More technical mumbo-jumbo

Sometimes in life, you wonder why something is done the way it is but you don't have the skills or resources to fix it yourself.
One such thought came to mind when dealing with satellite data. (I know I sound like a broken record, but I think this is the end of it)

Today's lesson children is a quick lesson on OSI layers. Click on the image above to enlarge it.
When you send an email, you use all layers of the OSI model to send/receive the email. Each layer adds more and more data. Almost like Babushka dolls. By the time you go to send just a single word of data, you've needed to transmit many many bits.
One word 'test' at layer 7 should be 4 bytes.
Send this in an email (Layer5/4), it's a kilobyte (just because of all the headers, like the addresses, time/date)
At layer 3, it's split it up into roughly 500bytes per packet (so, that's three packets because it's 1024 bytes)
Most of the time each sent packet needs to be acknowledged by the receiver.(Layer 2) Because it is approximately 1-2 seconds round trip for this data, lots of time is spent waiting, and if an error is detected, it needs to be resent - more and more precious time.
Perhaps the biggest problem with computers these days, is every application expects to be connected to the Internet. If your computer has been offline, as soon as it comes online, everything gets excited and demands data instantly. On your broadband connection at home, you might notice it's a tiny bit slow for the first minute or so. Typically this is because all these applications use all your connection doing whatever it is they need (Such as checking for Windows Updates, Anti-Virus updates, and of course your 'anonymous usage statistics'). All this data adds up - on broadband its a tiny inconvenience - on satellite dial up, it saturates the connection making it not able to transfer any of the actual data you wanted - like that email!

This is the problem I had, so I wondered why isn't there an application that just directly connects, reducing OSI layers and not allowing other applications to saturate the link. Well, such a program does exist - and I simply stumbled across it. The application is called UUPlus (Personal Edition) UUPlus Website


See below how it negates most of the OSI layers - or for those graphical people, 2 Babushka dolls, not 7.

It's a fantastic app which does exactly what I imagined an app like this should do.

It's got an inbuilt text based mail client (so you don't have to deal with annoying email proxies - although that is an option if you just must use your favourite mail application or have some legacy application)

Not only can it automatically insert your GPS location in your emails (and blog posts in our case), it's got a signal strength indicator, and some clever dialing tricks where you can configure it to only connect once it has enough strength.
These people GET what it is to work on super low bandwidth, high latency connection. Would you believe, it can even work offline... or SneakerNet - a word I have not heard since year 8 computer studies!
SneakerNet is offline networking where you use portable media to transport documents, emails etc to other PC's or the Internet. Imagine living in a cave where you have a PC, love writing and reading emails, but you only have Internet access in town. You take write all your emails, 'send' them to disk and go into town. At town, you load the disk, the application sends and receives, saving back onto the disk so when you go home and download, you have new emails. Amazing! Seems far-out, but the more I think about it, I bet this is more common then you would think.

These guys have been so helpful it's been amazing - I've been the most annoying, free support customer I'm sure -but they still won't let me pay for support. We've gone back and forth testing numerous configurations due to an odd dialing string that Telstra needs to call an international number. I figured out that Telstra will only accept the number if it's dialed +111800... not 00111800. Might not seem like a big deal, but when the computer won't dial a plus, I sure as hell was not getting connected. The + and the 00 SHOULD be interchangeable, but for some reason it makes a difference! Through some clever trickery I changed the dial command to include the plus and it worked a treat. Even the developer was impressed!
Huge thanks go to John & Jeremy at UUPlus!

eBay - everything under one roof

Today I removed the UHF radio from my car. This morning i listed it on ebay. A few hours later, it's already higher than I paid for it! It's one of those things that are great for when you travel with groups, but realistically, we do that less and less these days. Typically the radio banter is absolutely terrible, usually bringing out the worst in people. We have a great handheld UHF for these occasions - it performs equally well. We didn't use either radios even once on our Australia trip. I'd say in my next newer car, I'll get a nice clean integrated solution that is tucked under the dash with just the handset exposed - or just not worry about it.

