SpareOne: Emergency mobile phone powered by AA batteries
spareone.com
spareone.com
If you're truely going off the grid and want realtime coms available there is no alternative to Iridium.
An EPIRB is great if you just want to be found.
Argument against Globalstar is that it is not a true polar to polar real-time solution like Iridium.
Iridium is the only constellation where you will always find a bird overhead anywhere on the globe (with a ground station relay)
Realistically, Iridium has occasional (~5min) signal gaps likely due to the aging constellation (based on my own use cases developing with a roof mounted antenna)
Likely the satphone is better, but there are still limits.
Why not? There are all kinds of Emergencies. Some trees are fairly easy to climb.
If your GPS can get a fix, you can probably find enough signal to send a SBD.
Iridium carrier signal is stronger than GPS.
Another problem with that is the current public perception often is that their phones contact space. I hear this over and over again. It is interesting. Drive by cell phone towers all day and still think your iPhone is "going to space" when it is loading slow. There is a Louis CK bit about this on Conan's show. I wonder if that kickstarted part of the misconception
Have you seen the Louis C.K. bit the parent is referring to? It's a joke, but the joke is that people are annoyed with their phone being slow despite it "going to space".
Scared all the elk away...
Recently, the strangest thing that happened to me was having a signal on a total wi-fi phone in a remote area while friend's verizon phone plan had no signal. This was an area where there were no houses ...just miles of land.
If you're on the edge of signal you'll lose data and voice then SMS last. Mainly because SMS is small enough to slip through in 1-5s intermittent connections. UK Emergency services and mountain rescue use SMS extensively, but backed up by other channels - radio, sat phone and what have you.
So I could perhaps understand a cut-down text device, but voice? Hmmm. Even a 121.5 transceiver, cheap and AAA powered, would be a better idea.
Speaking from very personal experience, as in I was living on a high spot in Joplin, MO right at the southern edge of the "zone of total destruction" when the 2011 tornado hit, one cell tower hit the stack of apartments to the east of me, and the other landed on part of the parking/access road area just to the west of me.
ADDED: I forgot that the "before" picture I picked up (from the eeevil Daily Mail, this is one area where they excel), shows the original positions of the towers: http://www.ancell-ent.com/1715_Rex_Ave_127B_Joplin/images/
From the perspective of the picture, east is up and a bit to the right, the towers fell up and more to the left (counterclockwise).
But tornadoes have several saving graces, including that their path, even for an EF-5 monster like that one, is relatively narrow. As in I could walk beyond its effects, only a few blocks north, and while I can't remember if I had still had cell service while in my trashed apartment, I easily had it once I'd relocated to my mother's home ~15 block north of the path.
2 days later, I think it was, I was able to return, and by then AT&T? had a temporary cell tower running on a generator next to the spot of one of downed cell towers, using a point to point antenna to connect it to the rest of their network.
This characteristic allows massive surging of resources to the affected area, e.g. as I left my apartment complex within 1-2 hours, fire trucks from 40 miles (Lamar, distance by road) and 21 miles (Quapaw tribe in Oklohoma, with which the city has a close relationship) were there and men were already suiting up to search the complex.
I grew up there and my folks still lived there at the time not far from St. Johns Hospital (the one that was hit and featured in most of the news).
I was working at a startup in Oregon when a friend in Joplin called right after the tornado went though town. A quick look at the news told me all I needed to know and I immediately packed up my Jeep with emergency supplies and headed out for a non-stop drive from Portland to Joplin. I got there late on the 2nd day and the place was still in shambles. No cell signal in the disaster zone at all. My folks house was spared major damage (neighbors on either side and behind weren't so lucky) but they lost power, cable, and land-line when a falling tree ripped the feeds and power meter off the house.
I had an AT&T phone and it was mostly useless for about a week. Even after the temp towers went up (and there was one not very far away) the network was saturated with emergency workers. OTOH, my Iridium worked just fine. Too bad my folks didn't have one -- I didn't know their status until I got there in person.
I'm don't see a whole lot of value in a device like this. Any sort of natural disaster is likely to tear up the infrastructure a traditional cell phone depends on.
Although I think I recall it not being bad in subsequent weeks, and, I would be using it from the edge of the zone of total destruction, and a hundred feet or so away from what was likely a tower of my provider. But I wasn't using it heavily there, at most for coordination while on-site removing stuff from my apartment.
