Well, You could use an Iridium Satelite Phone and hook it up to a modem, and just have it dial up once a day. This might be expensive though. Also, you might want to look into the ARINC system that comercial aircraft use. They now have a datalink system that most comercial aircraft use when transiting the north atlantic. You probably wouldn't get permission to use this however. Also, you could put an ELT on it, and have it turn this on every 24 hours. There are satelites that specifically monitor the uhf 243 and vhf 121.5 frequencies looking for emergency locator beacons (ELT). But of course this is an emegency system and I doubt if the Governments' would appreciate a hobby boat interogating their system everyday. You might want to check with the ham radio folks and see if it's possible to use an hf radio to hook into some sort of relay system or program. cheers... ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tobie Horswill" To: Sent: Thursday, October 19, 2000 10:27 AM Subject: [OT]: Long range position feedback anyone ? > Hi, > > I know close to nothing regarding wireless transmission such as radio, > packet, satellite and the like but I was wondering if there would be an > economic way for an autonomous vehicle to send it's position back home ? The > vehicle is a solar powered boat already equipped with a GPS receiver used > for navigation and it would be a piece of cake to add a daily routine to the > PIC for uploading this information to some RF stage. Here is the catch : the > boat can be anywhere in the middle of the Atlantic ocean and obviously has > very little power available (in fact barely enough to keep it moving). The > boat could stop while it transmits to save power and wait for it's batteries > to recharge before going on, that's not a problem. The required bandwidth is > minimal and only a few bytes would be sent daily. The received data would be > used to update the boat's daily position on a Web site. At this point, I'm > only looking for one-way transmission, nothing would get sent back to the > boat even though that would be cool ... > > I was thinking of something like the transmiters they put in Tuna fish > to track their migration habits. Any idea who makes these things and how > they work ? Is direct ground to ground transmission possible accross the > Atlantic with such little power available ? Is satellite the only way to go > ? > > Thanks, > > > Tobie Horswill > Ex Machina, Quibec (Quibec) CAN > thorswil@hotmail.com > > -- > http://www.piclist.com hint: PICList Posts must start with ONE topic: > "[PIC]:","[SX]:","[AVR]:" =uP ONLY! "[EE]:","[OT]:" =Other "[BUY]:","[AD]:" =Ads > > > > -- http://www.piclist.com hint: PICList Posts must start with ONE topic: "[PIC]:","[SX]:","[AVR]:" =uP ONLY! "[EE]:","[OT]:" =Other "[BUY]:","[AD]:" =Ads