What you are looking at is SPOT for grown ups. SPOT is a subsidiary of
Globalstar and like all the Globalstar simplex hardware, the devices
are made by Axonn (http://www.axonn.com) so you can look there for
more information. This other Axonn hardware is too large and unwieldy
for practical use and would require a lot of systems integration work.
Somebody could take thee Axonn modules (the picture on their web site
of the STX2 sat transmitter looks like what is inside SPOT) and build
hardware small enough for our uses for even more work. Service costs
would be significantly higher, they are already higher than SPOT with
only a few messages per day, let alone every 10 minutes. Ultimately
doing anything custom is likely the wrong path and it is much better
to ride the consumer economics curve (even a device built for GA
markets is going to be a lot more expensive).

SPOT as is seems very worthwhile, I've got mine and it works as they
claim. I'd still like to see lots of web site improvements and
opening up of their back-end software but as is it looks like it will
save lots of retrieve hassles, and more importantly has potential to
save lives.


Darryl

On Jan 1, 12:49 pm, "Bill Daniels" bildan@comcast-dot-net wrote:
While I don't know much about this product, especially cost, it might be
worth looking onto for someone familiar with the technology. Maybe it could
be taylored for our specific needs.

http://www.daysatphones.com/downloads/simplex.pdf

Bill Daniels