In the WILDERNESS: Collecting Rainwater and Wireless Internet (HD)
Internet access is very useful whilst camping in the wilderness. Weather forecasts, maps, identifying the species of snake that has bitten someone, etc.
Some essentials for a similar setup in order of cost are -
Laptop with reasonably low power consumption – less than 45 Watt (3.7A at 12V) when hard disk + CPU near idle and no USB active. For example, my Dell studio 17 laptop can be configured to use as little as 3A while surfing the internet. Reducing the number of operating system services running helps, Windows 7 users should go here – http://www.blackviper.com/Windows_7/servicecfg.htm
Solar panels – minimum 80 watt. (200W in this video)
Pure sine wave inverter.
True deep cycle battery – minimum 80 amp hour – (40 Amp hour effective capacity).
Solar charge regulator – preferably a Pulse Width Modulation type (PWM)
Biquad antenna.
Cables and plugs.
Multimeter.
Battery hydrometer – a good way to measure state of charge
A basic understanding of electron flow and electrical circuits – Voltage, current, resistance, series and parallel circuits.
A decent understanding of how batteries work and how not to destroy them.
The Bi-quad antenna is a G spotter – http://www.broadbandantennas.com.au
This video stabilized using the Deshaker plugin by Gunnar Thalin for Virtualdub – http://www.guthspot.se/video/deshaker.htm
Duration : 0:5:46