Internet on a ship in Antarctica

[antarctican]

I'm spending a month this November in Antarctica aboard a ship, and although it has internet access, we are only permitted to use it for text only emails. Will likely have a SPOT messenger but that's text only as well. I'd like to be able to send a few photos every day back to my blog, so friends, family and children in classrooms can follow my progress.

Looked to rent a portable sat internet system and although voice is cheap, when you buy a data plan it's over $3,000 for 500MB of data.

Was thinking about reverse-steganography, hiding pictures in text but haven't found a suitable method for that yet plus am assuming there's a size limit to the emails.

Anyone have any suggestions for less costly alternatives?

 

[antarctican]

Am I asking the wrong question? Just substitute "ship" for "FJ Cruiser" and it is the same situation. What cost-effective options are there for sending internet data outside of normal coverage areas?

 

[Rando]

Are you going on a cruise? If so the best option is most likely whatever the ship operator provides. If you are lucky they may have an Iridium OpenPort, which gives you > 50kbps. For latitudes below 60S, the only other option is Iridium dial-up, and as you have found out it is quite pricey. That being said it works well, and we have been able to uploaded around 1-2 mb / day from 60 - 90S using Iridium dial up. Luckily I don't have to foot the bill.

 

[taugust]

Are you an amateur radio operator? If so, there are options for HF email where attachments can be sent. For reasonable speed, you would need an expensive TNC. With a radio, antenna and TNC, you could approach that $3,000 mark, but it can be done for less. There would be no fees after the equipment is purchased. Would you be able to put up a fairly sizable antenna?

If you are not a ham radio operator, you can get your license fairly easily. In the US, you need to take and pass test for the basic class (Technician) and the next level (General Class) to be able to use the worldwide bands this system works on. Between now and November, there is plenty of time to study and take those tests, and get your system setup.

I have a system setup that I can use anywhere using a $100 USB soundcard interface to the $800 radio. It does text and *very* small attachments.

This works by sending data to fixed stations around the world that act as gateways to the internet.

Do an internet search on HF email. The software is Airmail or RMS Express.

Regards,

 

[NuggetHoarder]

You can use an Iridium 9555 as a modem hooked up to your laptop via a USB cable. Normal voice minutes apply when using it as a data modem.

The Iridium 9555 phone will run you around $1,100 to $1,200 and a 500 minute prepaid card will run you $611 and is good for one year. You can also rent these phones.

The data rates are down in the 2400bps to 10kbps range - basically modem speeds from the mid-1990's. Sending a 1024x768 picture (which is around 110K bytes) would take you about 6 minutes uncompressed at 2400bps. There are some compression tools on the CD-ROM that comes with the phone and will compress files by 40 to 50% depending on content and the software will resume an upload if your session is dropped. The documentation says it can compress "up to 4 times" but that is only for plain text. digital images do not compress as much as plain text.

The most practical way to send pictures would be to first reduce them down to a small size, say 320x240. A 320x240 jpeg will be around 20k bytes and that would get the transmission time down to around 1 minute uncompressed.

Not really any way to get around the expense. It's gonna cost you a bundle to send pics from a sat phone.

You should also figure in a buffer on the minutes because there will be times where you get dropped calls in the middle of an upload and have to start over and that will burn some extra minutes - plus Iridium figures minutes on a 20 second cycle so, for instance, it's easy to think you only talked 4 minutes but you'll get charged for 5. You'll also need to figure in the time it takes from the moment you connect to the time you actually get the upload screen loaded. It might take you a couple of minutes just to get to the place where you can pick "upload". In other words buy more minutes than you think you'll need.

You'll also have to use your laptop and phone outside with a clear view of the sky unless you buy a remote antenna.

 

[antarctican]

Rando, as in original post, the ship allows text emails only unfortunately. It is sort of like a cruise but not really; the ship is chartered specifically as a photography tour, so less touristy more naturalist/photography.

taugust, not a ham (although was planning to get around to that at some point). However, weight is a HUGE problem, I'm counting grams/ounces on this trip, as my photography gear weighs an enormous amount and I'm having a hard time trying to slim it all down. The prices are certainly reasonable as I would keep the hardware afterwards but the primary concerns are weight, and the ability to mount an antenna on the ship. Unfortunately my bunk is below deck. Power on board is 110V, same as NA.

