How would one prepare, technologically, if camping for one year?

Say one were a photographer who set out for a year to document American wilderness in a an automobile. Say one is going low budget: boondocking, diverse camping and staying with friends. In a car one risks loosing all one's gear in one fell swoop, one doesn't have a persistent internet connection, and one lacks an electrical source. The three main technological challenges here seem to be: backup, connection, and electricity. How would you prepare technologically?

For backup, I'll keep a website of my travels and a backup for my laptop data. I'd like another backup, for data I create on the road as well as an access point to data I bring onto the road? I will leave a physical drive with someone when I leave, but the data created on the road is the critical data, so I'd be most comfortable if it was backed up twice, right? Should I get a second site at a different ISP for a copy of both pre existing data and current data? I'll need to bring about 40G of data, and I will create another 10G per month while on the road.

The second main technological problem is how to connect to the remote data and offload new data? My current laptop only supports wifi, but realistically cell would be better. Does anyone know how to build a better antenna? I have AT&T now, free of any contract. I expect to spend most of my time in the west: ND, SD, MT, ID, NV, UT, CA, AZ whereas I live in NYC now.

The third big question is electricity. I have a bunch of batteries that will need to be charged, and I'd like to run an inkjet printer from the car. One can run a reverser from the car , but what does one do when the only reason to run the car is to charge batteries? A generator? Biodiesel Generator?

Currently I am running a big dual boot desktop with 300G of data and a Dell Mini with Ubuntu 8.04 (wifi but no cell) and 40G of data. What backup services should I entertain? Cell tethers seem unrealistic, so should I plan to buy an new computer with either cell card or slot for cell antenna? If so, what computer? Remember - low budget! What cell company? I'd really like to go open source, and I'd like to stick with Ubuntu. Running XP in a dual boot (or as VM but I've never used VM before) may be useful (like for MG backup?) but I don't want to get caught up changing to Win7 while undergoing this bigger transition.

I hope this question is interesting. Thanks for any thoughts.

Sincerely,

Kevin

 

Few random thoughts:
1. Netbook (smaller, less power than laptop)
2. Arse load of thumb drives
3.USB External Drive

Good luck getting a signal in the boonies. Your best bet would be to find a local town and jack in there.

I've often thought about this and I was tinkering with buying another UPS that powers my entire set up for about 2 hours (1 DELL M2010, printer, FiOS router, wifi router). I figured I would try a solar panel (15W) with a trickle charger to charge it back up and run off the UPS.

I have no thoughts on this.

heh. I almost asked if pencil and paper was too cliche'

 

There's nothing wrong with charging using the car I wouldn't bother with a generator just charge everything as your driving,even just letting the engine idle is no big deal a single gallon of fuel will last all day as long as your engine tick over isn't too high,get your car serviced obviously before you go make sure the alternator is in good condition and you have a new battery fitted plus a spare one.

A test of your engine fuel consumption while idling and charging all your gadgets may be a good idea,charging too many things may stall the engine if the tick over is set too low,I like the idea of solar panels too for trickle charging but they can't power a printer for example unless you filled your car roof with them.

There isn't much point having a huge mobile broadband aerial either,you may be able to receive the signal from the transmitting station but your transmitting power is limited by law,over here its 0.5 watts transmitting power and as you know the internet needs both upload and download to work.

Good luck with your trip.

 

One year, hmmm. Would it maybe be possible to find a sponsor for this? A Budweiser semi following behind you comes to mind.:-D:-D:-D

 

What would Ansel Adams do?

 

He was all about medium and large format film cameras. No DSLR's in his work.
It's like the a classic Coke - Pepsi war, now-a -days regarding true rendition.
The good old wet dark lab Vs Digi photo shop! Nobody printed(debatable) out of the box then or now!
Cheers..
EDIT TO ADD: Heck, I'm OT LOL

 

Well, from my own experiences, even getting a signal for a cell phone is challenging in the wilderness, and most of the time, impossible, so why not just use a digital camera, a camcorder, and use a Lappy WHEN you have access to electricity?

A sponsor would be delightful, and very beneficial to you, if you could get one..

 

I just have to say that these 2 words should not be in the same sentence lol
But good luck

 

This is actually a good idea. If you are a photographer, you might want to contact some places that make chargers, cell phone, batteries, and such. Perhaps they would hook you up with some items in exchange for a review of their product.

