On the road

Thunder · Unread post by **Thunder** » Thu 29/10/2009 00:06

After my post on another thread I thought I'd start a new topic as it will be going off topic in the other. This is technical but is weather related, hopefully here is fine.

What do people think out there is the best solution for mobile data? I just had a look at the Telecom website and saw these little beasties:

http://store.telecom.co.nz/mobile/prepa ... ecom-mf626

Pay $99 for the device, and you can get a free sim card at the moment. Then for me I'd just go on the casual prepaid plan, here:

Casual rate: $1 a day for up to 10MB and $1 for each additional megabyte As much as you want to use, and you only pay on the days you use it.

Sounds perfect!

What do others think? I'd just hook this up to a laptop and well I think this would be the perfect solution.

Cheers
Aaron

trickytiger · Unread post by **trickytiger** » Thu 29/10/2009 00:16

Sounds great, would be an awesum we gadget for you guys that go out chasing the weather. Would be a good idea to get one of these. Others could also be informed of what's going on where you are via the forum a lot easier with one of these.

I'd actually like to see how well they perform - also would be interesting to see if it gets anywhere close to the speed it's enabled to achieve.

TonyT · Unread post by **TonyT** » Thu 29/10/2009 19:14

Do some tests, see how many MB of data you might conceivably download in a storm chasing session - and see if the 10MB will be enough, and what it will end up costing you if it isnt.

spwill · Unread post by **spwill** » Thu 29/10/2009 19:36

Good information Aaron
May try out mobile internet this Summer, just need a stormy outlook to inspire me into purchasing it.

Michael · Unread post by **Michael** » Thu 29/10/2009 19:52

Should try it in the states bet its much cheaper and faster there.

Andrew Massie · Unread post by **Andrew Massie** » Thu 29/10/2009 21:40

Looks good. I think over a 6 hour chasing session, 10Mb is more than enough.. particularly if you're only looking at weather radar and lightning tracker data. Now.. if we can just convince Paul or Steve R to share some live data...!

Andrew Massie · Unread post by **Andrew Massie** » Thu 29/10/2009 21:41

spwill wrote:Good information Aaron
May try out mobile internet this Summer, just need a stormy outlook to inspire me into purchasing it.

I've been using a smart phone with 3G, works really well!

Thunder · Unread post by **Thunder** » Thu 29/10/2009 22:07

Yeah the States is better, that's for sure.

Here it wasn't really worth it to me to do this sort of setup but that plan sounds cheap enough, $1 for mobile data while chasing? I need a laptop anyway so I feel it's just a $99 cost then the plan whatever that may be. The phone is awesome Andrew!

But was thinking of getting something with a screen a bit bigger then a mobile, for ease of use. Please do work on the convincing! $\:D/$ Most of the time all I look at is metvuw.com, the links are uniform in that you can go directly to the images and that's all you look at, for e.g.

http://www.metvuw.com/radar/images/2009 ... 0Z_cny.gif

So you just change the date and time of the radar you want, this is for 7pm tonight in Christchurch. This image is 16 to 17kb in size, it would take a while to use up the 10MB per day allowance. You can look at the bigger image

http://www.metvuw.com/radar/bigradar/20 ... 0Z_cny.gif

It's ruffly 100kb in size, so you would have to look at it 100 times to use up the allowance so that is still fine. It's a similar process for their satellite images. I used to be able to directly link to the weatherzone sat images which I find better but it doesn't seem to work now, the links still seem uniform but nothing shows?

Then again by paying $29.95 per month one could have a little more luxury and not have to worry about all the tricky things, could update the forum or whatever which would be cool! I think that's fine and would cover that, heh. I understand though when you recieve packets (web data) you also send them out in a way? Which also counts towards your total allocated data allowance? I'm not sure at which rate this is at.

Cheers
Aaron

tgsnoopy · Unread post by **tgsnoopy** » Fri 30/10/2009 07:28

I bought a NetBook (Acer Aspire One D250-1116) cheaply from Expansys just before the specials in NZ started.

I bought a Telecon T Stick on TradeMe on their $50 for a Gig plan with another Gig for $10. That's my mobile combination, but then "I need it for work"

The lady at Telecon who changed the account over to my name loaded it wrong and as a result I have a bill for 800 odd Megs at their casual rate of $8 & GST a Meg, I kid you not. Tired of talking to them about it, their mistake, not mine, I'm not paying.

While mobile with the T Stick and a special external high gain aerial a couple of weeks ago I was impressed where I could get coverage, but it was a slow connection most of the time. Note the T Stick is CDMA it's not on the XT Network, to be fair I'd need to compare them.

03Stormchaser · Unread post by **03Stormchaser** » Fri 30/10/2009 09:37

Vodafone have the same sort of plan/device available:
http://www.vodafone.co.nz/shop/mobileIn ... y=internet

Doesn't seem a lot different, I would go for a larger plan than the $10/10meg it just wouldn't be enough for a chase and if you are going to do it there is no point in doing a half ass job. By the time you look at rain, lightning data, the forum, metservice, etc you have easily gone over the 10mb limit.

I've always thought it would be awesome to setup a vehicle with a complete chase set-up, go over the top with gadgets etc, but with mobile internet being so expensive in NZ and metservice wanting an arm and a leg to access any data its just not worth it atm.

ricky · Unread post by **ricky** » Fri 30/10/2009 11:37

Some of the new big telecom mobile data plans are looking a bit better now.. 4 Gig for $70 or $80 then another 4 for $30 on top..

I reckon 10 Meg would be too little and you would have to be very careful not to go over... traps for the unwary include leaving things like automatic updates or any software update checks on which can download large amounts of data with little or no indication !

Andrew Massie · Unread post by **Andrew Massie** » Fri 30/10/2009 11:41

That's true about bl**dy updates!!

We were thinking about approaching the Christchurch City Council for funding for a weather radar and storm chasing equipment, running as a non-profit club and obtaining research about local storm patterns!! Let's face it, if the Canterbury weightlifting club gets $5000 per year..!

03Stormchaser · Unread post by **03Stormchaser** » Fri 30/10/2009 11:44

Andrew Massie wrote:That's true!

We were thinking about approaching the Christchurch City Council for funding for a weather radar and storm chasing equipment, running as a non-profit club and obtaining research about local storm patterns!! Let's face it, if the Canterbury weightlifting club gets $5000 per year..!

I remember talking about this, there are alot of rubbish groups that get funding out there, might as well add us weather nuts to the mix!!

P.S Im not calling the Canterbury weightlifting club rubbish!!

Andrew Massie · Unread post by **Andrew Massie** » Fri 30/10/2009 11:49

03Stormchaser wrote: P.S Im not calling the Canterbury weightlifting club rubbish!!

HAHAHA!!! I wouldn't if I were you! I only know as I used to do weightlifting and couldn't believe the funding they got!

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