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Show HN: I built a Iridium/LTE satellite GPS tracker and took it to the Arctic

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Re: Show HN: I built a Iridium/LTE satellite GPS tracker and took it to the Arctic

#11

Post by stilldavid »

GlibMonkeyDeath wrote: post #9
KMnO4 wrote: post #5

For anyone else wondering, the satellite transceiver is a RockBoard, which charges: - $302 for the hardware - $17/month for a “line fee” - $0.20/message (50 characters) Would be nice if there was an actually affordable, programmable Iridium device.

Indeed - a Garmin InReach is about US $500 and already ruggedized and tested. I understand the DIY aspect of this project is the fun part, but it definitely isn't a way to save money.

With a robust used market, as well. I laughed at the battery life goals for this - the inreach mini I use lasts _days_.

Re: Show HN: I built a Iridium/LTE satellite GPS tracker and took it to the Arctic

#13

Post by polishdude20 »

>The ultimate motivator for building this project was the opportunity to join the crew of the S/Y Southern Star yacht, which sails in the Arctic.

Anyone know how he got this opportunity? I'd love to join something like this if all I had to do was make a cool Iridium transmitter!

Re: Show HN: I built a Iridium/LTE satellite GPS tracker and took it to the Arctic

#14

Post by matrix2003 »

KMnO4 wrote: post #5

For anyone else wondering, the satellite transceiver is a RockBoard, which charges: - $302 for the hardware - $17/month for a “line fee” - $0.20/message (50 characters) Would be nice if there was an actually affordable, programmable Iridium device.

Depending on how you look at it, Starlink can be incredibly cheap compared to Iridium. It’s still not cheap from where I’m sitting in my clapped out Honda Civic, though.

Edit: I think $250 for 50GB of truly global data. I can’t do the math right now, but it seems like a better deal at face value.

Re: Show HN: I built a Iridium/LTE satellite GPS tracker and took it to the Arctic

#15

Post by matrix2003 »

KMnO4 wrote: post #5

For anyone else wondering, the satellite transceiver is a RockBoard, which charges: - $302 for the hardware - $17/month for a “line fee” - $0.20/message (50 characters) Would be nice if there was an actually affordable, programmable Iridium device.

> Would be nice if there was an actually affordable, programmable Iridium device.

I remember reading about this a while back, but doesn’t SpaceX offer some kind of IoT modem for a low cost (not the Starlink dishes)

Re: Show HN: I built a Iridium/LTE satellite GPS tracker and took it to the Arctic

#16

Post by cyberax »

matrix2003 wrote: post #14
KMnO4 wrote: post #5

For anyone else wondering, the satellite transceiver is a RockBoard, which charges: - $302 for the hardware - $17/month for a “line fee” - $0.20/message (50 characters) Would be nice if there was an actually affordable, programmable Iridium device.

Depending on how you look at it, Starlink can be incredibly cheap compared to Iridium. It’s still not cheap from where I’m sitting in my clapped out Honda Civic, though. Edit: I think $250 for 50GB of truly global data. I can’t do the math right now, but it seems like a better deal at face value.

> Depending on how you look at it, Starlink can be incredibly cheap compared to Iridium.

They don't have sat-to-sat communications deployed yet, so they can work only near the ground stations.

Re: Show HN: I built a Iridium/LTE satellite GPS tracker and took it to the Arctic

#17

Post by dotnet00 »

cyberax wrote: post #16
matrix2003 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on how you look at it, Starlink can be incredibly cheap compared to Iridium. It’s still not cheap from where I’m sitting in my clapped out Honda Civic, though. Edit: I think $250 for 50GB of truly global data. I can’t do the math right now, but it seems like a better deal at face value.

> Depending on how you look at it, Starlink can be incredibly cheap compared to Iridium. They don't have sat-to-sat communications deployed yet, so they can work only near the ground stations.

Hmm? Starlink has had sat-to-sat active for a while now. They've been making a killing selling services to ships and planes lately.

Re: Show HN: I built a Iridium/LTE satellite GPS tracker and took it to the Arctic

#18

Post by amlozano »

This is a very cool project, happy to see the costs of this stuff coming down a little bit.

When I was an intern 15 years ago I worked on a software library for this https://www.embeddedts.com/products/TS-IRIDIUM Board that does a similar thing (though you would need to stack on a cellular board if you wanted cell modems).

We used them to help Arizona Department of Transportation collect traffic data in remote locations.

We had big plans at that company to make a much smaller, much cheaper 9602 transceiver replacement, but the company got bought out before that could launch.

Re: Show HN: I built a Iridium/LTE satellite GPS tracker and took it to the Arctic

#19

Post by lxgr »

causal wrote: post #6
KMnO4 wrote: post #5

For anyone else wondering, the satellite transceiver is a RockBoard, which charges: - $302 for the hardware - $17/month for a “line fee” - $0.20/message (50 characters) Would be nice if there was an actually affordable, programmable Iridium device.

I've been wondering how Iridium costs are tallied. Recently had two calls with an Iridium phone, one sent and one received, about 1 minute each. T-Mobile charged me $50 for those. I found it very odd - it seemed like Iridium was somehow passing the call fees onto me, but I can't be sure because the T-Mobile rep I chatted with was unable to comprehend the situation (I suspect I was talking to an LLM, but it ultimately…

Receiving calls from Iridium should be free – the caller usually pays for the satellite portion of the call.

That usually makes Iridium -> terrestrial calls much more economical than the other way around, as telcos usually use the opportunity of terrestrial -> satcom calls to add on ridiculous margins. Conversely, satellite -> terrestrial calling is usually around a dollar per minute or less, these days.

In your situation, that would come out to a $50 (or maybe $25) charge per minute. Hefty, but that indeed seems to be at least in the ballpark of their listed rates (for prepaid here, for example: https://prepaid.t-mobile.com/connect/international-calling-r...).

Re: Show HN: I built a Iridium/LTE satellite GPS tracker and took it to the Arctic

#20

Post by lxgr »

fellerts wrote: post #3

Fun project! Did you look into NTN (Non-Terrestrial Networks) capable modules as an alternative to Iridium? I haven't played with NTN myself, but it seems modules such as SIM7070G-HP-S support LTE-M/NB-IoT as well as NTN networks, and could in theory serve the purpose of your Iridium tranceiver as well as your LTE module. This technology hasn't matured yet, and I suspect the roaming tarriffs are expensive, but I don'…

NTN seems to be only offered by geostationary satellite operators at this point, which unfortunately puts the use case from TFA out of coverage. See for example Inmarsat's coverage: https://www.inmarsat.com/content/dam/inmarsat/corporate/core...

I'm not even sure if Skylo is live with Inmarsat at this point, or if there are any other NTN providers covering oceans.

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