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Boats, Phones, and Drones...Oh my! - Ep 110
186 Plays6 years ago
Today Paul and Chris talk about new boats, drones (of course), issues with the iPhone X in the field, and other random tech topics. It’s a catch-all episode today and we hope you enjoy it!
App of the DayWebby: Motion-X GPSPaul: Google NewsGoogleAppleContactChris WebsterTwitter: @archeowebbyEmail: chris@archaeologypodcastnetwork.comPaul ZimmermanTwitter: @lugalEmail: paul@lugal.com
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Transcript
Introduction and Sponsorship
00:00:00
Speaker
We're excited to announce that our very own podcasting platform, Zencaster, has become a new sponsor to the show. Check out the podcast discount link in our show notes and stay tuned for why we love using Zen for the podcast.
Episode Introduction and Topics Overview
00:00:19
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Archeotech Podcast, Episode 110. I'm your host, Chris Webster, with my co-host, Paul Zimmerman. Today, Paul and I talk about everything from boats to fieldwork issues with the iPhone X to, wait for it, drones. Let's get to it.
00:00:36
Speaker
All right, welcome to the show, everybody. Paul, how is it going? It's going all right. Middle of summer right now. And, you know, it's still July. I haven't gotten to the dread of August yet, which means that school starts back up, you know, but trying to enjoy July while I still can. How about you, Chris? How's it going?
00:00:52
Speaker
Good,
Seasonal Transition and Tax Humor
00:00:53
Speaker
good. We're actually recording this on the last day of July, so as people hear, it's going to be August at some point. Oh, don't tell me that. I know, right? I know. We're in the future. It's already August when people are hearing it, so that's terrible. But I'm in the middle of trying to figure out some tax manipulations. I probably shouldn't put this out to the public. So here, let me back up, because this is relevant to archaeology. And Paul, I know you don't know anything about this, because you're not on Facebook.
00:01:20
Speaker
I don't know if any of this went to Twitter. I can't remember because my Instagram goes to Twitter. But anyway, so I've been looking, I mean, really for my whole life, but really specifically for the last few years, I constantly jump on Craigslist. You know how you just get on your phone sometimes? You might just be browsing stuff. I browse Airbnb a lot, like in weird countries.
00:01:39
Speaker
I like to browse Airbnb and say, wow, can I get a castle in Romania for $25 a night? I can. All right, let's figure out how to get there. I've never done it, but I like browsing those sorts of things. Well, I browse Craigslist for boats.
00:01:52
Speaker
a lot. And the boat that I want, I can't afford. I want a boat that has a decent amount of speed. I've always wanted a sailboat, don't get me wrong. I love sailboats, but sometimes I also just want a boat that can get me there at a reasonable amount of time, but also that I can sleep on comfortably.
Craigslist Boat Purchase
00:02:11
Speaker
And to hit those two marks,
00:02:13
Speaker
you need like a freaking yacht, you know, like you need some big boat that's $50,000 and it's 20 years old and who can afford that, right? Not me. So, however, looking on Craigslist last Monday as we were recording this,
00:02:30
Speaker
I happen to see something come across and it was right in Reno, actually in Sparks, the town that joins Reno. And it was a 1989 Mirage Intruder 217. That's the full like title of this boat. And it basically- Wow, that's the one that you use to smuggle drugs.
00:02:47
Speaker
My God, there's so many places to smuggle drugs on that boat. But basically, and not to mention, this boat was kind of set up as what I would normally call a douche boat. Like, it's one of those fast-looking, you know, speedboats that you would see out on the lake that's super loud. It's got a Mercruiser 7.4-liter Bravo 1 engine. I don't know what any of that means. But basically, it's a 454, 330 horsepower engine.
00:03:15
Speaker
Yeah. So it's big. So it's fast. So it fits that bill. It'll only do about 45 or 50 miles an hour at like Lake Tahoe altitudes, but you get it down into like San Francisco Bay or something like that. It should get up to about 65 or 70.
00:03:30
Speaker
I know. But here's the cool thing. It's also got this huge v-berth up in front. It's got an enclosed bow with two pore holes on either side and lights up in there. It's actually straight out of 1989. There's a mirror in the ceiling surrounded by LEDs in the bow. It's amazing. And there's some seating up there. There's a little table you can put. You can take all that down to make the sleeping area bigger.
00:03:55
Speaker
There's a little like cabinet to store clothing in and stuff. And there's a sink and other lights right there. And then the cockpit. The short story is here. I bought it last week. Congratulations. I know my wife and I went to look at it and we just like fell in love with it because we can take this thing up to Lake Tahoe, which we did last weekend. We actually bought it on I think actually paid for it on Wednesday. I had to install a brake controller on my truck because it's got electronic brakes on the trailer. I installed brake controller on my truck on Thursday.
00:04:25
Speaker
do all the registration and stuff, and then picked it up on Thursday afternoon. And then Friday afternoon after Rachel got off work, we drove it up to Lake Tahoe, put it in the lake, put the truck in a lot.
