141–150 of 152 posts
On average you can expect a range of 2 miles
We have designed Beartooth to last for a whole 4-day camping trip, music festival, or skiing weekend with our typical messaging usage (3000 mAh battery)
Each user must have their own Beartooth device connected to their phone.
As with any smartphone product being marketed for use in wilderness environments, a note of caution is necessary. Rescue services have seen an increasing number of life-threatening situations caused by the unwise use of smartphones. Phones aren't sufficiently rugged and often lack user-replaceable batteries, so cannot be relied upon as a navigation tool or as a means of emergency communication. If you're considering…
I have absolutely no affiliation with Beartooth, nor do I own one. But I have gone on long hiking and canoe trips in rural areas and could see a Beartooth as a nice addition.
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I've got a 4 pack of gotenna's, and the hardware seems good, but the android app is pretty bad. Pretty sure a solid Android dev could bang out an app with better functionality in a good solid weekend of hacking (assuming they were using an SDK that abstracted all the BTLE comms). Android app is missing some great features like automatic group location updates. Right now you have to get location updates manually broad…
Hi, the SDK is not dead at all, it's going to come out in 1-2 months, we just have been focusing on encryption which should be coming this week. By the way, the lack of automated group updates is by design, there is very limited bandwidth made available by the FCC and if we allowed everyone to transmit their locations non-stop it would ruin it for everyone. We do have some features coming soon that will help get loca…
Your hardware seems to be top notch!
Ahh, good explanation of the group updates functionality. Is this a problem for a small group of 4, every 15 minutes? Seems like not too much bandwidth if you aren't talking about an update ever minute.
As with any smartphone product being marketed for use in wilderness environments, a note of caution is necessary. Rescue services have seen an increasing number of life-threatening situations caused by the unwise use of smartphones. Phones aren't sufficiently rugged and often lack user-replaceable batteries, so cannot be relied upon as a navigation tool or as a means of emergency communication. If you're considering…
The latter has 5 years shelf life, no subscription fees, communicates distress signal with GPS coordinates to a much larger array of low orbit Search and Resque satellites(so works better in canyons), if GPS fails to acquire position (again in a canyon) the satellites can also figure out an approximate position using Doppler effect and trickery with multiple receivers, has a homing beacon for S&R aircrafts, has a strobe light, is buyoant and water-sealed.
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I've been trying to solve an issue similar to what Beartooth is doing, and 2 miles is amazing range. Bear in mind, these aren't huge towers hundreds of feet above the ground with 50kWh power sources and million dollar price tags, they're battery-powered, handheld, and consumer-priced. And cell towers with all the advantages listed only travel less than 20 miles. 2 miles with those limitations is a great distance. I t…
2 miles is amazing range. Bear in mind, these aren't huge towers hundreds of feet above the ground with 50kWh power sources and million dollar price tags, they're battery-powered, handheld, and consumer-priced This guy did 7,600Km at 10mW on the 30m band, using a raspberry pi and a couple passives: https://gerolfziegenhain.wordpress.com/2013/04/13/raspi-as-w... Of course, the antenna was 44 feet long, and he was tran…
Just don't see a value prop to make this feasible. I go to festivals, skiing, camping with friends 2-3 times a year. At a festival, cell service is fine. Camelback with gatorade/water mix is the crucial piece of equipment. Just keep an eye on it, as random people will try to drink from your straw. For casual skiing we set times/places to meet up in case we get separated. Again, cell phones work fine on most mountains…
I don't think it is designed with this use case in mind, despite the marketing that mentions crowded festivals. I see a "Born in Bozeman" badges on the site, so I'm assuming this was born out of necessity for backcountry trekking in wild Montana and not hiking Mt. Tamalpais. I'm not far from Bozeman and I don't have to travel far from home before I lose network coverage from both Verizon and T-Mobile. Sure, I relish…
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Your comment reminded me of a video I saw on Youtube which highlights the utility of having a reliable beacon for rescue services to track your location: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTiGU5TiYCE They were flying a Cessna 170B into a remote part of Alaska in August 1989 when they encountered an engine failure. They survived, and the plane was recovered shortly thereafter (performing an engine swap in the field no l…
From the video, it looks like they activated the aircraft's ELT, which is the aircraft version of a PLB. Same system, just integrated into the aircraft and designed to automatically activate in a crash. At the time that video was recorded (1989), ELTs were analog-only... nowhere near as accurate, and very prone to false alarms. The new 406 MHz digital beacons are much more accurate. :)
They were looking 5 miles away around a glacier!
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Your comment reminded me of a video I saw on Youtube which highlights the utility of having a reliable beacon for rescue services to track your location: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTiGU5TiYCE They were flying a Cessna 170B into a remote part of Alaska in August 1989 when they encountered an engine failure. They survived, and the plane was recovered shortly thereafter (performing an engine swap in the field no l…
From the video, it looks like they activated the aircraft's ELT, which is the aircraft version of a PLB. Same system, just integrated into the aircraft and designed to automatically activate in a crash. At the time that video was recorded (1989), ELTs were analog-only... nowhere near as accurate, and very prone to false alarms. The new 406 MHz digital beacons are much more accurate. :)
They were looking 5 miles away around a glacier!
Does the device constantly broadcast something so you can see when people are in range? Can this be turned off? What if I don't want to announce everyone where I am? (yeah, it probably doesn't send GPS constantly, but constant radio signals are pretty easy to triangulate). I would just want to broadcast a message and then all devices within range should pick it up and see if they can decrypt it (i.e. was it meant for…