[aprssig] Misc. Ramblings

[Scott Miller]

> At work we've been using Verizon EVDO as an end-to-end link for law 
> enforcement purposes (live video) FOR OVER A YEAR and for about the last 
> six weeks we've been seeing more and more EVDO to EVDO connections no 
> longer working.   Verizon denies any problem and says they are doing no 

Yeah, watch out.  We were using Verizon EVDO for monitoring municipal 
water quality telemetry, and when we added remote security cameras we 
went over Verizon's secret traffic threshold on the "unlimited" data plan.

We couldn't get anyone on the phone with the authority to prevent the 
site from being shut down in the 3 days notice we got, so it was shut 
off and required a visit to the site (some 4 hours away) to retrieve the 
card so it could be re-activated in its billing area code, and another 
trip to re-install it.

The form letter was great - it explained to us that there was absolutely 
no way we could legitimately be using that much bandwidth, and that we 
were therefore illegally sharing videos and music.  This despite the 
fact that the link was an encrypted VPN and only connected to exactly 
one remote host.

> I'm also doing a GPS provisioning project at work, and ordered a few USB 
> GPS units for evaluation.  I got a couple GlobalSat BU-353 GPS pucks 
> that have a SiRF Star III receiver, and all I can say is, "Holy Cow!"  
> These have to be the most sensitive GPS receivers I've ever seen.  They 
> lock onto several satellites at my test bench at work, which is uncommon 
> for any consumer GPS receiver.  And they were only about 50 bucks each, 
> to boot.

I've got some new SiRF Star III receivers from Deluo - I forget who 
makes this model, but they work great.  Unfortunately, the entire batch 
came with the wrong connector and they won't work with any of the Deluo 
adapters.  If they can't replace them in a reasonable amount of time, 
I'll see if I can get a discount on the bad batch.  If that happens, 
I'll have a sale on serial SiRF Star III receivers and you can all stock 
up and solder your own DB9s.  =]

Scott
N1VG