Rino! *snortsnort*
Dec. 9th, 2002 02:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tugrikWell, the radios, not the critters. Much-fun little things, and the latest fuss-with gadget to enter the household. And no, I don't just like 'em for the rhino-like antenna structure. :)
The Garmin Rino 120 is a combination FRS/GMRS/GPS unit. It's a really good example of two pieces put together becoming more than the sum of their parts. For those unfamiliar with the terms, a quick explanation:
FRS: Family Radio Service. Short-distance UHF unlicensed radios, about 1-2 miles range over open terrain. Sold everywhere, often cheaply. (600mW power)
GMRS: General Mobile Radio Service. The higher-power original service that FRS was carved from. Medium distance UHF licensed radios, 1-5 miles range in open terrain, at least in this 1w variant. (GMRS can be anywhere from 600mW to 50W. Most handhelds are 1 to 5 watts).
GPS: Global Positioning System. But you probably already knew that.
So yeah, these are walkie-talkies with GPS's built in. Simple.
As a radio, they're pretty normal. The FRS component is the same as any Radio-Shack FRS you get, but with the added bonus of being waterproof. Sound quality is decent. Range is about what's expected. The GMRS part is mediocre-to-bleah as GMRS goes. I put it just bleow the lower-cost Midland GMRS handsets, and the lack of integrated features on the GMRS band reduce the functionality (more on that below.) GMRS requires a license to use. No test is required. A little filing and $75 covers you and your entire household for 5 years. I've had my GMRS license for a year now, and own some 5w Pryme handheld radios, so I'm pretty familiar with the service. For those who knows GMRS: the Rinos are non-repeater-capable.
The GPS side is traditional well-built Garmin. It's similar to the eTrex line, but no extra baro/mag sensors. It's similar to the Garmin eTrex Venture, but with 8mb instead of 1mb RAM. The screen is pretty small but very good constrast, 4-level grayscale. It's got most all the normal waypoint, tracklog, track-back, and walking-navigation features as the other eTrex ones. It doesn't compete with the road-level ones like the Streetpilot III, though; that's not its intended purpose. It loads the MapSource Topo guides just fine, as well as Cityguide and Metroguide... but with only 8mb of memory it's limited to an area about 1/3rd the size of the state of California at the best. It also includes their standard USA Basemap, which has all major political boundaries, highways, and highway exit services. (Note: this applies to the 120 model. The 110 model has no basemap and only 1mb of RAM.)
The nifty part here is how those two sides integrate. One gives their radio an ID (up to 10 characters and an icon-choice) and then shares a channel/call-code with other Rino users. As long as you stick to the FRS bands the radio will send out your position at the end of each transmission or call-tone. All radios in the call group will hear this, and will put a marker on their maps for your position, using the icon you specify. The radios are capable of tracking up to 50 other users at once. While the range is only 1-2 miles in radius from your position, if you gain a little altitude (on a ridge or a peak) this can easily be a dozen miles or more. FRS (being a ~462mHz UHF band) is very line-of-sight dependant, so Altitude = Happy for the most part.
The basic use of this is obvious: two folks (or more) talking on radios will know where each other is. For people hiking, camping or caravanning in cars together, this is a very good thing. You can tell the Rino to navigate to another person as a waypoint, and it'll show you the way there. If you have a topo-map loaded you can get a good idea where they are just by peeking at their icon as related to the things on the map. As they move, their positions update with each transmission, so you can keep pace with a farther-spread group.
The next handy bit is that you can send waypoints. Say that you know where on the map folks should meet -- like a certain mall entrance after everybody's parked in various parts of the huge surrounding lot (thinking Mall of America here) or maybe a certain picnic spot by the lake. Mark it on your map, and send it out to everybody in the call group. It shows up on their maps and they can nav to it. Pretty cool.
The thing that I didn't expect when I opened the box? Games. Multiplayer, GPS based games. These are in their own way stupidly fun. I've really only fussed around with them solo, but I hope to get out and about with other Rino-owners (like![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
revar) and give 'em a good shakedown. I can see where these things would be downright fun while tromping about on a hike with friendlies, or even moreso at BurningMan. Yes, we bought these radios explicitly for use while out on the playa, if you were wondering. So what are these games?
