Leave lap home?
 

Is a laptop really the best alernative for an extended bike journey?

I much fancy todays portable hard drives, I just saw one 20go usb drive, smaller than two cigarett packs; really takes no space at all.

The setup i imagine is:
bar mounted pocket pc; blue tooth class 1 transmitter integrated + gsm included + gps.
-->
Hard drive equiped with bluetooth transmitter in USB and stuffed with anti vibrative foam into bikes toolbox under seat; offcourse made waterproof with silicone etc + power supplied from battery.
-->
2nd wonder!: a foldable blue tooth keyboard, takes no space at all.
or a virtual BT keyboard, even cooler.
-->
helmet equiped with quality stero speakers + microphone, blue tooth...and cable for power to battery.


Blue tooth is short distance low frequency radio waves, this would make the bike capable of many things.
In Europe check e mails while driving!?
Listen to music
get instructions from gps into ears
(watch movies)
telephone to friends while driving
install voice comand control utility; phone, mp3, mail, gps etc. do now!
bike2bike comunications
stop bike and lock off pocket pc, have a sit, fold up keyboard and access hard drive if bike is within 100 meters.
Park bike outside local cyber café, plug in little blue tooth usb transmitter, access your 20go, update your web site.

Has anyone done anything similar and do you see any limitations?
As the blue tooth to handle several things at the same time?

Matt


[This message has been edited by Matt595 (edited 06 February 2005).]

[This message has been edited by Matt595 (edited 08 February 2005).]

I use a Autocom intercom on my bike everyday. It can be wired for phone and MP3 player or other device. They do not do Bluetooth yet, but you can put a car one in. As for emails I will use a PDA for GPS and sending E-mails then use a bigger card to store music on as well. Only problem is storing pictures etc, unless you pay for a 1GB card.

Bluetooth is not the wonderful thing that you imagine it to be. In fact, its a pain in the neck half the time.

My colleague’s Bluetooth Sony-Ericsson cellphone won’t send pictures to my Bluetooth PC when his Bluetooth headset is switched on at the same time. When he tries to send me a file from his Bluetooth cellphone to my Bluetooth Palm T3 handheld computer my Bluetooth Nokia cellphone beeps and tells me something is trying to communicate with it.

5meter range? Ha! Sometimes the devices work only intermittedly over 30cm and when the carrier signal is lost for more than a few seconds the device stops transmitting altogether… aargh!

Trust me Matt, Bluetooth is overrated!!!

[This message has been edited by LuckyStriker (edited 17 May 2005).]

Matt, it all sounds so straightforward when you list it all like that.

Initially I was planning on a PocketPC for navigation, but it is just to unstable (software), and weak (hardware), that it's still coming with us, but only as backup GPS to the Garmin V, and a nice to have for photo labelling and sorting, mp3s etc.

I'd recommend keeping things as robust and simple as possible. I'd agree that Bluetooth is horrendous, and caused me no end of trouble.

We're not taking a laptop - but hoping the Pocket PC can link ok to USB of an internet cafe PC - Or maybe they'll have a card reader - If not, we have enough space to store all the GPS logs, photos and muic we need on the CF / SD cards.

Hope that helps!

Best of luck

Will

A few points:
This week I saw a very compact USB 100 gigbyte hard drive (made by Merlin from Taiwan).

The Bluetooth on my Sony-Ericsson (P910i)works fine. I have received files from a Nokia Bluetooth enabled phone. Range is allegedly 10 metres but I haven't tested that yet.

Autocom now have a Bluetooth device. This is what they have told me:
"Our Bluetooth kit is based around a Nokia CK-7W car kit from which we take out the main module and power lead and use our Part 55.5 to link to the two units together. We have tested the kit to around 120 mph so we know it works at speed and you will not lose out on any quality over running our standard phone lead and block combination. The kit costs £120 all in."

Not cheap! Stephan

I'm waiting for this to become a reality

http://www.flipstartpc.com/

------------------
Richb
http://www.postmaster.co.uk/~richardbeaumont/60684/

I have not tried the following but some of you might find the device interesting:

The "Cardo Rider" bluetooth headset for comms, cellphone, radio, etc.
Is it old news?
http://www.cardowireless.com/

and if you like sticking things on your helmet you'll love this:
http://www.veypor.com/hud.html

[This message has been edited by LuckyStriker (edited 21 July 2005).]