Panamerican Peaks Project

Got Gadgets? My Electronics Gear…

April 2nd, 2009

Electronic equipment can provide safety and more fun on the road or mountain. Here is a sample of the components I plan to bring along:

Dell Mini 9 Netbook Computer: Light-weight (2.2 pounds) mini computer with 16GB solid state disk, Win XP, wireless Internet, Bluetooth, integrated webcam, USB ports, running 4 hours on a battery charge.

Garmin Oregon 400t GPS: Integrated topographic maps for North-America, intuitive touch-screen interface.

Olympus Stylus 790 SW Digital Camera: Shock-proof and water-proof 7 megapixel camera, with 2GB xD storage card for thousands of pictures and hours of video.

Solio hybrid Solar Charger: Universal charger for electronic devices; charges from sun or socket – anywhere in the world.

Apple iPod / iPhone: Portable phone, camera, GPS, music and audiobook player, app and game platform, with wireless Internet and AT&T 3G cellular network.

A secondary mission of this project is to document the trip and eventually write a book about it. In order to provide frequent updates from the road / mountain, I plan to bring this equipment along on the trip. In fact, the above photo was taken with the iPhone, and the Blog post was written on the Mini Netbook. (See also the related NYTimes article from yesterday on “Light and Cheap Netbooks are poised to reshape the PC industry“.) The plan is to write trip reports and organize photos on the Netbook, and to upload them to my Blog whenever I get to a place with wireless Internet. That will also allow me to check email and to stay in touch with my family and friends using email and Skype video-chat (should save on the phone bill :-).

Additional things I’m considering:

Small helmet camera for action video shots

SPOT GPS tracking device for emergency locator service and passive tracking

Satellite Phone (brought to Logan and Denali by expedition outfitters for safety reasons)

Bike movement sensor / alarm (to prevent silent bike theft)

USB sticks to copy photos off camera and distribute storage (reduce theft and damage risk)

Sigma Bicycle Computer

Kindle eBook Reader

Got suggestions for additional gear? I’d love to get your comments or suggestions on this topic.

Thomas.

Entry Filed under: Technology