3
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bergie
Joined 8,159 karma
Sailor, hacker, and an occasional adventurer. Author of Create.js (http://createjs.org/) and NoFlo (http://noflojs.org/).
More on http://bergie.iki.fi and https://lille-oe.de/
[ my public key: https://keybase.io/bergie; my proof: https://keybase.io/bergie/sigs/94Ea8rkF51hWAkqI5uBmafa01SABlUwEamPyaPswvoM ]
- bergieFor travelers, this Balkanization of payment mechanisms is quite a hassle. You can't have Swish (the Swedish payment system) without a Swedish bank account. You can't have Yappy (the payment system used in Panama) without a Panamanian phone number. So as a foreigner you simply can't pay. Especially in Sweden where cash isn't a thing.
- We can turn on the deck lights on our boat remotely via Meshtastic. Works great when dinghying back in the dark.
- I think the primary problem is that the polygons for regions would take quite a bit of space in the limited microcontroller.
Though bigger reason likely is that very few people actually travel between different regions
- For a single hop you can expect close to similar ranges as a VHF set. We saw 30NM distances on open sea when leaving Curaçao. Could be a lot more with antenna situated high up.
Where the magic potentially kicks in is the mesh hops. With those you can reach much further by jumping from one node to another.
It's not even close to satellite comms in reach or reliability, but it also requires no infrastructure, no licensing, and no subscriptions.
- No, you need to switch the region manually. Not a big deal to do for a couple of nodes.
The trickier part is to figure out the correct preset for more exotic locations. I've had to ask a couple of times from the local Meshtastic community group.
- We're using Meshtastic quite extensively for communication on our boat. Each crew member carries a mobile waterproof node (Seeed T1000e), the boat itself has a node, and we also have a Meshtastic tracker for the dinghy.
We often sail in places where there's no communication infrastructure, or it is prohibitively expensive. With Meshtastic we can talk when somebody goes ashore, and the boat can send telemetry and alerts to the remote crew.
Some of our buddy boats also have Meshtastic on board so we can text chat with them instead of using VHF.
Here's a story describing this: https://blog.noforeignland.com/off-grid-boat-communications-...
- These trips happened all the way to late 1940s. Here's a good book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Grain_Race
If you get the chance, the Pommern is a beautifully preserved ship from that era in Mariehamn's excellent maritime museum.
- That's true only in constrained waters. But obviously they need to see you from afar to be able to make that course change. That's where AIS transponders help a lot.
We've crossed some of the busier shipping lanes of the world, and have had to call the bridge of a freighter on radio just a couple of times. And usually the watchstander immediately confirmed seeing us and clarified their intentions.
- > that your choice of sailboat should entitle you to having something that is literally hundreds of times larger and less nimble than you have to make the effort to go around you.
That's how the rules of the road work. See: COLREGs.
We also travel by a small sailboat, and it is always reassuring to see huge tankers make small course changes tens of nautical miles away. That way everybody stays safe and nobody is majorly inconvenienced.
- Here in Colombia we noticed that a lot of bars and such have awnings built out of solar panels. Cheap, durable, and makes power.
- In many East European countries you can likely still get a license plate by bribing the right people
- I was able to avoid WhatsApp until we started our current multi-year sailboat cruise. All the local cruiser communities are on WhatsApp. So when we got to the Canaries, I created an account.
But I'm making sure WhatsApp will not be used for anything outside this context. That way I can nuke it when we're back home.
- We're running three right now:
One runs our boat's primary navigation system with Signal K and connects to the instruments via an NMEA2000 hat.
The second one is the boat NAS.
The third one powers an info display on the nav table.
- Exactly what I wanted to say. LinkedIn was slop before there was AI slop. So that's probably where LLM generated stuff fits the best. That, and maybe Medium.
- The taxes aren't even that high if you compare with for example Germany. And in Finland they include healthcare and education etc
- I'm trying to integrate Meshtastic devices with the Signal K marine software ecosystem.
The idea is to facilitate communications between ship and the shore party, as well as to have alerts, some commands ("boat, turn deck light on") without reliance on telecommunications infrastructure.
Down the line communication and telemetry sharing between different vessels is also potentially interesting.
- Environment related, yes. But also the way government subsidies in EU give flights an unfair advantage over better methods of transport
- > Excellent news.
Terrible news. Flying is way too cheap as it is.
- Sailing is great. And has so many facets. You can sail competitively with anything from dinghies to big boats. Or you can just enjoy an afternoon out on the bay. Or you can go on a world cruise.