I plan to sell my cargo barrier, but I'm a bit disappointed how little value they are fetching. I plan to also get rid of the rear seat, but only after I'm certain the car is not coming home. Thinking about it, I could just sell it after the car is gone. Better to put up with the wasted space then having to buy one just to sell the car.

Not only is eBay proving an effective tool for getting rid of stuff we don't need, it's the only tool for sourcing odd little tidbits.
I was toying with how we will use navigation. Taking some inspiration from Mick Hines's Parado (I think it was him), they had a laptop in an almost straight 160 degree configuration in front of the passenger. This had great advantage in the ability for the passenger/navigator to have good view of the screen and use mouse/keyboard inputs with ease. Downsides of this configuration was the loss of visibility for the passenger, complexities of mounting and supporting the laptop but fundamentally it was just in the way.

Compared to our past solution of having the screen centered, it gives better visibility for the navigator, (much less for the driver)' access to centre vents and gauge cluster.
I propose developing a hybrid solution with a nice high resolution, LED backlit 10" touch screen display centered on the 'Jesus bar' in front of the Passenger. As mentioned, I liked the keyboard input possibilities that Mick's solution offered, but realistically, you only need this functionality when keying in a street address for turn by turn navigation or at the end of a drive when you need to save the track file. I'm confident we could use a bluetooth or USB micro keyboard that is tucked away (perhaps even behind the screen) when not in use. My loyalty is to a hard-wired solution as the laptop is typically stored in a difficult to get at position, so dealing with wireless connectivity dramas doesn't sound like a holiday to me.
The laptop we have chosen for the task thankfully has integrated GPS which works really well, but we'll need to test this under the seat, with someone sitting on the seat.

The ongoing concerns remain around getting rid of the darn car. As mentioned in previous posts, we can't figure out how to get into the country with the car but leave the country without it. The expense of getting the car back from Vladivostok or Magadan will exceed the value of the car. I'm certainly going around in circles, but I somehow feel the more I write this out, some idea may come out of it.

Some suggestions from people:
-Torch the car - 'they can't make you bring it back if it can't be found.
Obviously I detest this option as it's wasteful, malicious and dishonest

-'Bring It back even though it's worthless'
Again, seems kind of wasteful but the complexities of shipping it from Magadan, then from Vladivostok with all of the potential complications due to language barrier, Australian customs, bribes etc. It would cost at least 5 grand.

-'Give it away or sell it at a wrecker'
I agree, it would be an elegant solution to give it away, but the reality is, they couldn't register it as it will have no documentation.

-'Park it in the street, it will eventually disappear'
Yes, I agree, this would buy us some time if we went to leave the country but were challenged about the car, we could at least go and get it again.
The fact still remains, we may get a knock at the door asking why our car was not exported as part of the terms of temporally importing the car. There would also be a sick curiosity that would come from parking it near a online webcam so that we could see how long it lasted!

Consider also that we will need to provide a security deposit of the value of the car, we will most certainly not get this back without exporting the car. So, not only would you loose the value of the car, but also the deposit (which from what I understand IS the value they place on the car)

We almost just need a single point of contact that will do everything from beginning to end. From Magadan to Sydney - I don't care how, for a fixed fee. This would take 90% of the stress out of it. I asked the UK shipping agent for a quote for Magadan back to Sydney, but they could not find the Magadan port. Ugh.

I think perhaps the largest complication comes from the destination being Magadan. There is a seaport... And that's about it. Even if we get rid of the car, we will struggle to get out of there. If we go to Magadan, then Back to Yakutsk, sure - we could fly out but we will be backtracking ~1000KM, but means we are then not able to ship the car back. I really want to pay some expert in Russia to give us concrete facts and solutions. How you would go about sourcing such an expert, I don't know.

Its so funny how I relish spending countless hours in my head building lovely solutions for IT, Communications & navigation with skills that I have... as opposed to spending 10 minutes dealing with some much more important details such as visas, vehicle imports, shipping, flights, accommodation etc.