00:04:35
Speaker
And we spent the night on it Friday night and Saturday night. And because it's also got, you know, the top you see on boats that kind of folds up, that's called the Bimini top. It's got this camping cover that snaps to the normal cover snaps on the boat and then zips to the Bimini top and then encloses the entire back end of the boat in like this canvas and clear plastic camping cover thing.
00:04:57
Speaker
We were perfectly comfortable. We threw out the bow anchor, threw out the stern anchor and we were able to sleep on
Lake Tahoe Podcast Idea
00:05:02
Speaker
it. So it was amazing. I loved it. It was awesome. I'm not much into fishing and you know, we don't have any water skis or anything, although it did definitely do that. But we just like cruising around and checking things out.
00:05:12
Speaker
So here's where this comes into a tax issue. So we just bought this bow. We put it on a credit card that we couldn't afford because we just didn't pass up the deal. I know. Just couldn't pass it up. I've got a way to pay it off here in the next few months, but that's the way we did it right then.
00:05:28
Speaker
Here's the thing. So I instantly thought of this podcast idea. 360 degrees of Lake Tahoe. Lake Tahoe is a big lake. It's 70 plus miles around. And if you drop a compass rose right on top of it, and then I was thinking if we created a podcast that would basically stop at 365 episodes, and in each degree of the compass,
00:05:50
Speaker
you go over the history and the current properties and the history of those properties if you can find them all the way back like Native American stuff because nobody ever talks about Native American things like Tahoe it's always you know some old hotel or something that's been there for like 60 years that's old up there.
00:06:06
Speaker
And just go around the lake and have imagery associated with it on the show notes page and then talk about different things. Maybe do some interviews with some of the local business owners that are in that particular degree. So Paul, if I do this as a podcast and I put it on the APN, doesn't that make the boat a business expense? You're asking me for tax advice.
00:06:30
Speaker
Pretty much make it a business vehicle like we couldn't have done it without a boat. Yeah, that might be a stretch. I don't know what You know the definition of a boat is right I've heard lots of definitions. Yeah, it's a hole in the water lined with fiberglass into which you throw money and
00:06:52
Speaker
Yes. Yes. That's a, I think, um, w what is it? Uh, I think I heard the acronym boat was like bring only another thousand or something like that. What are the two happiest days in the sailor's life? Uh, the day they sell their boat and what's the other, the day they buy the boat and the day they sell it. So here's the thing we bought the, one of the reasons that we landed on this one was a, this boat retailed for $65,000 when it was brand new.
00:07:22
Speaker
It was no shit like a fancy speed boat built like a tank, but it was built by a company that went out of business about five years after they built it. They've been in business I think about 10 years, but not because they built bad boats. Everybody who talks about these in forums and stuff online, which yes, I did join and find, they said these are the best built boats on the planet. I mean, they're just amazingly well constructed.
00:07:46
Speaker
And the guy that I got it from, he'd only owned it for two years. Him and his wife just wanted a bigger one, but they love this boat. We actually saw them all like Tahoe in their new boat that they picked up on Friday and they were like saying, wow, I really missed that boat. They really liked it. But so they took great care of it. And the guy that I got it from in 2017 drove out to Wisconsin to pick it up and it spent the last 20 years in Wisconsin.
00:08:09
Speaker
And if you have a boat in Wisconsin, a boat like this, you don't leave in the water. It's in the water for about two months out of the year. And then after that, it's usually in a garage or covered or some way. So it was, it was well protected from the elements there. And it was just, it's just an immaculate shape. The carpet is great. The electronics are great. The vinyl seating is amazing. The paint job is amazing.
00:08:28
Speaker
everything about this thing is like it rolled off the showroom floor yesterday. So we don't have to put any maintenance into this. I mean, we have to put scheduled maintenance into it, but we don't have to put any big maintenance in. The only big thing is, um, that really is going to cost us a lot of money, which we're, we're working around ways to mitigate that. So we can go out every weekend this season is the fuel, right? This thing has a 69 gallon gas tank. And, uh, I mean, we filled up in Reno for the first trip up there, but then we went to the north end of Lake Tahoe.
00:08:56
Speaker
after tooling around on Saturday. We needed to put in some gas, not a full tank, but we needed to put in about 30 gallons, so we knew we had enough reserve to get back down to the south end of the lake. That 30 gallons cost me $174. That was no joke. It was like $6 a gallon on the lake, and it doesn't get good gas mileage. That's going to be the one downside.
00:09:18
Speaker
What we want to do, we know a bunch of nice places on the lake where we could just put in for about 15 bucks at the boat launch, store the truck overnight for 10 bucks, and then cruise over to Little Harbor, drop anchor and chill out, do some swimming in the cove. We can cook on the boat, just spend the night there and then come back the next day. It wouldn't even cost us an eighth of a tank of gas to do that. So lots of weekends of fun. This first weekend, we took it all over the place and we're speeding around and doing all kinds of things.
