[lug] Sean's geek travels.

[Matt Clauson]

On Monday 08 October 2001 22:56, you wrote:
> Hi, I'm Sean and I'm a geek...

(Everybody, now!) Hi, Sean!

> The nice thing about going to Eugene is that there was coverage in a
> number of places along the way for CDPD, and coverage when I got
> here.

Does CDPD cost by the (bit/byte/block/minute) or is it flat rate?

> To make a long story short(er)...  I now have a delightfully mounted
> laptop, connected to a camera pointing out the front window.  About
> once a minute, while I'm in coverage and driving, an image from the
> front of my van gets uploaded to the web.  I don't yet have a GPS so
> you can tell where exactly I am.  I'm writing journal entries to keep
> my location logged and some additional information.

Garmin ETREX Summit (I think -- it's sitting down in the Exploder and 
I'm too lazy to go down and take a look at it -- it's handheld, with a 
translucent blue case -- I call it the iGPS) has serial out, as do all 
the others (to my knowledge) in that hardware family.  NMEA or text 
out, among others.  4800 baud straight serial, but do you really need 
more?  Will also take power from the vehicle electrical with the proper 
cable (which, unfortunately, isn't supplied).

I use it with my test laptop, running Windows (blech!) and MS Streets 
and Trips, for navigation through unfamiliar cities or on trips.  
Streets and Trips even has nice road-destruction data, so I can plan 
detours if I need to.  Worked extremely well for DefCon out in Vegas 
this past summer.  I plan to take it with me when I go to DC10 next 
summer.

Hmm, sure would be nice to have that under Linux.

> You can now start changing your bumper-stickers to read "Log out and
> drive"...  I'm working on combinations of speech or morse-code
> feedback, and some sort of single-hand entry system to make it so I
> can type and/or get data back from the computer without ever having
> to look away from the road.  Too bad the twiddlers aren't very good.

Hope you can copy code at decent rates in your head.  5 words just 
won't cut it, and it's so darned slow that you almost have to write 
down what you're recieving.

However, having said that, I note that a (long) while back, I wrote a 
morse-feedback program that tail-ed a file (like an IRC logfile) and 
would send out the data being logged to it in real time morse, with 
some limits and parameters.  If I can find it, I'll go ahead and send 
it to you.

Speaking of cool ham-radio oriented stuff, you might want to check out 
the Internet Repeater Linking Project at http://www.irlp.net/ -- it's 
really cool, running real-time VoIP using ham radio repeaters.  
International in scope (I routinely work into Australia on it) and lots 
of cool places on it (I'm hoping to get a repeater on a high mountain 
near Estes Park soon enough, with IRLP.  It'll be on 70cm).

Local node (Front Range coverage, based in Evergreen) is on the 145.340 
(-600 kHz, 103.5 PL) RMRL repeater.  The command codes are club 
membership only, but many club members will bring up the link for you, 
and you can hear the repeater on the Denver Reflector most of the time 
anyway -- people just leave it up!

--mec