Now thinking about it, would it be fair to have cassie take care of these details? She is no doubt better equipped to deal with this kind of thing.

Wooooohoooooooooooo

Yep - you bet, it actually worked. Excuse my rambilings of all the lame technicial posts, but it's been playing on my mind trying to get this darn thing working. It's kind of important to us to figure out this problem as it represents the main way we'll be posting our blogs on the road. Thanks go to Ed from MailASail for his troubleshooting - I got it working on Cassie's old Dell laptop running WinXP. I'm now confident some Win7 component or background application was hogging all of our very limited 320 Bytes/second. I will revisit getting this working on our new laptop once we're on the next months billing cycle... I have no idea what all my testing has cost! So now the posting solution is pretty good, I thought I'd test the SMS functionality.
It sends SMS fine, but doesn't receive them. If I take the SIM out and put it in a normal GSM mobile, it works fine. I've checked the SMS message centre number and its fine. Now, this is how the plot thickens... If I get a notification from Telstra (like a voicemail or missed call) the SMS comes through. If I SMS from an online system to the handset, it gets through. Maybe it's just a Vodafone thing. I don't have any other carriers to test with... Wait, I haven't tried sending to itself.
Thinking about it though, it's not really necessary. I wanted this to work was to facilitate quick messages like 'happy birthday', or 'wish you were here'. But if it's urgent, a call will be best. If its not, an email will be best. SMS is just a kind of expensive middle ground. I have really nerdy videos of how the sat data connection works and the emails get out, but I doubt its going to see the light of day... Its equal or worse than the 'testing the sat phone' video.
And yes that post below is super random. It's just a random pic off Cassie's old laptop that I used to test how long it takes to upload a post via sat. Enjoy.

Test from satphone

Oh wow, did it actually work?!

Check-in/OK message from Graeme SPOT Messenger

Graeme
Latitude:-35.11111
Longitude:149.11111
GPS location Date/Time:02/13/2011 12:42:41 EST
Message:I'm safe and well. My GPS co-ordinates are in this message
Click the link below to see where I am located.
http://fms.ws/4Eu3e/\-35.11111/149.11111
If the above link does not work, try this link:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=-35.11111,149.11111&ll=-35.11111,149.11111&ie=UTF8&z=12&om=1
Graeme
You have received this message because Graeme has added you to their SPOT contact list.
Every day is an Adventure. Share Yours.
http://www.findmespot.com

Ugh - the joys of satellite data

OK the below post SHOULD have been the first post to be submitted over the sat phone, but in truth, it didn't work properly. I am experiencing a problem where the connection will just stop transmitting data after 20-45 seconds. I have tried changing so many elements to try and figure this out but to no avail.
I've emailed the MailASail support guy Ed who although it's totally not his job, he may be able to point me in the right direction. I've made around 30 minutes of calls this month alone, I'd say at least half of them are data calls - all seemingly a waste diagnosing this problem.
What kept me awake last night is that perhaps these data calls (to an international number) are charged at satellite rate, plus international call rate. So instead of my anticipated bill of $90-$100 it may be more like $270-300. I guess we'll see, but I am anxiously waiting a Telstra bill.

It seems cheap to be concerned with the cost, but I'd say that post below would have cost about $5 to submit over satellite in airtime charges. You guys had better enjoy our posts! The picture is super small and super compressed. It's about 15kb, or 45 seconds of airtime to upload! I won't win any quality awards for the pics, but it should be a nice little bit of bling to an otherwise text based post. When we get into towns, we'll be using WiFi which will enable us to upload much nicer photos and even video.

On another note, I came up with an awesome idea. Using the Spot messenger, it is setup to email and SMS family and friends once we submit an 'I'm OK' message. In an epic brain explosion, it occurred to me to put in the email address we will use for submitting blog posts. That way, we can post our position each day, for virtually no money, and without doing anything other then sending the message. It's a two minute ordeal to send a spot message or 30+ minutes to figure out out location, prepare a blog post and upload it over satellite data. The sum of all this, you can be assured an update every day. My next post I'll send through a spot message to see how it looks as a blog post. This also gets around the problem of how the SPOT website deletes your history after 7 days. It's epicly anoying, but at least this way we'll be able to keep the locations forever.

