Member #750278
Member Since: December 11, 2015
Country: United States
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I have used a couple of the 9602-based RockBLOCKs and have a had a very positive experience. But I seem to recall from discussions on the arduiniana.org site that the IridiumSBD library for Arduino was not compatible with the 9603.
I also see that Mikal Hart has released v2.0 of that library on github. Does anyone know whether that new version is compatible with the 9603?
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Thanks for all these ideas. The way I see it, I get those first 50 characters for my 1 token expense. As soon as I need to exceed that length, I look for the types of optimizations you all are suggesting, to keep the message under 50 characters. I will use a look-up table on my next attempt b/c I want to have a bunch of diagnostics. Originally I was relying on the emails to see the data, so human-readable made sense. Now that I also receive by http and parse the payload, store in database, render to web page, I have more flexibility. Thanks for the ideas!
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In backyard testing, I got some transmissions that were within 1km and then others that were 100km away. I might depend on where the sat was when the connection was made, how strong the signal was. Anyway- it was not accurate enough to use reliably for me. I am using a Ublox 7m into an Arduino and out through the RockBlock and that works well.
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Yes, but that's pretty verbose. I sent messages under 50 characters like this: 151021025831,42.0873,-63.1774,4.20,315,44,29
That's YYMMDDhhmmss, lat, lon, voltage, mast1 position, mast2 position, logging interval (min)
I was thinking of next time using base 16 (or higher) for numbers to save a few characters.
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Oops, I'm wrong. Looks like you can send 2-way. But if you're at a computer, I don't see why you'd want to plug one into a computer just to get the message. It only takes seconds to go from the ground station to you. Plus, you'd need to be outside with your computer to receive the 2-way communication. I guess if you wanted to get a message from a place without wifi to a place without wifi, this would work.
Bear in mind that you pay about $0.10 for each short burst of data each way, which is about 50 characters. Plus around $15 per month to have an active account. You buy the tokens in bundles. The pricing seems to be set by Iridium because you can get just a modem and use another reseller. But this is a really nice package they put together.
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Yes, that would be cool! So I did it! I have a Google site that documents the project (and it continues- I will launch another attempt in 2016.) Here is the track from this October: http://gortondesign.com/gortobot/tracker.php
I used a RockBlock with Arduino Pro Mini for this and even under a 1/4" plywood deck (epoxied) and bouncing around, it got a signal each time in about 10 seconds.
I can attest that Rock Seven customer service is excellent. Great to see this distributed from the U.S., as getting it from the UK added quite a bit (currency conversion plus shipping).
The IridiumSBD library that Mikal Hart wrote is great. He helped a group in Texas get a HAB over 100,000 feet.
If you're interested in my project, chime in on the disqus page.
No public wish lists :(