As far as backups, as Kodo said, thumbdrives... They are cheap, and you could mail them to a friend or to a PO Box for backup offsite, and of course a spare USB drive or 2.

For printing, you might look into Walgreens or similar places, they will print your digital photos over the internet, and you could pick them up, or just wait until you are at a town that has one. A friend of mine shot a wedding for some friends of his, and sent them to Walgreens and let the people order their own prints, quality was pretty good for the price.

For camping, some states have state parks. Louisiana has some that are very nice, clean, and safe. (Electrical outlet, water, firepit, central bathrooms with a clean shower with hot water...) Yeah, I rough it when I go camping. :-D And only $10 a day. YMMV

Sounds like a great time! Good luck with it, and post up a picture or two every week or so when you have internet.

 

Thanks all

I appreciate everyone's feedback and good wishes.

Kodo, I am with on netbook and usb drive, but I hadn't thought of mass of thumb drives, but I will get a bunch. Already, I plan to keep all SD cards with original photos, so that plus thumb drives equals two backups of photos, right? The big UPS is a great idea, thanks.

FredG, good idea to mail them out thumb drives as I go.

Rikky, thanks, will get extra battery for car and double check the alternator. What do you mean by "tick" over? Idle speed? The thing about charging with the car is: what if the car is a days hike? A generator wouldn't be fun to carry, but it'd be better than walking back to the car every day or two.

I lack some basic electricity knowledge that would enable me to figure out how to configure solar panels. Solar panels are expensive ,and I can't figure out how many I'd need or what any given panel gets me. The fancy light and flexible ones cost $359 and put out 26W, but I dont' know what 26W does for me? If I have twelve 11V batteries to charge, do I need 12 $359 panels.

A sponsor would be nice, and I am looking for one, or several, now. Volunteers?

WWAAD? He built a studio out *in* the wilderness. I'm working towards that....gotta start somewhere Walgreens is a good option for proofs, but I make black and white prints and I want to sell them on the road to raise money and find sponsors ;-) I figure I can run an HP(linux drivers) printer off the reverser and print from netbook.

Thanks again.

 

Re: Thanks all

When you start the car up and the engine runs without you hitting the throttle,it can be adjusted very easily with a screwdriver you just close the butterfly valve until the engine is running at its slowest speed if your aiming for good fuel consumption while charging,unless you comfortable with engines it may be too big a job.

Well you have no option where power is concerned you either have to buy extra batteries and carry them charged or get a load of solar panels,the problem with solar panel is if your hiking you can't exactly fix them to your head while your walking to charge your batteries and that's what you'll have to do,leave the solar panels charging all day in the sunlight as they give off little power.

I've just thought of a better solution actually,you can't carry lots of spare LION batteries they would cost a fortune and its impractical so why don't you just carry one big 12v battery?You can then use an inverter to turn it to 110/240 so you can plug your chargers in,problem is ofcourse you have to carry every one of your chargers for each piece of equipment.

I'd get something like a 12V motorbike battery,they are pretty heavy for their size but manageable in a back pack and small,its up to you really how much you want to carry,the bigger and heavier the battery the more power you have,it doesn't have to be a lead acid battery either,a large lightweight lithium Ion battery would be perfect as they are so light but a large 12V one that gives out as much current as a motorcycle lead acid would cost a fortune.

http://www.tayna.co.uk/catalog/84/0/Motorcycle-Batteries-Varta-LF-Sealed-Bike-Batteries-page1.html

Then a simple inverter to turn the 12V DC into AC,so your chargers can turn it back to DC:-D Pretty inefficient but that's the price you have to pay for universality 'I'm surprised universality is word,first time I've typed it:-D"

http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/0183996/Trail/searchtext>INVERTER.htm

Again depending on how many items you wish to charge at once you may need a bigger inverter,this is 200W,most small camera chargers charge at 1-2amps 12 V around 10-20 watts,my laptop charger drains 65 watts,so you could charge around two laptops and three camera's at once before this inverter over heated.