Just FYI, I modified the GPS location to cut down on stalkers... nothing personal.

First post via sat phone

Fairly boring technical post, but this is a proof of concept - posting
via the sat phone using mailasail. ok... in truth, this post I'm going
to be forwarding on from our gmail because using a trial account from
mailasail, I can only email this address. For most of our posts when
we are truly in wilderness, this will be how they are submitted.
When testing this in Canberra, I had issues where the data connection
would stop transmitting after about 30 seconds. It's weird, because I
have had 5+ minute voice calls with not even a hint of disconnection.
I have the kind of sick mentality that says, perhaps if I try the same
thing in a slightly different place, on a different day, the results
may be different. This is certainly the definition of insanity, but
hey, at least I will be able to rule out some kind of atmospheric
condition or transient failure.
The attached picture is dad checking the signal strength in the driveway.

Sat Phone - Up and running

The visit to the telstra store I figured would be riddled with problems - but it was fairly painless.
I've put together a quick video showing it's first calls.
I had to change the diversion delay so that it wouldn't only ring once then goto voicemail (It takes about 30 seconds to actually ring the handset)
I also changed what happens when:
A) the device is out of range/off etc. - It now goes to a pleasant and descriptive 'Device is not responding' message
B) if we're on the phone - Just a busy signal

The main motivation for this was to cut down on the number of useless voicemail SMS messages. You would get one if you missed a call, get one if they went to voicemail but didn't leave a message, and also one if they went to voicemail and did leave a message.
SMS's are expensive, and using voicemail on this service is a huge waste of resources.
Sending us a text message should only be done if it's really important. Email will be best.
It was quite difficult to get rid of these 'value-added' services as if you cancel all diversions, they go to 'Voice2Text' which is not helpful. This page was handy: http://forums.mactalk.com.au/55/89553-telstra-how-disable-call-notification-sms-voice2text.html
I've been given some rough costs to expect using the this method:
30 sec = 2.06
1 min = 3.85
2:30 min = 9.22
3:00 min = 11.01
9:00 min = 32.49

The roaming rates for Mongolia & Russia are around $8/Minute anyway!

Everyone says you need to be on a $30/Month or above plan to use this trick, but now that I know it works, next month, I'll change it to a $10/Month plan and see what happens. From what I understand these calls wouldn't be included in your '$30 credit' anyway, so it makes more sense to get no included calls because you can't use them anyway. The upsides are huge, with the no contract, cancel any time, and possibly only a $10/month fee if it's not used.

Video is below - I know it's really boring and nerdy, but it could help some people appreciate the process including delays in answering calls etc. I would say there is a 15-30 second delay between the caller receiving 'Please expect a small delay connecting this call' and the handset beginning to ring.

Toys

OK - so I bought it.
It seems to be always the case that you only truly look into things, after you've bought it.
Satellite data/voice is soooooo expensive. It's not the actual airtime it's expensive, it's the ridiculous plans an loopholes that catch you out.
Airtime is typically around $2/Min for even the lowest prepaid plan. But then they hit you with the establishment fees, and the fact that your 75 minute allotment only is valid for one month. What a scam, these people should be hung. I think to be more specific, it's the usage pattern that I intend to use this for that is the problem. I'll probably only use five minutes of airtime over the next twelve months, but I do want it available for when I want to use it. There are a few options with various pros & cons.

Telstra NextG SIM
-Pay $30/Month for a normal NextG mobile SIM
-Can use the SIM in a normal mobile where you have NextG coverage
-Sat calls are expensive, like $5/Min but you get 30$ included.
-Doesn't work outside Australia (Apparently, I can imagine testing this in the UK before we leave, if it doesn't work, buy some expensive pre-paid)

Telstra Satellite Plans
-Pay 30/Month
-Can only use the SIM in the satphone
-24 Month commitment
-For some ridiculous reason, pay $25/Month for the ability to use data?!