Waypoint Bomber: It's like a game of realspace battleship. If you think you know where your buddy is on the map, joystick over them and 'drop a bomb'. If your target is within the 45' blast-radius, they take a hit and their radio makes a loud noise. He with the least hits on their person wins. As you can do this from radio range, it's useful to use the topo-map info to try to guestimate where they are if you have a visual on them.
Clotheline: For three players or more (four is better). Two folks on the same team trigger their radios one after the other. An imaginary line is drawn between them when that happens. The point of the game is to make that line go across an enemy team-mate, thus 'clotheslineing' them. The radios keep score of which team has clotheslined the other more. The line can be any size up to radio range.
Assimilation: It's a high tech game of Tag, for 2 to 50 players. When you're within 30 feet of someone else, be the first to hit your send-key, and you 'assimilate' them... they become part of your team. The game either ends when everybody's been assimiliated to the one team, or until a timer runs out. In the latter case, the bigger team at time-end wins.
There are also two single-player games:
Memory: It's the usual 'see which pieces match' game. You try to clear the board by matching all the pairs up in the least amount of time. The twist here is the board is realspace: you have to run around to move your cursor into the squares to flip over the pieces. This can be anywhere from a 4x4 grid of 30ft squares (small parking lot) to a 16x16 grid of 120foot squares (huuuuge). It's a good excuse to walk around and get exercise while making folks wonder what you're up to.
Beast Hunt: It's the old computer standard game Hunt the Wumpus. It plays the same as the computer version, with the pits and arrows and, of course, the wumpus. As above, instead of simply pressing n/s/e/w on your keyboard, you actually walk the map. Best played in a large flat area like a school athletic field. Once more, people will wonder just what the heck you're doing.
These things will be a blast at BurningMan. They should be plenty handy on the motorcycle, replacing my Pryme GMRS radios with something waterproof and a backup-GPS to boot. The side advantage here is that giving a 2nd radio to someone driving/riding with me will make keeping together a little easier. They're not good road-nav replacements, though; they're built for walking about more than anything else. If you want something that'll talk you down the higway you'll still need to shell out real cash for the Garmin Streetpilot III or similar techtoy. They're kind of pricey ($250 for the 120 model, $180 for the memory-less 110) so I don't think anybody other than geek-types will have them for a while, but I'm sure they'll drop in price or have cheap competitors after not too long. They'll be a lot more enjoyable when more people have them. With luck mulitple manufacturers of GPS/FRS cross devices will standardize on how they send positioning data so they'll interoperate. Probably not gonna happen, sure, but I can hope.
These devices were delayed repeatedly due to a little war between the FCC, GMRS advocacy groups, and the manufacturers. The GMRS folks are out to protect their turf, sometimes to the point of frothing at the mouth. They viewed FRS as an unwelcomed intrusion, and the GMRS bubblepack (over-the-counter) sales as the work of the devil himself. They actually have a point and I sympathize with 'em, but they keep getting steamrolled anyways. This new thing, sending data-burst (the position relay the Rinos do) over their precious frequencies, even the stunted FRS ones, is just madness to them. The manufacturers just want sales, and they smell cash. They're pushing more and more GMRS radios on the public, making the fine print that says 'license required' smaller and smaller, much to the detriment of licensed control of the airwaves. They'd love it if the FCC dropped the regs altogether and GMRS became the next CB Radio. Ugh. The FCC is just as confused and snowblind as always, staggering between corporate interests and radio-users' rights like a drunken elephant that keeps tripping over its own trunk.
In the end there was a lot of shouting, bruised feelings, and product delays. The manufacturers won a half-victory, getting allowed to do data-burst on the FRS frequencies at a max of once every 10 seconds, while the GMRS turf-warriors got to keep their frequencies clear. As a GMRS-licenced user and and a reader of a few GMRS/PRSG (personal radio steering group, a consumer-group for GMRS use) boards, I can say that these people put up just as much of an angry, self-righetous stinkfest as any sci-fi or anime fandom. It's been pretty impressive.
For now, I'm enjoying my new toy. I'll probably by a 110 to go with it, to be able to toss to people travelling with me. My infrastructure side wants to buy a rack of four of them to hand out for group-use during daytrips, but that's a little silly and beyond my budget. If you get one and are going to be near my area RL anytime, give me a holler; I'll drop by and play Bomber with ya. It's a good excuse to get out and walk!
