'M' Technology
The expedition will utilise the usual technology en-route. There are the essentials such as GPS Navigation, Stereo including MP3 players and Satellite navigation. Below is a summary of my decisions, the reasons for them and some information which I’ve not read anywhere else – which may help others in their planning.
Firstly Music: An essential part of any trip in my opinion. I struggle on a short bus journey without music – for Africa I’m going to need a substantial amount of MP3’s! I’ll be taking with me my Archos Gmini 402 20gb MP3 player. Should it get broken lost or stolen en-route, I’ll be buying another one! All music will be backed up onto DVD so I can restore should a replacement be necessary.
My stereo has an auxiliary input, so plugging in the MP3 player is simple and straightforward, why only a few stereos’ have this functionality remains a mystery to me. Perhaps it’s something to do with the music industry wanting to ensure people continue to buy their overpriced, fragile and bulky Compact Disk media. Paradoxically my stereo’s a Sony, who are also one of the largest music labels.
GPS: I chose the Garmin Gmap 60CSX GPS system; it’s has a rugged design, suitable for mounting in the vehicle, and for handheld use. It’s covered in rubber in all the right places, which will hopefully make it slightly more ‘Chris resistant’ it’s also waterproof, and will float, although submersion for long periods of time is obviously not recommended.
A word of warning on Garmin products however, I purchased mine from the US, where a 25% discount was available due to the current crazy exchange rates (almost $2 to the pound). It appears however that all is not what it seems with Garmin, you would expect that when you buy a GPS system, it will navigate, turn by turn to the location you’re heading for. This is a feature on the Garmin system, but only when you have the right software, and the right base maps for your GPS.
Upon receiving my GPS system, I tried to navigate to a new location a few miles away, when calculating the route the error “No roads near start point”, even though I was stood on the road and the GPS map showed this. Apparently you need the software “City Select Europe” to allow automatic route calculation, something I wasn’t aware of. This software costs over £250 (after much shopping around), which is a huge frustration. I’m as yet unaware of whether once I purchase this system if I’ll have the same problems in Africa when trying to automatically navigate. Often in the UK Garmin bundle this software with the GPS for virtually no extra money. So if you’re planning to buy a Garmin, you live in Europe and you want to automatically navigate via roads, don’t buy one in America, and check out the software package first!!!
Watch this space for how I get on in Africa – I still can’t figure out whether it’ll auto navigate there after I purchase the City Select Europe software…
Satellite imagery is mentioned in Tom Sheppards book “Vehicle based expedition” it’s obviously of great benefit to have satellite images of where you are and where you’re going, it can help immensely, for example: in areas liable to flooding, having the satellite images, albeit old images will give you a fantastic overview of the area, the rivers, plains and possible alternative offroad routes.
We’re now firmly in the age of information, when Tom Sheppard wrote his book, satellite images were expensive, and not comprehensive. Now, thanks to Google, it’s free to access for everybody through Google Earth.
Tracks4Africa (www.tracks4africa.net) have over 7 years of overlanders waypoints, detailing everything from police roadblocks, petrol stations even down to potholes in the road. They now have a layer on Google Earth’s featured content. This provides outstanding detail of everything I’ll need during my expedition, I wanted to find a way to take this with me during my trip.
Google Earth will Cache data in a local Cache, in the event of a loss of internet connection the application will use the locally stored data. The maximum Cache is 2gb, which sounds like a lot, but when you want the highest quality images of the areas you’re visiting, it can be filled very quickly.
Here’s my solution to this problem:
Google Cache data is stored in this location:
“C:\Documents and Settings\administrator \Local Settings\Application Data \ Google \ GoogleEarth \ ” ‘administrator’ will obviously change dependent on your login details…
“dbcache.dat” and “dbcache.dat.index” are the two cached data files. I have started with fresh cache files and gone to the country I want to map in detail – I started with Ethiopia. It took 3 – 4 hours to get all of the images for the areas I intend to travel, after which the cache was around 400mb in size. I moved these files into a subfolder called ‘ethiopia’ and put blank cache files back in the default location. If I ever wish to look at Ethiopia satellite images in future, all I need to do is take the 400mb Ethiopia files and overwrite the blank cache files. These can then be accessed offline with no internet connection – and with this method, I’ll be able to store far more than 2gb of information.
It’s a time consuming process, but one I hope will pay off in the long run.
If you would like my cache files for any of the countries I’m visiting and have an FTP site with enough space, let me know and I’ll see whether I can get them to you! |
