| Geek on Everest - A tale of High Tech vs. High Altitude (Part 2) |
| Technology |
| By Mark Kahrl on 6/4/2007 7:14 PM |
Internet connectivity
For internet connectivity at base camp, and advanced base camp we use Immarsat BGAN satellite phones. These operate by connecting with geo-synchronous satellites. It's internet Jim, but not as we know it! My first experience with the BGAN units, it took me an hour or so just to be able to ping google, but I was soon able to figure out their fickle nature.
The BGAN units work best when pointing NE, despite the fact that the documentation specifies that they should be pointed South. The BGAN units need to be manually pointed to find the best signal strength, the best orientation varies by hour and day. Many times good signal is lost and the phones need to be reset and re-oriented. Sometimes, especially during bad weather and snow storms, the signal is lost altogether. As far as performance, there were some serious limitations. Typical ping latency is from 1100 to 1700 milliseconds, this massive latency causes erratic behaviour, web pages frequently time out, and many ftp servers would out right reject connection at this latency.
The bandwidth is also quite limited, we could get 15 to 40 kbs down band width but could only push data up at 2 to 5 kbs, and pushing data up was the main thing we wanted to do! Despite the high latency and low band width, we were able to push out a large quantity of web content, but as you can imagine, this was an all day, every day chore!
Gathering web content
For the gathering of web content, photos and videos, all members of the expedition were issued Sony 650 digital cameras on which they were encouraged to shoot both photos and video clips. We chose the Sony 650 because it is one of the few digital cameras that uses AA batteries. Using AA lithium batteries, these cameras could run for days and weeks, as opposed to the rechargeable cameras that would only work for a few hours in the cold before need recharge, and there was no way to re-charge above base camp.
Our expedition photographer also periodically sends me high quality photos on flash memory sticks, which are then converted to web friendly format. Web content also includes voice dispatches which were radioed or phoned to base camp and then converted to mp3 files, blogs written by various team members on either laptops or on one of the IPaqs with attached querty keyboards. We also gathered and published biometrics such as heart rate and Oxygen saturation of various team members as they moved up the mountain.
Processing web content
All digital photos are run through Photoshop, cleaned up and reduced to VGA resolution before being published - this is critical as out bound band width was very limited. The real meat and potatoes of content processing was for video. All videos are edited and then processed into 'Flash' video format. This was a power and time consuming process, and took much of my time and effort. Processing the video to 'Flash' format was a crucial step as this reduced the final file size to 10 to 15 percent of the raw .avi files size - this allows us to routinely publish five or six decent video clips each day, even given the very limited up band width available.
Hardware for high on the mountain
For high on the mountain, we use the new Thuruya 2510 satellite smart phones to send out web content. I stay lower on the mountain, at base camp or advanced base camp manning the heavier weight hardware, the laptops and the BGAN satellite phones, while Kevin will bring the Thuruya phones and IPaq windows mobile devices all the way to the summit. These devices have the advantage of being all solid state and not subject to the same failure modes as the laptops, but the rechargeable batteries are very sensitive to the cold.
The Thuruya phones are a big leap forward for satellite phones in that they are the first smart satellite phones that have features such as still photo, 3GP video and GPRS connectivity. The Thuruya phones are not without there quirks however. Like all satellite phones, connectivity can be intermittent, and the GPRS connectivity frequently doesn't work. However, the phones can be connected to the IPaq units via blue tooth and used as a modem so that content can be sent even without a GPRS connection. The IPaq can also be used to do basic photo editing and compose text dispatches. The real limitation to both the IPaq and Thuruya phones is that they use rechargeable batteries which work poorly in the cold. To recharge the phones and the IPaq, we constructed our own battery pack chargers which are filled with AA lithium batteries.
Each unit can be recharged many times from a single battery pack and we had the porters carry a massive supply of AA lithium batteries up the mountain for us. In the cold, the Thuruya phones run for as little as 30 minutes on a charge but despite the struggle we still manage to routinely publish still photos and 3GP videos from anywhere on the mountain, which is quite a feat.
The challenges
The challenges of the trip have turned out to be un-expected and diverse. In Lhasa I needed to get my laptop on the local network to send web content and print production documents. Though Lhasa is a relatively modern city, the network required manual configuration, and everything was in Chinese! However, I did manage to get my laptop on the network, send out web content, and print documents on their dot matrix printer - havenít seen one of those since the 80s!
First day at base camp was a bit rough - needed to get all the equipment set up and get content out. Being at 17,000 feet my brain was rather foggy, I proceeded to plug a 120 V rated UPS into 240 generator power, fireworks resulted, but the generator power was quite clean, so the barbequed UPS wasn't really needed any way.
Life at base camp isnít exactly the usual office environment - it can very cold, barely above freezing during the day, and extremely cold at night. We usually have to wait for the mid-morning sun before we dare turn on equipment. If the weather is down right bad, we can't even get a satellite signal and hard drive failure is much more likely. We only have generator power and the generators need to be re-fueled and cleaned frequently due to the low quality of fuel available. Generator use has to be carefully managed because if we use up our fuel supply, getting more fuel will be very difficult.
Usual tasks at base camp include changing out blown hard drives, a frequent occurrence, getting printers to work, recharging HD movie camera batteries, gathering and sending out web content, which are all very time consuming tasks.
Recreation time
Though we were kept very busy on the trip, we do have a little bit of time to relax. We have a large geodesic dome tent at base camp with a flat screen TV and DVD player, there is a large collection of DVDs left by various expeditions. In addition to the usual British and US titles there are a lot of Bollywood and Nepali titles which are popular among our Sherpa and Tibetan porters. I also use downtime to practice my black jack game - if you can remember the strategy matrix and count the deck at 17,000 feet, it should be no problem in Vegas!
The future
Right now, it's June 2nd and were gearing up for our final summit push. I'll be doing my final push up to advanced base camp, and Kevin will be moving up to the higher camps towards the summit. Summit day is scheduled for June 11th so stayed tuned for the exciting conclusion to the world's highest multi-media web project!
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