AST Australia Pre-Paid Iridium
-$130 Establishment fee - for nothing
-$175, 1 Month expiry, 75 Minutes

Pivotel Australia Pre-Paid Iridium
-$200 Establishment fee
-$30/Month including $10/Calls

Ugh, I'm going to go down to the local Telstra store, get a sim just so I can play with my new toy.

Sorry for the late post

Sorry all - I've only thought to update this now that I'm back. Ideally had we been able to edit video on the road, you would have got video, but the thought of putting it all together now is such a big task.
Anyway - enough about all that.

As we found on our Australia trip, mobile coverage is non-existent, and wifi is about the same. Even when it's available, it's either not included in the room cost, or it's hopeless speed, or hopelessly inconvenient. An example was in Gympie, we needed to go to the reception every three hours to have another receipt printed with a key on it.

The summary of that rant, is that we can't rely on any mobile/broadband/wifi infrastructure as we travel on our main trip. Through Europe, it should be OK, but I bet it will go downhill very quickly as soon as we hit Slovakia & Ukraine.

An opportunity has come up to buy a satellite phone & data kit for not very much money, but it's a bit ahead of time. Part of me says to jump on the opportunity, and part of me says 'you don't have a car, what good will a satellite phone be'.

Having a satellite phone won't be the whole answer, the data rate is horribly low, so you need to get clever to use it properly. Some clever people have made some software that resolves all of the inefficiencies of retrieving and sending email on super low bandwidth (20KB/Minute!)

http://www.mailasail.com/Main/Mailasail-In-Detail


All of our blog posts (when not on WiFi) will be done via an email client. It's a convenient way of writing the blog offline, but without the wastage that comes through posting via other means. Considering the best rate I've found is $2/Minute for data calls, getting the best out of this outgoing is going to be a high priority. We totally don't intend to browse the Internet using this system, it's far too slow for that.

Oh, about that not having a car bit. I have a car, but it's fairly worn out. The clutch is worn, suspension, bushes, front shocks, steering box are all rubbish. There is roughly 3" of play in the steering. That becomes very tiring to drive. It has a weird fault where it won't start if it's hot. I'm waiting to read the fault code with Brett's OBD-II (On Board Diagnostics) computer. The tyres are all worn. It has 10 months rego, which is perhaps it's only selling point. But the summary of this, is I don't want any of these problems. I want something that's super easy to drive (more car like)

It seems a bit wasteful to just throw it all away after the effort we've put in... but it's not like that - we've learnt heaps. Everything is saleable or reusable. I've got the car on eBay, and will post a few of the other items such as the drawers, and the fridge frame. I've already sold the navigation system for a cool $500 - this included the fail laptop I complained about so much on our recent trip.We don't intend to sell the fridge, air compressor but I doubt what I've made is going to fit a newer car. I'd say it will actually fetch a pretty penny. Worst case, I'll cut it up and retain all the steel, runners and timber for another system.

Cassie has a new laptop for school which as all the bells and whistles, which will come with us on our trip. It's got plenty of power for making videos, storing photos, modern operating system and a built in GPS &3G.

What we didn't have on our last trip was a table. That was something we certainly thought about, but due to a mis-calculation, the maxtraxx didn't fit where I wanted, and they took the place of the table.
Thinking about it, it would have been hard to get out of the bog on Fraser with a table, so perhaps we made the right call. A table on it's own is nothing, a mosquito proof room would have been awesome. We found at the end of the day when it was still hot, we wanted to unwind, but as soon as nightfall came, bugs made it impossible to be outside the car. So shade and outdoor room would be awesome. Not quite sure how to do that yet, but there is plenty of time for that.

It's been so hot here in Canberra the last few days, and it's finally come across raining now - time to get back to TV.