war bicycling - how to power it all.

[i_do_dew]

Gas prices being what they are has put a serious cramp in my war driving. That being the case, I'm getting more interested in war-bicycling. I also want to loose the weight I've picked up sitting in the car all the time.

For those of you who war-bicycle, how do you power it all, or do you just go for shorter 1-2 hr rides? Do you use a laptop, or do you somehow power a WRT?

For the GPS what type of connection do you use to the computer?

Oh and how do you make it weather resistant?

Thanks in advance,
I_Do_Dew

[arkasha]

Hey,

So I do a lot of my war[walking|driving|riding|hitching] with the minimum rig possible. I have a Nokia linux N770 mini-tablet and a bluetooth GPS. If you're feeling adventurous, you can even install an external antenna, although I frankly like the compact form factor and sealed exterior. Woot had the tablets for cheap a little while ago, and I'll bet you can get more advanced models or that model I have more cheaply by now! Note: I get about 1.5-2 hours on internal power from the devices but it'd be trivial to create a power supply/adapter kit to run them off of a larger power source.

Cheers, and I hope this helps.

[uhtu]

i had at one point a simple rig in my backpack to hold my vaio n505 still (running dstumbler) and a battery-powered gps with a blade antenna (no amp) which worked quite well in an urban setting. that would run well for 3 or 4 hours. which was more than my legs could handle at the time anyhow :-)

i'm currently working on getting my eee running kismet and a usb-serial dongle for the same battery-powered gps unit.

[i_do_dew]

thanks both of you,

i'm currently working on getting my eee running kismet and a usb-serial dongle for the same battery-powered gps unit.

a battery powered serial GPS? who made that?

because of where usb is on my notebook Ive just about clobbered the port. I thought about a serial based unit instead since that would screw on for a firmer link. my notebook is older and I can get up to about 4 hours off a charge with both batts. my problem is that I like to go on longer rides than 4 hours. I thought about taking a battery and an inverter, but that is a whole lot of weight in a backpack especially if toting batteries . I'm hoping to figure out something with one of those satchel things. All I have come up with is that some racks can support a baby seat, so that can probably take some abuse. no idea about hanging a bag or 3 off of that.

[uhtu]

garmin rino 110 has a serial output, if you turn off the lolradio the gps part is quite handy/reliable and lasts a long time on 3 AAs

[KH]

Gas prices being what they are has put a serious cramp in my war driving. That being the case, I'm getting more interested in war-bicycling.

For those of you who war-bicycle, how do you power it all, or do you just go for shorter 1-2 hr rides? Do you use a laptop, or do you somehow power a WRT?

My setup, described in detail at http://idefix.net/~koos/wardriving-box.html is optimized for the bicycle. It uses a 12V battery with a nice weight/capacity ratio (700 grams / 2.2 Ah) and the system has been chosen to use as little power as possible. In a test I got 4 and a half hours of wardriving out of a full battery.

For the GPS what type of connection do you use to the computer?

Serial. But that is from a personal dislike of serial-over-usb in wardriving because I always had problems with usb disconnects causing big wardrives without locations.

Oh and how do you make it weather resistant?

It is all carried in a laptop bag which has a rain cover. And I usually don't cycle in the rain voluntarily...

[Nevyn]

I am using an older Magellan Sportrak Map that a friend let me have (he's on his way to Iraq and has little use for it there - no maps). It runs on 2 AA batteries and has a serial connection.

A little slow to lock sometimes, and an older unit, but does the job just fine (especially for free).