The Garmin Rino 120 is a combination FRS/GMRS/GPS unit. It's a really good example of two pieces put together becoming more than the sum of their parts. For those unfamiliar with the terms, a quick explanation:
FRS: Family Radio Service. Short-distance UHF unlicensed radios, about 1-2 miles range over open terrain. Sold everywhere, often cheaply. (600mW power)
GMRS: General Mobile Radio Service. The higher-power original service that FRS was carved from. Medium distance UHF licensed radios, 1-5 miles range in open terrain, at least in this 1w variant. (GMRS can be anywhere from 600mW to 50W. Most handhelds are 1 to 5 watts).
GPS: Global Positioning System. But you probably already knew that.
So yeah, these are walkie-talkies with GPS's built in. Simple.
As a radio, they're pretty normal. The FRS component is the same as any Radio-Shack FRS you get, but with the added bonus of being waterproof. Sound quality is decent. Range is about what's expected. The GMRS part is mediocre-to-bleah as GMRS goes. I put it just bleow the lower-cost Midland GMRS handsets, and the lack of integrated features on the GMRS band reduce the functionality (more on that below.) GMRS requires a license to use. No test is required. A little filing and $75 covers you and your entire household for 5 years. I've had my GMRS license for a year now, and own some 5w Pryme handheld radios, so I'm pretty familiar with the service. For those who knows GMRS: the Rinos are non-repeater-capable.
The GPS side is traditional well-built Garmin. It's similar to the eTrex line, but no extra baro/mag sensors. It's similar to the Garmin eTrex Venture, but with 8mb instead of 1mb RAM. The screen is pretty small but very good constrast, 4-level grayscale. It's got most all the normal waypoint, tracklog, track-back, and walking-navigation features as the other eTrex ones. It doesn't compete with the road-level ones like the Streetpilot III, though; that's not its intended purpose. It loads the MapSource Topo guides just fine, as well as Cityguide and Metroguide... but with only 8mb of memory it's limited to an area about 1/3rd the size of the state of California at the best. It also includes their standard USA Basemap, which has all major political boundaries, highways, and highway exit services. (Note: this applies to the 120 model. The 110 model has no basemap and only 1mb of RAM.)
The nifty part here is how those two sides integrate. One gives their radio an ID (up to 10 characters and an icon-choice) and then shares a channel/call-code with other Rino users. As long as you stick to the FRS bands the radio will send out your position at the end of each transmission or call-tone. All radios in the call group will hear this, and will put a marker on their maps for your position, using the icon you specify. The radios are capable of tracking up to 50 other users at once. While the range is only 1-2 miles in radius from your position, if you gain a little altitude (on a ridge or a peak) this can easily be a dozen miles or more. FRS (being a ~462mHz UHF band) is very line-of-sight dependant, so Altitude = Happy for the most part.The basic use of this is obvious: two folks (or more) talking on radios will know where each other is. For people hiking, camping or caravanning in cars together, this is a very good thing. You can tell the Rino to navigate to another person as a waypoint, and it'll show you the way there. If you have a topo-map loaded you can get a good idea where they are just by peeking at their icon as related to the things on the map. As they move, their positions update with each transmission, so you can keep pace with a farther-spread group.
The next handy bit is that you can send waypoints. Say that you know where on the map folks should meet -- like a certain mall entrance after everybody's parked in various parts of the huge surrounding lot (thinking Mall of America here) or maybe a certain picnic spot by the lake. Mark it on your map, and send it out to everybody in the call group. It shows up on their maps and they can nav to it. Pretty cool.
The thing that I didn't expect when I opened the box? Games. Multiplayer, GPS based games. These are in their own way stupidly fun. I've really only fussed around with them solo, but I hope to get out and about with other Rino-owners (like
revar) and give 'em a good shakedown. I can see where these things would be downright fun while tromping about on a hike with friendlies, or even moreso at BurningMan. Yes, we bought these radios explicitly for use while out on the playa, if you were wondering. So what are these games? Waypoint Bomber: It's like a game of realspace battleship. If you think you know where your buddy is on the map, joystick over them and 'drop a bomb'. If your target is within the 45' blast-radius, they take a hit and their radio makes a loud noise. He with the least hits on their person wins. As you can do this from radio range, it's useful to use the topo-map info to try to guestimate where they are if you have a visual on them.
