PDA Designed for the Great Outdoors

Paul Bawon writes "A company in UK called Node has developed the world's first consumer PDA designed for use specifically in outdoor environments. The device is fully waterproof to 3 meters, has a 8 hour battery life, built in DGPS receiver and 1 Gig of storage. Bluetooth and WiFi come as standard as does a touch screen and either a PocketPC or Linux operating system. I bumped into them at a tourism conference in Edinburgh where they were demo'ing the unit and I was impressed. It's smaller than a standard postcard."

no karma no whore

[Anonymous Coward]

from the site:
Features
Wireless networking
400mhz xscale powered computing
Colour screen 320 x 240 hi resolution
Incredible low reflection screen
Location aware technology
Ultra long battery life - up to 6 hours
Rubber easy grip design
Changeable colours - choose from 265
Easy clean screen and casing
Robust durable casing maximising protection
Changeable necklace strap, assists devise care
Auto load software
Hidden restart -button
Water proof casing
Simple charge options either dock or individual charge
Expandable memory option
Advertising and branding space on rear of devise
Light weight casing design
Lockable casing design
Landscape screen
Touch screen

Slashdotting

[Jon Langridge]

Site seems to be under the influence of, well, us. Here's google's HTML version (cached) of the Node Explorer product info sheet: http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:0ycwbWxgTh8J: www.nodeexplore.com/pdfs/NodeExplorer_v2_020904.pd f+nodeexplore&hl=en

Re:Excessive features?

[inkdesign]

If you were separated from your hiking partners, I wouldn't rely on Bluetooth anything to stay in touch. Just not enough range to be practical at all for that kind of use.

Screen?

[OpenGLFan]

In my senior projects class, one group designed data acquisition systems for power line techs, etc. using PDAs. Their main obstacle turned out to be screen visibility, not ruggedness. I know my laptop screen is hard to see in bright sunlight even with the brightness turned all the way up. Anybody know how to address this problem? Polarized sunglasses?

Look at the site!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Guys,

The PDA has been designed as part of solution targeting tourist attractions (including the outdoors) and NOT as a product that will be sold to the public.

Re:These are invaluable

[Minderbinder106]

invaluable
adj.

Of inestimable value; priceless: invaluable paintings; invaluable help.

Contradictions here

[Khali]

Colour screen 320 x 240 hi resolution

Not exactly my definition of high resolution. I think that recent handhelds have typical 320 x 320 resolution, don't they?

Ultra long battery life - up to 6 hours

Doesn't the news item advertise 8 hours?

Changeable colours - choose from 265

Frankly, do we need that many colours to pick from? I think not. Some marketing droid must have thought that a big number here would impress the customer.

(Note that I couldn't read the article yet, as the site is obviously /.ed.)

Re:In outdoors

[Anonymous Coward]

Your English teacher must be proud.

In that sentence, the preposition "in" was referring to the noun "environments" which was being modified by the adjective "outdoor."

This is why we have a structure called a "sentence." We use this amazing grammatical device to string together multiple words into a single conveyed thought. It's not necessary that a couple random words taken out of the sentence's context make sense in and of themselves, as long as the sentence as a whole is accurate.

Not "a first" ... (rolls eyes...)

[blakespot]

Ever heard of Pen Computing magazine [pencomputing.com]?? Even the earliest copies I've got on my shelf, dating back to 1997, have several rugged, vertical-market PDA's per issue that can withstand "the great outdoors."

Nothing to see here folks, move along...

blakespot

Re:Excessive features?

[Morgahastu]

It's not only for the outdoors. The site explains it's also designed for indoor attractions. It's targetted for the tourism industry.

For example: You go to Yosemite National Park in the USA and you can borrow one of these when you enter and it has all sorts of information on the park and landmarks placed on the map for you to go see (including washrooms an d gift shops!)

Or you go to a large museum and you borrow one to get a map of all the attractions and maybe some accompanying text/voice info on whatever exhibit you're nearest to.

Oh and back to my point: The wireless would be to remain on the network at an indoor location or possibly in some outdoor areas.

DGPS? Are you sure?

[SpyPlane]

"built in DGPS receiver"

Doubt it.

DGPS != GPS

DGPS stands for Differential GPS and comes in a variety of flavors, all of which use corrections from some trusted source to eliminate the inherit errors in GPS (such as ionospheric errors).

I checked the site to actually confirm that it has DGPS, but I couldn't find any evidence. Most commercial DGPS services cost in the thousands of dollars a year (OmniSTAR, StarFire) and would be totally overkill for a simple handheld PDA intended for recreational activities.

Granted, this unit might support WAAS, but that wouldn't qualify this as a DGPS unit.

Sorry to go off on what was probably just a typo!

Re:Where's the GPS

[alanh]

There are several [socketcom.com] Bluetooth [pharosgps.com] GPS [fortuna.com.tw] devices [emtac.com.tw] available....

Re:Where's the GPS

[ThogScully]

Well, the article summary does say that it has GPS, making it clear that it's one of the main selling points.

The whole basis of the product line seems to be location-finding and all...
-N

Solar Cells are easy

[cgenman]

Not to be too hacky, but it is trivial to add a good solar cell to most electronics, especially if they are built for a charger. This one looks like it uses a fairly standard power plug, which means it's probably 2.0 or 1.9 center positive. Anyone with a unit could tell you to required voltage, but I would guess 12v as it has an internal hdd. All that's left to do is find a good 12v solar cell [allelectronics.com], find a plug [allelectronics.com] of the right size, chop off the end bits of the two and attach them together, and double-check that current is flowing in the right direction. Bing! You're done.

It's very easy. Check these values, of course, with the requirements of the actual hardware before you start plugging things in.

Re:Field charger?

[Anonymous Coward]

In journalism school, they taught us to stick the camera battery in our armpits during the winter time to warm it up for use. Another option is those "hot shots" chemical hand warmers.

Re:8 hour battery life?!?

[DaChesserCat]

Give me a Palm Pilot anyday.

Agreed. I've got a IIIxe which is running on NIMH AAA batteries. I can charge-em up and use the hell out of it for about three weeks at a time. I've got two sets of battereis, so one is in the unit while the others are charging.

It has a 16 MHz CPU, 8 MB RAM, and monochrome LCD display. It's a very simple device, and goes a long way on very little. I can take it with me on a road trip over the weekend, use it as

• an e-book reader
• a spreadsheet
• a note taker
• a calendar
• an alarm clock

you name it. If I REALLY need to, I can buy some regular AAA batteries while I'm out and about. It's not fancy, but it works well.