Powering up is hard to do...

Ok, ok, ok...so maybe the nuts and bolts of power generation and storage is not all the tricky, but fickle weather, plenty of that here, certainly is a hurdle to "creating" that power.

My technical bag of tricks boils down to the following:

• 1x BGAN Wideye Sabre 1 satellite modem/dish for highspeed transmission
• ASUS eeePC netbook for writing blogs, editing images and Skype video calls with the School for All Seasons in Minnesota. (A special thanks to Tom Sjogren at ExploresWeb - www.explorersweb.com -  for the loan of this netbook).
• 1x Iridium satellite phone for making calls anywhere - and I mean anywhereSony DSC-HX5 for images and vidoe is a sweet little camera with a built-in, power-hungry, GPS component for capturing the "where" in the photo meta data
• 1x Apple iPhone for capturing vlogs for future posting. I don't use this for much else out here unless I am running low on caribou to count as I fall asleep and need some easy listening to send me to dreamland.
  

To re-power these devices I use 2x Tekkeon 3450 batteries. These act as the recipient of the power generated by my 26w, flexible solar panel.

I've found on a good sunny day I can just about get both the batteries charged. These batteries will then provide almost enough juice to all of the above - with the exception of the Iridium which I packed along 4 batteries to last the entire trip and my iPhone which is getting minimal use and holding steady.

Now, a good day means sun, sun, sun and it has been exceptionally shy this past week. Today (Friday) I was able to get a good charge going, but since my netbook and satellite modem had been depleted over the previous days that power is now all but gone from recharging those devices. I am hoping for sunny skies tomorrow.

Interesting to some of you might be that with the 24 hours of "daylight" the panels will continue to draw in a bit of power while I am sleeping in my tent - I am really milking them for all they're worth.

Al that to say, it's a game to be self-reliant, but good planning and a happy sky make it all come together.

jim

The web is a tangled weave...

Let me first say my apologies to all of you for my site being down. While it was completely out of my hands, I still feel a certain bit of frustration for the site being AWOL.

I use a blogging system called Posterous (www.posterous.com). I think that Posterous is an incredible tool for blogging and even now I still recommend it over any other for the person who wants to blog  and share their story online. Setup and usage is about the simplest I've found and they continually improver their toolkit to make it better.

The denial of service attack on Posterous was perpetrated by some hackers and from I've been able to gather, it was a huge effort to bring something as solid as Posterous down. Posterous did a valiant effort to fix the problem, and re-fix it when the hackers changed their tactics, and although it is frustrating I'll stick with them.

I hope they, Posterous, have plugged the "hole" and me, and all the other Posterous users where were affected, can get back to business as usual.

jim 

Tracking...

If you haven't done so already, take a look at the mapping solution I have running for this trip. You can view my current position and when I am on the move it will be updated every 10 minutes.

Click Here for the map or use the link in the right menu.

Making calls, anywhere...

To get the jump on my trip in July, I activated a new satellite calling plan with Iridium. Iridium is the only truly global satellite network and is far and away the best choice for anyone heading way out there. North Pole? Sahara Desert? Atlantic Ocean? Yep, and more.

Talk time with the Iridium network is quite expensive at around a $1.39 per minute, but if you want the confidence of keeping in touch with the outside world it is worth it. You can also connect your laptop or PDA to the handset to make data calls and transmit, and receive, email. Keep in mind, it is extremely slow and, from personal experience, transmitting a small, very compressed photo can take several minutes.

The plans from Iridium vary and you choose based on the number of minutes you'll need and how long you'll be needing those minutes - I chose the 1 year plan with 500 minutes. For me, this made sense as I wanted to insure that none of my minutes expired while I am away and I have sufficient minutes to make voice and data calls throughout the trip. This set me back $600, but with no other real choices it was an investment I needed to make.

The phone I have is the Iridium 9505a. The 9505 series by Iridium has been a solid handset for years. Rugged, easy to read display, straightforward functionality and decent amount of talk time per charge.

Thanks to Tom over at ExplorersWeb / Human Edge Tech for their speedy processing of my order - from Colorado to Minnesota in a matter of hours. I've worked with Tom on other projects and they are the go-to-people for expedition tech.

New camera on the way...

I just received an email that the camera I ordered, Sony DSC-HX5V, shipped and will be here in the next few days. I bought this camera primarily for its GPS tagging capabilities, but it definitely packs a load of pro-sumer features into a compact body. I'll post some more info after I've had a chance to test it out.