Equipment:Technology:Cool Stuff
Back to Technology page
This page will be used by Dietrich to show and discuss some of the pieces of hardware used to meet different needs. This page will largely be in "blog" format and a little less formal than othe pages on the site.
Websites used by Dietrich for information gathering on different subjects.
March 1, 2009
In January, I finally made the major step up with phone technologies and got rid of my old reliable Moto 815. After extensive research, I opted to get a Blackberry Curve 8330. Having this phone for over a month now I have fallen in love with it's usefulness and practicality. I now have access to emails and web applications at anytime and have the ability to easily write emails or text messages with the well-defined and user-friendly keyboard. I'm really impressed with this phone in its simplicity of use and it's flexibility for software, personal information management and ease of handling. With the keyboard and trackball, this phone is a dream to operate one-handed (which is often the case when driving or operating equipment or other stuff that I probably shouldn't be losing focus on while messing with my phone).
My Blackberry Curve 8330 from Alltel. Ok I don't have the wall paper changed yet, but I've done some cool stuff under the hood already. As I'm pretty hard on my phones, I put this one in an Otterbox setup to protect my phone from me. It looks like it works pretty well but does the add weight and bulk to an already good sized phone.I have all of my contacts syncing between my Outlook and this phone everyday so I'm always up to date. I just started playing with the 12-channel GPS reciever built in but I need to get into it a little deeper and make some changes to get reliability up. There is a plethora of freeware for this phone and Blackberry has a gigantic user community which is always important when adopting new technology as the user community can get a guy up to speed with tasks and answer questions quickly and with more thought than just looking at the minimal manual or figuring out everything on ones on. The major source of information I have been using is found at the Crackberry site.
Over the past 8 years I have been trying to find a decent earpiece that works for farmers or anyone that is working either outside or in loud environments. In the early days I used wired Jabra headsets and these worked well until the first time the wire got pulled and then they were dead. This meant that I was going through 2-3 of these per year. Bluetooth headsets started to come onto the scene and the first one I tried was the Cardo Scala. This was not a bad headset in quite environments but was uncomfortable to wear (too loose) and the noise cancellation software would blow the hears out of folks you called. Next I got onto the trucker discussion forums and discovered the BlueParrot.
The BlueParrot was awesome: good clear audio for both the caller and callee, long battery life, comfortable design with comfortable earpiece. The downside to the BlueParrot was its bulky size. First it requires having a mic in front of your mouth so no eating or drinking without adjusting the mic out of the way. The large blob that has the earpiece on it hangs down low enough that if one wears a simple hooded sweatshirt and turns their head it moves the whole headset. For the hearing challenged however this would be the headset of choice as it has volume levels I never even tried inside a loud tractor cab because it was already loud enough.
After the BlueParrot (which I still use some today) I sought a smaller footprint headset but with the similar audio qualities. In 2007 I bought a Jawbone headset. After doing some research I removed the ear hook and stock ear bud and put on a Jabra ear gel (molded to the shape of the inner ear and pipes audio down into your ear canal). This thing was great in that the audio side was good, folks I called had little idea of whether I was in the office or in a loud tractor as the noise-cancellation software works superbly. The only downside was that it was a little bulky and heavy so this past winter I moved to the Jawbone II, which is basically a smaller version of the original Jawbone headset. Life is good now and I'm really happy with the whole phone setup.
Picture of Blackberry with Jawbone II headset. Big "bulky" thing on the sleek black body of the headset is the Jabra ear gel. This piece is molded to the shape of an ear and allows the headset to be "locked" into place using just the ear piece while at the same time getting the audio down into the ear canal for better clarity and less ambient noise pollution.
Closer look at the Jawbone II in relation to a penny.Looking at amp/repeaters, both Wilson and Wi-Ex make pretty good setups but they tend to be expensive ($300-$600) and don't lend themselves to moving them from vehicle to vehicle. I've permantly mounted a Wilson in my farm pickup and a Wi-Ex in my main tractor but I needed something cheaper and more portable. What I found was the Cell Ranger Stix.
At a third of the cost of true amp/repeater mobile systems, this seemed like something worth trying. I purchases one last summer and use it as a floater system between vehicles. Although it doesn't give the level of signal boost the higher end systems give, it does act like having an antenna outside of the car (which signficantly helps signal strength) without having to have the phone tethered to the antenna. I bought another one for dad's pickup this winter. So far it has been very durable and has really increased my signal quality, especially through hills. Out here we can often get a good signal on the tops of hills and on flat area but driving anywhere usually involves going up and down hills and this is were calls are lost. With the Ranger, there are only a handful of hills that still cause me problems while the majority of the time I can hold my calls without any trouble.
Useful websites for tech stuff, problem solving and information gathering
For all cellular equipment needs: Solid Signal
Best discussion forum for genral cellular stuff: Howards Forums
Best discussion forum for EVDO stuff: EVDOForums
For long range wifi networking: RadioLabs
For all things computer: Tom's Hardware and Gizmo's
For PC stuff: PCWorld
Best discussion forum for internet and network connectivity stuff: Broadband DSL Reports
|
Contact
Us | Contact Webmaster
| © 2009 Kastens Inc. Farms
|
