Thanks a lot, PICList!  I expected better than this from you.

I had to find out from _someone else_ that you can buy a satellite
modem for under $150!

http://www.digi.com/products/wireless/satellite/m10.jsp#overview

I'm truly amazed.  The development kit is $300, and comes with 90 days
of service (100 packets per month or about 25kbytes per month).

Yeah, it's slow and low bandwidth, but you can build a worldwide
satellite email device for under $200 and use it in emergency
situations such as the Katrina hurricane, Haiti's earthquake, or the
2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami.  People are desperate to get information in
and out, and a 200 byte packet, compressed, can hold a good chunk of
useful information.  I'd be interested in having one on hand as part
of my own emergency prepardeness kit.

It's 60mA at 12V to power the receiver, and max 1.5A at 12V to
transmit using a long whip antenna, so it can be used on solar power
with a battery.

I've emailed Orbcomm to see what the pricing for service is like after
the dev kit period, and if they don't make me sign an NDA I'll publish
that information here.  I also haven't done a lot of research into
their network - the satellites store and forward messages, so when
they aren't within sight of a ground station it can take some time for
the message to relay, but when in sight of a ground station the
message is 'real time' for some values of latency.  I don't know what
their coverage is right now.

Disclaimer - I worked for Digi 3 years ago as part of Rabbit
Semiconductor, but am no longer affiliated with, or hold any financial
stake in them.

-Adam
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