Clotheline: For three players or more (four is better). Two folks on the same team trigger their radios one after the other. An imaginary line is drawn between them when that happens. The point of the game is to make that line go across an enemy team-mate, thus 'clotheslineing' them. The radios keep score of which team has clotheslined the other more. The line can be any size up to radio range.
Assimilation: It's a high tech game of Tag, for 2 to 50 players. When you're within 30 feet of someone else, be the first to hit your send-key, and you 'assimilate' them... they become part of your team. The game either ends when everybody's been assimiliated to the one team, or until a timer runs out. In the latter case, the bigger team at time-end wins.
There are also two single-player games:
Memory: It's the usual 'see which pieces match' game. You try to clear the board by matching all the pairs up in the least amount of time. The twist here is the board is realspace: you have to run around to move your cursor into the squares to flip over the pieces. This can be anywhere from a 4x4 grid of 30ft squares (small parking lot) to a 16x16 grid of 120foot squares (huuuuge). It's a good excuse to walk around and get exercise while making folks wonder what you're up to.
Beast Hunt: It's the old computer standard game Hunt the Wumpus. It plays the same as the computer version, with the pits and arrows and, of course, the wumpus. As above, instead of simply pressing n/s/e/w on your keyboard, you actually walk the map. Best played in a large flat area like a school athletic field. Once more, people will wonder just what the heck you're doing.
These things will be a blast at BurningMan. They should be plenty handy on the motorcycle, replacing my Pryme GMRS radios with something waterproof and a backup-GPS to boot. The side advantage here is that giving a 2nd radio to someone driving/riding with me will make keeping together a little easier. They're not good road-nav replacements, though; they're built for walking about more than anything else. If you want something that'll talk you down the higway you'll still need to shell out real cash for the Garmin Streetpilot III or similar techtoy. They're kind of pricey ($250 for the 120 model, $180 for the memory-less 110) so I don't think anybody other than geek-types will have them for a while, but I'm sure they'll drop in price or have cheap competitors after not too long. They'll be a lot more enjoyable when more people have them. With luck mulitple manufacturers of GPS/FRS cross devices will standardize on how they send positioning data so they'll interoperate. Probably not gonna happen, sure, but I can hope.
These devices were delayed repeatedly due to a little war between the FCC, GMRS advocacy groups, and the manufacturers. The GMRS folks are out to protect their turf, sometimes to the point of frothing at the mouth. They viewed FRS as an unwelcomed intrusion, and the GMRS bubblepack (over-the-counter) sales as the work of the devil himself. They actually have a point and I sympathize with 'em, but they keep getting steamrolled anyways. This new thing, sending data-burst (the position relay the Rinos do) over their precious frequencies, even the stunted FRS ones, is just madness to them. The manufacturers just want sales, and they smell cash. They're pushing more and more GMRS radios on the public, making the fine print that says 'license required' smaller and smaller, much to the detriment of licensed control of the airwaves. They'd love it if the FCC dropped the regs altogether and GMRS became the next CB Radio. Ugh. The FCC is just as confused and snowblind as always, staggering between corporate interests and radio-users' rights like a drunken elephant that keeps tripping over its own trunk.
In the end there was a lot of shouting, bruised feelings, and product delays. The manufacturers won a half-victory, getting allowed to do data-burst on the FRS frequencies at a max of once every 10 seconds, while the GMRS turf-warriors got to keep their frequencies clear. As a GMRS-licenced user and and a reader of a few GMRS/PRSG (personal radio steering group, a consumer-group for GMRS use) boards, I can say that these people put up just as much of an angry, self-righetous stinkfest as any sci-fi or anime fandom. It's been pretty impressive.
For now, I'm enjoying my new toy. I'll probably by a 110 to go with it, to be able to toss to people travelling with me. My infrastructure side wants to buy a rack of four of them to hand out for group-use during daytrips, but that's a little silly and beyond my budget. If you get one and are going to be near my area RL anytime, give me a holler; I'll drop by and play Bomber with ya. It's a good excuse to get out and walk!
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