filePro Printing over a Satellite

[Jay R. Ashworth]

On Wed, Mar 10, 2004 at 09:18:58PM -0500, Walter Vaughan wrote:
> Acccording to the sales engineer at directway, the FCC will not allow them
> to install the dish on any moveable structure. On the other hand,
> they directed me to MotoSat http://www.motosat.com who modifies the
> dish and installs a GPS that finds the satellites and uploads your
> position to comply with FCC rules. They only supply the hardware, a
> second company, GroundControl http://www.groundcontrol.com supplies
> the IP feed. GroudControl's feed is not bandwidth throttled like the
> home or professional level direcTV (you get a two hour blackout if you
> exceed a 250Meg download in a hour). That can be good or bad I guess.
> 
> I guess the goverment considers the ability to contact a satellite some
> sort of "munitions" that must be monitored and pinpointed if needed.

Nope.

I used to work for a cable network, so I got to have these discussions
with our chief.  The issue is that satellite *uplinks* are closely
engineered because the birds are so close to gether on the belt, and if
you splatter one that isn't yours, lots of other people will become
commercially unhappy.  This is why self installs are only permitted on
downlink dishes; you have to have a tech set it up for the 2-ways.

Clearly, it's permissible to mount uplinks on vehicles, or else Wolf
and Frontline would be long out of business.  They do it the same way:
a GPS receiver and a powered az-el mount that tracks the bird
automagically.  So far as I know, none of the mobile 2-way's are
certified for in-motion use, though I'd bet some of them would work ok.

I'm familiar with MotoSat as well as KVH; there are several people in
the market, some of whom I suspect are OEMing other people's systems.

> Most of the Nascar Race Teams in my area have these I have discovered,
> so I hope to be able to test one out before we lay out the cash for one...

Yeah; it's not that hard.  Just pricey.  Figure $2-4k up front, and
$100 a month.

> They are coming out with a new model that is supposed to as brain
> dead simple as hooking up a linksys router to a cable modem is now.
> No dedicated PC/gateway PC required in a few weeks.

Satellite systems differ; I *always* recommend an independent external
modem with an *Ethernet/DHCP* connection.  This is merely nice if you
run Windoze; absolutely required if you have a laptop, Mac, or run
Linux.

> It costs a lot more than the home dish systems, but not
> nearly as bad as I thought it might.

If you have a 40-foot truck, it's delta, if not epsilon.

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Member of the Technical Staff     Baylink                             RFC 2100
The Suncoast Freenet         The Things I Think
Tampa Bay, Florida        http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

        "They had engineers in my day, too."  -- Perry Vance Nelson