 

Here's an equivalent LION battery,much lighter ' it only weighs 800g compared to 3-5lbs lead acid' but much more expensive.

http://www.philipmorris.uk.com/prdf.php?pid=6160

 

Re: Thanks all

Na. you can get one 100.00 panel with a trickle charger for ~25.00. The panel will output 15w of power and you send that juice to charge the battery in the UPS or car battery. Basically you never run directly off the panel, rather you always charge the battery with the panel and run off the battery.

on 2nd thought.. it would take a very long time to charge 1 car battery on 15w/h.. maybe go with 2 at minimum:
http://www.sportsmansguide.com/net/cb/solar-power-charger-kit-and-panels.aspx?a=255798
That will run you 250 and put out 30Watts/hour which will charge a 12v deep cycle marine battery to full charge in about 5.7 days with 7 hours of daylight/day reflected in my calculation. While not a super fast charge.. if you charged one battery while you used another, it might work out for you. Drop another 100.00 on the third panel and you're down to 3.8 days.

you can get about 20-24 hours of running a standard lappy off a car battery (someone correct me if I'm wrong here).. so maybe you could swing it with 2 panels if you brought a backup battery.
other reference: http://omino.com/dvb/reference/battery/

 

Yeah, running even a notebook off-solar isn't particularly cost effective. On the other hand, a solar battery charger for the spare battery would probably work quite well.

Rikky: I seem to recall a solar-powered hat though, I don't recall where, that was exactly that, a battery charger attached to the hat.

Consider also the small Battery operated jumper systems. They don't carry a lot of charge, and have to be recharged, but do have a 110 AC outlet built in. Smaller than a generator, and probably cost efficient if you have two and leave one at the car on a trickle charger.

 

Re: Thanks all

I agree,I think that's the solution if you have a remote base camp,charging larger batteries from solar then using your larger batteries to run your electronics.

I guess it all depends on how remote your base camp is studio,whether your willing to leave all your gear in one place at the risk of it being stolen when you go walk about,if you have a secure base camp then fine.

Well I worked it out out of interest I've over simplified it so it will be easier to spot if I've made a mistake, a nice sized car lead acid car battery is 100AH,100amps for 1 hour or 1 amp for 100 hours,my laptop uses 65 watts at full tilt,when the battery is charging and your using 100% CPU and vid card.

65watts at 12V is 5.4 amps,100AH divided by 5.4 amps is 18.5 hours,this is the maximum draw on the charger though it isn't real world as the laptop draws around half of the maximum wattage of the charger 32.5 watts so it lasts 37 hours.

So if you went into the jungle and started Folding or ran 3Dmark it would last 37 hours,I think in real world usage it would last double that and then some,I think if you left your laptop connected and ON the battery would last 3 days,if you turned it off between sessions much longer possibly a week.

You would struggle carrying a 100AH car battery very far though.

 

Re: Thanks all

If you set your LCD to low brightness, you cold probably extend it some more. Speed Step enabled, perhaps even more and it would be fine if just using things like office apps and 2d image programs to manipulate photo's.

Rikky, I doubt he'd be taking his battery too far from "base camp" . He mentioned having his vehicle with him , and I assume where he parked it would be base camp.

OH! LED LIGHTS! use those instead of regular incandescent ones. I have 3 AA powered LED lights that also have an internal battery for the hand crank. I hand cranked one about 1 month ago (shut up you perves!!).. It still has a charge .

 

Re: Thanks all

They stay healthier if you hand crank them regular,I try to hand crank mine every night,if you turn it on too often it will blow its charge too early,my torch.

:-D

 

Kodo, thanks particularly for the burning man link. The information was very practically helpful in understanding what is what.

Here's some specifics. I plan to set up a base camp where I will stay for two weeks to a month at a time. So I am happy to spend considerable effort schlepping gear to camp.

My main electrical need will be 24 flash batteries. I will charge 12 each day while using the other 12. Each battery takes 3 hours to charge. Each charger says: input AC 120V, 60Hz, 18.5W. Output: DC 10.8V 0.6A.

A quick search shows 100AH 12V Marine Battery runs about $200. Two $100 solar arrays are another $200. Whereas a small generator (which I bet weighs less than battery) runs about $275.
http://www.sportsmansguide.com/net/...900-watt-Generator.aspx?a=579845&kwtid=312681

Having a generator running inhibits the repose of nature, but this is also a work trip. If generator runs at 7.5amp @ 120 volts, and each of 12 chargers run at .6amp, one may run all 12 at once and stay under 7.5 amp limit on generator?

Thanks again all for your thoughts. The electricity has been a bigger mental challenge than what to do with all my junk.

 

You can't mix amps at different voltages you have to use watts as the 7.5 amps is at 120V,the 0.6 amps is at 10.8V,watts is the total amount of energy passing through the system.

