- Phone, Iridium Motorola 9505A. Package contains phone, AC charger with international plugs, DC charger, leather case, external magnetic antenna (about 1 meter cable), manual and hands free. Weatherproof case with housing is available with extra cost.
- Prepaid subscription. Best is to take 500 min subscription which is valid for one year. If there is minutes left after one year then they are not lost if new airtime will be bought. Downloading of weather data takes about 2 minutes and email about same. So you can count about 4 minutes per day. Adding minutes adds validity up to 24 months and this can be done by us.
All calls to landline and mobile to any country have same price. No possible to call to other satellite systems (ex Inmarsat) or transfer calls to ex GSM, these are available only by postpaid.
- Data set contains SW cd (for windows), modem to attach to phone, istallation manual and a serial cable from modem to pc. It has to be noted that Iridium has only serial connection, no USB. If your laptop do not have serial port then there is two solutions: buy Iridium tested USB-serial adapter from us or buy general PCMCIA - serial port. It has been reported that not all USB-serial adapters work, it is case by case. To get serial port by PCMCIA card is ok but more expensive (normally over 100 euros) than Iridium tested USB-serial adaptor.
- Optimised e-mail connection. As I mentioned, sending and receiving email with Iridium without optimised service is extremely slow (and expensive). You can receive and send about 8-15 normal emails in less than 2 minutes, without these softwares one email can take several minutes. In addition to this it is possible to have satellite connection optimized blog-service.
- Ohjelmoitava palomuuri. Ilman ohjelmoitavaa palomuuria on erittäin vaikeaa estää erittäin "ohuen" satelliittiyhteyden käyttöä. Huomatessaan yhteyden nettiin yksi ja toinen sovellus alkaa käyttää linjaa ja tukkii sen. Eri ohjelmien asetuksien kautta se ei käytännössä onnistu, koska ohjelmat asetuksista huolimatta käyvät tarkastamassa uusia päivityksiä ym. vaikka eivät niitä lataisikaan. (Päivitys 21.5.2008)
- A Personal Location Beamer (PLB) with integrated GPS or SPOT satellite messanger for every grew member. SPOT www.findmespot.com is just new product which in addition to emergency messages can send Help and OK-messages (including position and link to map) which can delivered to emails (and to Iridium phone) and OK messages can be seen as a route in Google maps. PLB with integrated GPS is emergency message equipment which is totally planned for sea usage. We do sell both. All messaging of SPOT is free of charge.
Even if you would go for PLB equipment, I would recommend to get one SPOT in a boat as it can also send OK and Problem -messages in addition to Emergency messages (if case of problems with Iridium). PLB can send only one type of message - Emergency message. What is better with PLB is that they send local search signal which can be traced with local equipment, if available.
- Man Over Board equipment.
*Possible options:*
- Image compression. As I mentioned, sending of normal digital photos is very expensive through Iridium. It can send about only 15-20 kb per minute through its 2400 bit/s modem. I have been using Advanced Jpeg compressor from www.winsoftmagic.com . It is very good and in addition you can select different compression levels to different areas of picture, eg. compress background more and faces of persons less. Very good, with this software you can without problems to compress pictures to size which can be send by Iridium email - and still have good quality. Can be purchased through their web-site, or we can sell it.
Examples in our web page:
http://savantum.com/puhelin/kuvat/pict4404.jpg Original picture, 2272x1404 pix, 1276 kb
http://savantum.com/puhelin/kuvat/pict4404_pak.jpg 2272x1404 pix, 191 kb. Size 1/7 of original, still usable for print.'
http://savantum.com/puhelin/kuvat/pict4404_800.jpg 800x600 pix, 44 kb. Size 1/29 of original, high quality web size and can be well send by Iridium
http://savantum.com/puhelin/kuvat/pict4404_320.jpg 320x240 pikseliä, 12 kb. 1/100 of original size, good blog size and fast even by Iridium.
Even short video clibs can be sent thought Iridum but for best recommendations we have to still do some work.
- Advanced email service. I am personally travelling now for 6 months and I am using Fastmail.fm I have following system:
a) All mail received is copied to Iridium phone (no cost), I get "compressed" version and just "cut" version as a text message. I can reply directly from phone to sender, even seldom used option.
b) All mail also copied to Ocens for retrival by satellite, GSM or any other connection.
c) Mail available still by imap, pop and web by from fastmail servers.
b) Mail send by Ocens copied automaticly to free "storage" mailbox for backup archive and saved to PC for local usage.
I prefer this arrangement as emails are still kept at server, not only at boat pc which is difficult to backup during travel. If not using fastmail (or your current service if it provides advanced forwardings, many do not) , when messages are downloaded to PC (at least in Ocens case) they are not stored in the server anymore. In addition, in some harbours it may by more easy to access mail by web mail in internet cafe than by connecting own laptop, and you have still all mail available.
Price about 40 USD per year, well worth of it. Available by credit card.