You were also several miles to my west, in the direction the tornado came from. I also had the advantage of being on a hill, that might not have been true for you.
But we agree in that such a device is not to be depended upon; I'd say at best something to hold in reserve, and mention of affordable emergency Iridium systems like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11701692 has gotten my interest.
If we assume a 50% charge at crisis start, and a rational response by the person using it: * Turn off wifi, cellular data, bluetooth, other unneccesary stuff * Turn screen brightness to minimum * Send only text messages * Don't use phone unless sending or receiving important message
any decent smartphone will last 4 days or more.
Example: I have a midrange Samsung A5 for an office phone (mandatory company rules). With wifi and 4G enabled, but only being used to check the occasional message. It lasts 8 days on a charge.
121.5 Mhz Emergency Channel is for aviation usage only (other than older PLBs) although if you had a multi-band handheld transceiver (in a genuine emergency) it would probably be useful to communicate with rescue helicopters etc.
I'm not current with aviation any more so the off the cuff thought could be very silly. :)
Using aviation channels for frivolous non-aviation uses can result in FAA/FCC/FBI getting involved.
The 121.5 beacon actually interferes with Emergency voice transmissions, so downed pilots sometimes shut them off in order to talk to rescue crews etc. without a beeping noise :)
In the US at least every phone has to be able to dial 911 even if it doesn't have a plan (all it needs is a SIM card). Useful for having something in an emergency if you're on the road or some other place near cell service.
If the phone is not connected to the network currently, it will do network hunting, and will be able to do an emergency attach to the first network it finds. This may also happen if your say out of coverage with your own provider, but can see signal from another provider, even if there isn't a roaming agreement. 911 get's interpreted by the phone in a special way, and the phone will flag the request as for emergency services when connecting to the network, so the network will treat it with priority. In theory, even if you can't be delivered a phone call, or the network is overloaded, emergency calls should still work, depending on exactly what the problem is of course.
It's also something that at least here in Canada, get's tested fairly extensively, both on all the devices we sell, and the network equipment when deployed and each patch.
* my views are my own, and do not reflect those of my employer.
In some European countries (France, p. ex), a "valid" SIM card is now mandatory (too much prank calls).
I was under the impression that a SIM card is not required. Am I wrong?
Personally, I carry an Instapark Novobeam 3000 in my backpack. It's about the size of a roll of breath mints or a small flashlight, is rechargable, has a waterproof cover, and costs about nine bucks on Amazon.
If you need something like this, you don't need to fiddle with USB chargers
USB is available from almost any computing device, a growing number of displays and other peripherals, and increasingly in common areas. And AC-USB adapters are easy to get, spreading the convenience to every wall plug too. As others have mentioned, AA-USB adapters exist too, spreading USB's coverage to everywhere you can find AA batteries. As I hinted earlier, most recent devices have switched from AA to USB-charged built-in batteries, so a USB battery may have more utility than AA batteries these days.
Tangentially, there's a behavior pattern prevalent in the "Prepper" (aka Emergency Preparedness) community that confuses me. They take a logically-sound concept such as storing large amounts of food, and seem to separate the emergency food from every day food. Here, similarly, we have an emergency device that is not usually used. How do we know if it still works? Test it occasionally?
The USB battery breaks this pattern in that you can use it frequently and it's still useful in an emergency. And using it regularly can build a habit of keeping it charged, and you'll know if it breaks or goes bad before an emergency.
I'm not saying AA powered emergency devices are harmful, but rather our emergency devices and processes should be our every day devices and processes, whenever possible.
I have a phone like this from about 10 years ago that we leave at a family camp (super rough cabin with no utilities). With the loss of quality, power-outage survivable POTS phone service, this type type of device fills an important niche. 20 years ago, NYNEX (now Verizon) would provide dial tone for 10-14 days in the event of a blizzard or other power outage. Now you get 24-72 hours from cable/internet providers at best.
Another issue with conventional rechargeable batteries is they don't handle charging well when discharged completely. A cellphone left in a cabinet for 5 years is a brick in many cases.
In the same way. Test some, store the rest. When stored food nears it's life expectancy, test or just plain eat it.
If you're really serious, you tape shut your fridge door, water taps and flush toilet if you live in the city, open most of the circuit breakers if you don't have a generator, etc. etc. for a few days and test everything for real (then again your electrical company is likely to give you occasional opportunities to test your generator :-).
Any way you look at it, the more stuff you have that works or is edible, even if some of it fails, the better off you are, the less you have to expose yourself to whatever is out there, the more you can help your neighbors.
