Connect from your Android Device?

[DrPanda]

Ok I hope im not going insane and am completely making a mess of this Topic…

Today i was thinking of building a set up to connect to the Outernet, flicking trough my android phone i turned on an app that requested GPS access… and then I remember my ToughBook has a built in Sat Receiver for GPS and can be Used as a SAT phone if needed…

So then i Taught GPS is using Sats to get location, so the phone must have some sort of satellite receiver with in the phone itself, so could in theory with a small software mod i should be able to connect my android phone straight into Outernet to revive data being trafficked…

Before someone says it dosnt work that way, i did research already, there’s an App called Spot that uses basically connects to a Sat, so you can send an Emergency Text when there’s no Cell Service, call for emergency help and even broadcast your location data, all trough sat without having any phone signal,

So I was thinking is there anyone who is good at programming working on this or am i gonna have to try and learn something to program an Android app that would do this … like it wouldn’t take much, just get the Spot app reverse engineer it and see basically how it connects to there Sat, change out the coding for there sat to the outernet and instead of having other emergency options, change it out to receive files to storage card…

i could even see it one day using the outernet as its out phone network for calls and texts globally… im gonna look into this more… and i also wonder if anyone else is already having the same taughts as me… id really like some input because i can program … im more of a thinker then a coder haha .

[Syed]

I’m never one to discourage new ideas, but there is a very good reason why this wouldn’t work for the current version of Outernet. The satellites that Outernet currently uses broadcast in Ku-band (roughly 11 GHz). The Spot service uses the GlobalStar satellite constellation, which operates in S-band (around 2.5 GHz). Very different kinds of hardware are needed to receive transmissions from those two very different sets of frequencies. It’s like your wireless router and your FM radio.

But we do have our mobile service in the works, which will operate at a very different, much lower frequency. It still won’t be possible to repurpose GlobalStar radios, but the types of receivers needed will be very cheap.

[RPC_Telecom]

Just to add a few comments to those from Syed:

@DrPanda

the phone must have some sort of satellite receiver with in the phone itself, so could in theory with a small software mod i should be able to connect my android phone straight into Outernet to revive data being trafficked…

Indeed your phone has a satellite receiver, but this is a specific receiver intended for receiving the GPS satellites’ positioning information. You would not be able to repurpose this receiver in code to receive Outernet signals. As Syed has said, the current Outernet implementation uses Ku-Band geostationary satellites, and even were Outernet in the future to launch its own constellation of small satellites (as it plans to do), these would not transmit signals that were on the same frequency as, nor compatible with, your phone’s GPS receiver.

@DrPanda

there’s an App called Spot that uses basically connects to a Sat, so you can send an Emergency Text when there’s no Cell Service, call for emergency help and even broadcast your location data, all trough sat without having any phone signal,

The SPOT Connect app does not turn your phone into a satellite-capable device. It couldn’t do, as your phone has no built-in satellite communications transmitter/receiver. What this app does is to use the phone’s Bluetooth radio to connect to an external SPOT Connect device. This external box does contain the necessary satellite communications transmitter/receiver, which - as Syed mentioned - communicates with the Globalstar satellite constellation. The app is nothing more than an interface to the external SPOT Connect box.

@DrPanda

So I was thinking is there anyone who is good at programming working on this or am i gonna have to try and learn something to program an Android app that would do this … like it wouldn’t take much, just get the Spot app reverse engineer it and see basically how it connects to there Sat, change out the coding for there sat to the outernet and instead of having other emergency options, change it out to receive files to storage card…

As you’ll see from my comments above, there is no way, therefore, that you’ll be able to reverse engineer the SPOT Connect app, or write new code, that will allow your phone to directly connect to the Outernet service in the way that you propose.

However… what I do expect that Outernet will do in the future is to offer a service rather similar to the way that SPOT Connect is implemented. Once Outernet manages to move on to its next phase, and build and launch its own constellation of small, low orbiting satellites, then I am sure that there will be an “Outernet Connect” external box, that you can access via your phone so as to receive the Outernet service that way.

@DrPanda

i could even see it one day using the outernet as its out phone network for calls and texts globally

Unfortunately, this is not very likely. Outernet is planning only to implement a one-way, receive-only, non-real-time data service, so you’ll never (well, never is a long time - I suppose it could happen one day, but not soon!) be able to use Outernet to make voice calls, browse the web, transmit data or anything that requires a two-way, transmit/receive, real-time data channel. The principal reason is cost. To implement the two-way, real-time service would cost billions of dollars. Outernet is trying to bring free access to news and information, to those in the World that currently have nothing, for a fraction of this cost.

@Syed

I’m never one to discourage new ideas

Just to end by saying that I fully agree with Syed. New ideas and innovative thinking is great. My comments are meant to be helpful and constructive and not to squash new thinking!

[macclad]

I am ghosts of Christmas future. Now… Late July 2017, I just tried it on a… ahem… Lark (bwaaah haaah haaah!) and presto it works perfectly on my Galaxy S7 Android by Samsung. Purty cool!