NuggetHoarder, those prices are a bit better than the random searches I did for sat phones. Good tips, thanks. Do you have a good source for prepaid cards?

Some very good advice and considerations, thank you all for responding!

 

[NuggetHoarder]

I've used this company before...

http://www.globalmarinenet.com/catalog/iridium-prepaid-worldwide-minutes-p-47.html

I did make one mistake about the $611 price I quoted. That was for North American minutes. For worldwide minutes, which you will require, the price is $649 for a 500 minute / 12 month card and you'd need a Globalmarinenet SIM card which is $10.

If you go to shopping.google.com and search on "Iridium 500 prepaid" you'll find a lot of prices. Also try 800 or 1000 if you need more than 500 minutes.

The antenna issue is important. Sat phones require a clear view of the sky. This means you would have to be on deck with no overhead interference. You could buy an external antenna with a 15' cord but then you'd have to get that cable through the ship's bulkhead and mount the antenna outside. This wouldn't be an important issue in most places, but I would think that in Antarctica, this would need to be a consideration. The outside temperature may exceed the operating temperature range for your laptop. The operating temperature range for the Iridium 9555 is -4F to 140F. If you are going to be outside that range, then you'll have to get creative. Perhaps a 12V trucker's heated seat pad would work to bring the ambient temp up? Those are only around $15 and are compact but then you'll have to figure out how to get 12v portable power out on deck too. Maybe you can get away with a 110v heating pad?

Another tip I'll add is that you might want to find what I call a "trip coordinator" back at home. This is a person you could email your blog posts and photos to and then that person will log into your blog and upload and format the content for you. I think you'll find that composing an email offline, then going online as briefly as possible and hitting "send" will be much faster than trying to log into your blog and upload content directly.

 

[Rando]

What NuggetHoarder is suggesting is likely your best option. From practical experience with larger data transfers at these latitudes, actual throughput using dialup is around 12 kilobytes/minute once you take into account connection attempts and resending of packets. So a 500 minute card buys you a maximum of 9Mb of data upload, and more realistically 6-7Mb, so figure about $100/megabyte. It makes $3000 for 500 MB of data sound like an exceptionally good deal.

Obviously it is up to you whether the price is worth it, but paying several thousand dollars to get some photos on the web a week or two earlier than you would otherwise seems a little excessive.

 

[PNWDad]

Which ship will you be on? My company has several ships down there. And internet at those latitudes becomes very expensive.

 

[Toyotero]

How often could you send a USB flash drive back to someone with regular internet access?

 

[PNWDad]

Another quick question, if it is only for 3 weeks why are you "needing" to upload pictures? Can this just wait until you are in port? Its not like you are living 12 months a year on this ship without internet.

I would just bring along a bunch of 1.5-2 TB External hard drives and double or tripple backup my images. Then edit when your on the ship and then upload when you get back to Port.

 

[antarctican]

liftedlimo: the Ushuaia. The idea was the have a children's school class be able to follow my route on a daily basis, interact and field science questions with them via email, and actually show them what I'm seeing. Unfortunately this is looking less and less likely. I wanted to do this out of my own pocket but my pockets are not that deep. Daily image feeds would have had so much more impact than just text, and waiting until I'm back, well they may as well just go watch a video or read a book.

 

[DarthBeaver]

I have done that trip it is AMAZING... the best trip I have EVER taken. On the Akademik Iofe (my ship) we had email only that would batch upload once per day. One of the guides had a sat-phone modem that he used twice (due to VERY high cost). most people who want to send updates to folks did it via email with photos coming at the end of the trip from Ushuaia or Porto Arenas.

 

[antarctican]

Yes, can't wait it's my dream trip (well, next to spending a WINTER in Antarctica...)