Saves us both time and money to have a bunch of staple goods at home that get restocked every six months or so. And in an emergency, hey, we've got a bunch of the same kind of food that we eat anyway, and have more than enough to share with our neighbors.
Outside of a supply of bottled water that gets rotated, we don't really have anything purchased purely for emergencies. Plenty of backpacking gear, but that gets used on the weekends, and we know that all of it works well.
One thing I did start doing was leaving my backpack loaded and ready-to-go near the door. Our biggest threat in Japan is earthquakes, and if we have to evacuate, having the same kit that I would carry for a three-day backpacking trip would make things a lot more pleasant.
How much is fresh or thereabouts food, vs. stuff from cans, white rice, beans etc.? If too much of the former, and you don't have a list of stuff you normally use in backpacking trips, then you'll either have to try some ahead of time, or store it anyway assuming you'll be hungry enough if the emergency comes, which I've read can be a terrible mistake.
Ditto bugout bag contents in case you have to evacuate, as you note.
The stuff I store for emergencies right now is "purely" for them, but it's all stuff I like (white rice, indica and japonica, which my normal input of is limited, then there's there is no MRE desert that isn't at least good, and most are very good to excellent, and, oh, even some of the Humanitarian Daily Ration entrées are just plain good even if a bit old: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanitarian_daily_ration and you can occasionally find extras. Companies that pack this stuff for the government, especially MREs, will produce more in a lot than needed, to make sure their yield for the order is high enough, knowing they'll easily sell the extra to civilians, and civilian demand is I suspect getting high enough that they're now making more than a little extra).
Purely in scare quotes in that while they're still palatable, I'll buy fresher product and eat the older stuff so it won't go to waste. Ditto the Mountain House freeze dried stuff, it was easy enough to find a set that were at minimum "good", and if I haven't used them in some years I'll replace and eat the older items.
I also do things like maintain a minimum of a year of various specialized dry goods, like allergen free shampoo and soap, and replenish every April and October when the weather is moderate here in the US. This way if one of these products becomes unavailable (or in the case of one soap product, contaminated with perfume, at least two lots), or if there's an emergency, I'll have a minimum of six months to procure replacements, and in the latter case I won't have to be scurrying around with everyone else to find the necessities of life, and as we've both noted, can share with neighbors.
I also do things like maintain a minimum of a year
A minimum of 6 months, a maximum of 1 year when I replenish every April and October.
You're not wrong, and this mindset isn't limited to people that are preparing for either a big earthquake (that'd be me, since I live in Japan) or the zombie apocalypse (much lower down on my priority list).
As a case in point, I personally know plenty of people that have bought pepper spray for self defense, but who have never once actually tried it out to see how it worked.
It's the Magic Talisman Of Protection mindset; e.g., "this object will protect me".
But if we move to the domain of guns, I'm AMAZED at how well and responsibly many many people in the US with little or no training use them in self-defense, which I attribute at least in part to centuries of ergonomic improvements, which for me and handguns reached their apotheosis in 1911.
Even if such an attitude and approach is appalling to someone who's father started taking him hunting with him when he was 3 (ditto all my siblings), started shooting a BB at 7, (safe) dove hunting at 11 (ditto my brothers), high school JROTC rifle team 16-18, etc. etc. etc., and never advise this, I can't argue with the empirical results, and the relatively low number of bad outcomes, all most all of which are due to misunderstanding the law and morals those are based on rather than bad gun handling.
Having a spare battery in a single waterproof package is just more convenient for me. It lives in my backpack, and I don't need to care when the rainy season hits.
Plus, since I use my phone as both a camera and a GPS, I can take the Novobeam with me while backpacking to keep my phone topped up.
Between spending money on a gimmick mobile, and spend money on a USB charger to keep using your everyday smartphone, the path of least resistance always wins.
Particularly when the USB charger costs a fraction of what the gimmick phone is sold for.
But there are USB chargers that run off those, too, so you don't really need a special phone.
This.
There are cellphone chargers on ebay that cost $1 and take AA batteries, which are quite capable of charging any phone that supports the USB charging interface. I bought one to use when I travel abroad and it works very well.
Please do not plug your $600~ smartphone into a $1~ charger. That's just asking for trouble.
Why? Do you think they'll fight because they don't make the same amount of money?
But fine, get a $5 model from a reputable brand.