The generator puts out 120v X 7.5amp = 900 watt output , 12 chargers at 18.5 watts = 222 watts,you have 678 watts headroom your no where near the limit of the generator

 

That little gen is nice. I might grab one however.. If for some reason your fuel is "lost", you should have some sort of backup to charge batteries. I would definitely dump any incandescent lamps in lieu of super bright LED lights as the batteries in them will last much longer.

 

On the road.....

Hi All, I'm on the road now, in ND at the moment. So far I have opted for an auxiliary battery in the van. I wired it myself to save $300 labor, and surprisingly it worked the first time (unlike most computer work I do). It charges from the car, is separated from chassis battery by a solenoid and switch, and I bought the best Optima deep cycle 12V available. I bought a 200 watt inverter for charging computers and phones, and a 1000 watt inverter for the electric tea kettle (and running power tools which I haven't done yet). I passed on a solar trickle charger at the Tractor Supply in Minot on Saturday, and now I am regretting it. If I have to camp far from van, I will look into generator.

I took Kodo's advice and bought a ton of thumb drives, as well as a ton of SD cards. I figure: one copy on SD card (no erasing and re-writing), one copy on 'working' portable HD, and one copy on thumb drive that I send to my brother as remote backup. Seems solid, so undoubtably there will be some unexpected reversal.

Thanks all for the help and suggestions!

 

Good luck, try to send us an update when you can! :cool

 

That's easy.

I don't camp. :-D


Good luck with your trip!

 

Here's a couple of pics of life on the road in North Dakota. The Stanley Sportsman's Club was very helpful tonight trap shooting for the first time in 20 years.

 

One year later

Well, I've been camping (90%, no hotels, no fast food) for a year now. Favorite town? Carpio, North Dakota. I received much gracious hospitality, and met a wide array of fascinating Americans. Didn't hunt or fish much because the out of state licenses are mighty expensive, but I shot a lot of skeet. I was treated to long horn sheep and antelope in Montana, and the sheep in particular were excellent. Best quote was, "Butch! Butch! Order a rib steak! We sold the calves and if there is any time to order a rib steak, ITS TONIGHT!"

Electricity for my various tools came from an auxiliary battery wired to the chassis battery of my van but isolated by a solenoid and manual switch. It has worked pretty well. The only times I've killed the chassis battery (by leaving switch open) Iwas in town so it was not a big problem. Running the van to produce electricity is expensive, but it also keeps me warm. A solar auxiliary would probably be money well spent.

I blew the motor of my van after less than a month on the road. I was stuck in the mud after four inches of rain over Memorial Day weekend. A new (used) van was cheaper than a new motor, but nonetheless an unexpected expense.

Working in Berkeley (warm place to spend the winter) I left my computer sitting on the recycling bin while unpacking the van on Presidents Day. I forgot it for an hour, and big surprise, it was gone. No sense in practicing much security if you leave the thing sitting on the street. Thanks to lessons learned here on MG, it was well backed up so I only lost about four hours work. Two weeks later I got a call from a neighbor kid who'd seen my signs pleading for return of my computer. My faith in humanity was restored, and the story alone is worth the $50 I gave him. The battery was dead so they only had a limited time to fail at logging in,

Basically, all is good and well. The plan is to remain 'at large' as long as possible. The work I've been doing is here:
http://petroglyphist.com.

Thanks for the help and support getting started!

 

Old and New

Two works in Ingomar, MT
http://petroglyphist.com/Images/GreyRiderPetroglyph.jpg
http://petroglyphist.com/Images/img_3616.jpg

 

My humble thoughts. All those chargers could be plugged into a ciggy lighter converter. Or cut the converters end plug off to direct wire to one battery. Don't forget to use a fuse before the pos terminal on the circut. Buy a large enough converter to handle the amp draw on all of them. Use 2 or 3 power strips. To plug in your chargers. Plugging in the 2nd to the 1st to power it up, 2nd to the 3rd to do the same. You would have many plugs to connect each charger to a strip.

Next is doing a dual battery. Engine running charges both. Shut the engine off. Only draw from one battery on charging what you want. So if it dies, you still have the other battery to get it started. Using the toggle.

-> http://www.bcae1.com/battiso.htm

More simple using a relay
-> http://www.4wheeloffroad.com/techarticles/dual_batteries_backup_battery/index.html

 

My 10 min on edditing went over the time limit. I see you figured it out. My other responce was to not get a lot a thumb drives. Get a USB external drive instead. Save to it.