- Iridium Log -

Usage log: Iridium Satellite Phone

   I've always wanted to play with an Iridium satellite phone. The idea that you can literally be in the middle of no where and be connected to the rest of the world is the holy grail of wireless communication. However, world-wide coverage has its downsides, as using the phone costs two dollars per minute. David rented a Motorola 9500RF Iridium phone with data kit from Crystal Communications for roughly $370, including insurance and shipping. I'm hoping we don't accidentally drop it in a rinse bucket while on the Aggressor :). I was a little overwhelmed when I opened the box and found the phone and accessories packaged in nine separate little boxes. Like any tech-toy lover, I opened them all and took out what I thought would be necessary without even touching the manual. We're going to be using the phone almost exclusively for data while on the Aggressor, so all I'll need to bring is the phone, the serial port/data adapter, a wall charger, two lithium-ion batteries, and a little stand that keeps the antenna pointed at the sky while the phone sits in it. The phone gets a whopping 2.5Kbps/sec when sending already compressed data. It it supposed to reach up to 10Kbps/sec when transferring highly compressible content, like text.

   At David's request, I tested the phone by uploading a single 42KB .jpg image, one 10KB thumbnail image, and one 15KB .html file, using a shareware program for my Windows 2000 machine called CuteFTP. Installing the appropriate software on my machine was easy, and the phone connection worked the first time I tried it.

   The results were as expected, although the phone did seem prone to disconnecting randomly. It indicated that I had full signal (five bars), but sometimes fluctuated all the way down to zero bars (at which point it dropped the call).

   The 15KB .html file, 10KB thumbnail image, and basic directory traversal took 4 min 30 sec. A few seconds later, the battery indicator started flashing, and the phone disconnected itself from the network. I would have expected it to run for more than five minutes on a single charge (!), but I guess I'll be adding an extension cord to my list of things to bring. Perhaps the battery we received was defective. Powered using the AC adapter, I reconnected to upload the 42KB .jpg file, which took roughly six minutes to transfer. The phone dropped its connection twice during the upload and took 15-30 seconds to reconnect each time.

   Each day, we will be uploading three winning photos, three thumbnails, four .html files, and one or two more photos to show what a good time we're having on the Aggressor. Each day's upload will add up to about 200-250KB of data we must transfer via satellite. At 11 minutes for roughly 65KB worth of data, we can expect it to take upwards of half an hour to transfer 200KB. A good deal of time was lost during dropped calls, and while changing and listing directories during the upload. I'm going to try to minimize that by putting each day's update in one directory.

   - Eric Cheng, 5:00pm, October 25th, 2001

   The upload tonight took almost an hour. Dave and I sat out on the bow of the Aggressor (on the hard concrete), babysitting my computer and the Iridium phone. It was almost comical, actually; the phone was propped up with a fish pillow from the salon, because I didn't bring the stand. :) Uploading was frustrating, though. The phone dropped three calls, and had a hard time transfering large files (over 60Kb or so). I had to disconnect manually and reconnect in order to connect to wetpixel.com again, and each time it orphaned a ftp connection (the server stated that seven people were connected -- it counted up one each time we had to reconnect). If this continues, we will delay uploading upload large versions of photos until we return to civilization. I'm EXHAUSTED. Everyone else has been asleep for hours.

   - Eric Cheng, 12:34am, November 5th, 2001

   We've abandoned uploading full versions of the photos of the day. The Iridium phone just doesn't seem to be able to upload large files without disconnecting. Also, the Apollo connection software blue-screened my Windows 2000 machine, which is really, really bad. Before crashing, it had cloned itself twice in my taskbar area already, and would pop up three status windows each time it wanted to communicate something to me. For a system designed to work in potentially harsh environments where there is no traditional cell coverage, its data software is pretty crude.

   - Eric Cheng, 11:56pm, November 5th, 2001

   Iridium sucks. We dropped 10 calls tonight trying to connect (it hung up after trying to authenticate each time). Why throw all those satellites up in the sky if it's not going to work? No upload tonight. :(

   - Eric Cheng, 11:04pm, November 7th, 2001

   Well, I take back the harsh words I wrote yesterday. The phone was uploading consistently tonight, with no dropped calls. This morning it dropped eight calls, though, and this afternoon the Apollo NDIS driver for Windows 2000 blue screened Windows 2000 again. Again, I must stress that this is a very, very bad thing for software to do, and the Apollo folk deserve a back-handed slap to the cheek for writing software that does that.

   The verdict: It works, most of the time, but the driver software is really bad. Do not use unless you have no other options. (Disclaimer: this is my opinion only, and isn't the opinion of wetpixel.com or any other organizations that have linked to this site).

   - Eric Cheng, 11:52pm, November 8th, 2001

Final Invoice: 27 tiny phone calls, ranging from 1 minute (min time) to 18 minutes each, mostly on the smaller end.

Total with taxes and everything, including pretesting and the whole Kona Trip was $178.98, much lower than expected from the upload times we were getting. The final phone rate was $1.29 / minute.

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