You can also get an entire phone for $10. It will even have a screen!
Don't spend $50 on a piece of garbage.
You're assuming that supplying 5v to a cellphone through a 5v USB charger is something that damages the phone.
One of my favorite features of my olde Palm IIIxe PDA was that it ran on batteries you could buy at the drugstore, and I wanted that for my smartphone, so I have an AA-to-micro-usb device ("AA power bank charger") that get me there. Ten bucks on Amazon, probably you can do better if you shop around.
An AA is 1.5V (rechargeable AAs are 1.2V).
Once that is established, it all comes down to the mAh.
Most AAs sold these days are listed as 2500mAh, multiply that with 1.5V and you get 3.750 Watts.
Note that this is very close to what you get from a 1000mAh li-ion battery found in many phones (3.7*1000=3700).
Now with a external li-ion emergency battery you will get conversion losses, as it has to go up to 5V for the USB and then back down again at the other end.
Considering that different phones consume different amounts of energy, and that different AA batteries have different capacities, that's hard to say.
If you carry a Wiko Lubi like me, you can probably talk more than 10h with a single battery. If you carry an energy-hungry smartphone, you'll probably get an order of magnitude less.
In most devices, the size & weight benefits of proprietary li-ion batteries mostly aren't worth it for me once the battery goes bad and you have to look for a replacement (which can be quite expensive, if you can find one to begin with). Forgot to charge the device? Forgot to bring a charger? Don't have a usb battery pack in place with no outlets? Sucks. Can't walk into a shop and get a fix.
For bigger lithium-ion cells, 18650 is probably the most common size and has gradually made its way into consumer devices too as a replaceable cell, although the safety implications of the much higher energy density mean they have to be treated more carefully than AA/AAA. (E.g. the warnings about not carrying loose cells because they can short and cause burns or fire is far more important with a lion cell, since they have much higher current capacity.) Companies will continue pushing the "safety" excuse to lock-in users with proprietary batteries, but I see the spread of 18650s as starting to counter that trend.
There are already plenty of cell phone chargers in the market that take standard batteries.
I don't want to sound like I'm advertising any product, but I've purchased a cheap chinese cell phone charger that takes AA batteries. It cost me just $1 out of ebay. I actually purchased it on a gamble, expecting it to be awful, but it actually works very well. It's a very simple gadget that uses standard AA batteries connected in series to ramp up the voltage from around 1.5v to a tad above 5V, which is then used to supply energy to a standard 5V USB charger. Depending on the batteries used, a 4-pack of fresh AA batteries provide around 1800mAh of juice.
I've planned on purchasing another just to rig it to take C or D batteries, which provide the same voltage but hold a lot more charge, but honestly the AA pack works very well as it is.
Since most devices are rechargeable via USB these days, most people are probably better off carrying a USB battery pack that uses AA's, then you're only paying for the bulk once (and it's quite light without batteries)
I think some kind of wind-up cell phone charger would be more useful for people than a separate cell phone powered by AA batteries ("Hey, where'd I put those spare AA batteries...?")
http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/Seeeduino-GPRS-p-1909.html
What about a SIM and data plan you ask? Head over to:
With just a credit card, no contract required, you can buy a SIM for $2.75 and $1/month gets you 750k of data. You can turn SIMs on and off month to month. You have to buy 10 SIMs to get started but they are having a promotion right now to get 10 SIMs for the price of one.
I have no connection to either Seeed Studio or Aeris other than being a happy customer of both
Includes SpareOne Locate and Alert service and 120 minutes of nationwide calling. Includes basic voicemail, call waiting and 3-way calling.
https://www.att.com/cellphones/spareone/emergency-phone-prep...
(But of course you don't need a plan to use a cell phone for 9-1-1.)
HAM radios are also very useful when venturing into the wilderness. Many hikers monitor the 2m/1.44m calling frequencies periodically for distress calls. And at the right altitude your meager 5 watts can cover tremendous distances.
I miss that brickphone.
Think how much it would suck these days to get lost or broken down and your phone isn't working! It seems only prudent to keep a backup with you.
(Especially now that all Payphones have been removed)
T-Mobile seems to have a prepaid plan for $3/month, it's still expensive but not that bad. Alternative, you can just get the phone, then switch the SIM cards if your main phone is broken (doesn't work if you lose it instead, though).
https://twitter.com/SpareOnePhone
>30k favorites, aka favorite spam. I hate those - everything is automated and it does not add any value at all.