in the vacinity of each other, etctera.
A cordless mouse that uses bluetooth is not useful. We could do this without bluetooth.
Same goes for keyboards.
Anyone?
I highly doubt that the Ipaq is kept outside the clothing dangling un-insulated in the cold. the LCD will freeze and crack at temperates well above the -40. Keeping on the person inside the coat and using it for 5 minutes in the open air WILL NOT get the lcd down to even near freezing from the balmy 60-70degrees it enjoys inside the coat.
Leave one outside the tent overnight tied to a pole so snow cant cover it and insulate it... then I'll be impressed.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
You can have the very same anywhrere on the planet Internet access that they have.
Read the damn article. They used an Iridium phone. It's off-the shelf technology....readily available.
Just as soon as you have something important enough to do on the Internet that you'll blow $4.00 a minute, you let us all know.
Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.
IIRC there have been tours to the north pole that people could take on a nuclear powered russian ice breaker. No need to drive a sleigh across the ice. Just sit back and sip martinis while the ship breaks all the ice to get to the pole.
"sweet dreams are made of this..."
I'm sure every expedition to one of the poles didn't give a hoot about chasing some point that will make their compass do wacked out things. They go to the geographical pole.
First of all, let me challenge some of your "non-useful" assumptions:
Bluetooth was designed so that the Bluetooth device (read: network adapter) could be very small and use as little power as possible. This effectively means that YES, it is useful for internet access from your laptop, because your cell-phone is not going to be doing battery-powered 802.11 for a couple of hours in the near future. It's not about what the laptop can do, it's about what the internet access device can do.
Of course, since your cellphone has bluetooth, if your PDA has it, you can go on the net with it (and edit your dial list, and dial straight from your PDA, etc).
And if your laptop has both bluetooth and 802.11, it can be usead as a bridge to let your PDA talk to your 802.11 network, and so on.
And, of course, it makes sense to use bluetooth for mouse/keyboard/whatever, since you have on all your devices anyway. Why bother with another radio protocol? Besides, you can now use the keyboard to type into your PDA if you want to, no cables involved, no adapter needed on the PDA.
Now for the creative usages:
Redefining "phone": Your phone can now be just a black box that sits in your pocket/briefcase/backpack. Your phonebook is in your PDA, of course, and you talk into a wireless lightweight earset/mic combo. The phone is nothing but a relay station and gateway to the cell network.
Ubiquity:Bluetooth adapters are cheaper and smaller, which means they can be embedded into mostly whatever you want. Your camera will have it, so you can send pictures immediately to your PDA and even store them there instead of in the camera. And you can even print them from your PDA, all you have to do is go near a printer.
Information Exchange:Yes, you will be able to exchange information with other people using bluetooth from your PDA/cellphone/laptop/whatever, even if it's a different brand. More, you will be able to go to a museum and download info and a set of links about a particular piece on show. Or get detailed specs about a video camera you see on a radio shack shelf.
The uses for any technology are unlimited, as long as standards exist. Standards are the basis for interoperability, and that in itself is the basis for competitionand innovation, which in turn stems progress.
If one takes the "oh, we already have a protocol for that, I don't care if it's proprietary" approach, we would never have had TCP/IP and would be stuck inside millions of little islands running OSI and SNA. Or, god forbid, NetBEUI.
free the mallocs!
Come on. Proportionality has nothing to do with this from a technological standpoint.
Comparing low-earth orbit satellite access to terrestrial wireless is the proverbial apple to oranges comparison.
Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.
hey, they've got a product that survives 40 degrees below zero. The guys also use Ericsson phones that survive just as much abuse. (I don't work for either company)
/. audience punish me for what I have just said...
I don't mind hearing about a cool gadget that survives in extreme conditions against all odds - that's just impressive.
Hey, if Microsoft sends a small rover on Mars powered by CE, and this thing survives for a week (there is nobody to push "Reset" buttons up there...) - I'll be impressed with them too.
Now I will let the
Jobs? Which jobs?