00:09:45
Speaker
But what does this have to do with archaeology? Well, you tell me. I know. When I was in North Carolina working, North Carolina and South Carolina.
00:09:55
Speaker
We, the company we were working for had a job doing
iPhone X Overheating Issues
00:09:58
Speaker
FERC surveys, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Basically, all the reservoirs around there needed surveys every 10 years, archaeological cultural resources assessments every 10 years. And we did them by boat. The company bought like a 25-foot pontoon boat or whatever that we would tool around in a lake because we basically would beach it up against a property.
00:10:16
Speaker
We'd have to call for the high water level. We had to call for whatever the lake level was, and we knew what the high water level was, and we had to interpolate. If we were at the high level, where would the water cover the landscape? And wherever the water covers the landscape is where we had to shovel test.
00:10:30
Speaker
And we had to do archaeology. And I'm thinking, well, now I can start looking for those proposals because those are all over California, too. It's a federal thing, not a state thing. And I've never been able to really look at those proposals before because I didn't have the vehicle for it. You know, now I do. So not only that, but the podcasting possibilities that I mentioned, that wasn't even a joke. We really seriously consider doing that.
00:10:52
Speaker
So, you know, bring it into archaeology, it's a little nice, and we can do that. That pontoon boat did like 20 miles an hour. I mean, that thing was horrible to get from one end of the lake to the other. We worked on Clater Lake, Virginia, and it's like 100 miles long when you're at the other end of the lake doing a survey, and you've got to get back to the other end of the lake where you're staying.
00:11:11
Speaker
it was not fun, just like puttering along in a school bus basically. So yeah. Anyway, so that's how I'm going to go to jail because I'm going to put this boat on my tax expenses. Okay there Al Capone.
00:11:30
Speaker
Nice, nice. So leading into the episode, 11 and a half minutes in, we've got kind of a mishmash of things to talk about. The first thing I want to bring up is fieldwork issues with the iPhone X and particularly heat. I mean, I always promote to people, especially when I'm talking about Wild Note or anything else, that, hey, you can just use your iPhone for or your Android phone or whatever you have for fieldwork.
00:11:52
Speaker
But one particular thing about the iPhone X in general, and let me step back for a second and say this, you can't say anything about, quote, the iPhone, OK? The iPhone X is different from the iPhone 8, is different from the iPhone 7, is different from the iPhone 6. There are improvements. There are
00:12:12
Speaker
backslides, I like to call them, places where they thought they were making an improvement, but it's actually worse in the newer hardware. And in one of those cases, the iPhone X definitely fits that bill. I've seen tons of articles about overheating concerns on the iPhone X, and it's because of the way the hardware is configured. And it's not even the iPhone XS or the XR or the XS Max or whatever. It's just the iPhone X, the one that I have, has serious battery overheating issues on some of them, not all of them.
00:12:40
Speaker
And it doesn't have to do necessarily with the battery, but how the hardware and software interact with the battery. And it's, uh, it's not good. So I've been having serious issues with it. I did some field work a couple of weeks ago, part of it in Elko, Nevada and part of Northern California, where I was in some pretty hot conditions and I've got the phone on the entire time because I'm not only using it for navigation and, uh, you know, figuring out where I'm at and what I'm doing, but I'm also taking photos, doing field notes, writing site records. I'm doing all that with the phone. So it's pretty much on the entire time.
00:13:08
Speaker
And I'm pretty good about keeping it out of direct sunlight, you know, holding it down in my hand in such a way or putting it up in my vest pocket or whatever. Um, but even then I wasn't able to go more than half a day on the battery. I had to plug in my external battery, which doesn't help with the heat problem. And, uh, uh, and then having my screen on the whole time, it was just really destroying it. So I'm pretty disappointed by that. What was the, uh, the ambient temperature? Probably in the low nineties. Yeah. So hot, but not, I mean,
00:13:36
Speaker
in the range of what we do archaeological fieldwork in. I've done it in 110 degrees weather. Exactly. I think it would have failed in 20 minutes in 110 degrees. Yeah, probably.
00:13:51
Speaker
Yeah, so I've looked up some cooling cases. I didn't know what to type. I just typed in cooling cases on Google. I don't even know if I want to try some, but I might because the price is right. There are some cases that are listed on Amazon as cooling cases. They're made with this mesh and they're supposed to dissipate heat really well.
00:14:11
Speaker
Most of them are in like the mid range for ratings from customers, like three stars. None of them are like five stars. And some of them are one star. Most of them are 10 to $20, which tells me a lot about the case quality. I mean, I'm not sure I would even need a case at all if it's only going to be, you know, a crappy, thin little case that's not actually going to protect my phone. Yeah, I can imagine what you would do in a case to really help cool it. I mean, because if you think of
00:14:38
Speaker
on computer chips or on certain car parts and such where you have cooling fins, it relies on increasing surface area and hopefully also having some airflow over it. But a case on a phone, you definitely don't want to increase the surface area and you're probably not keeping it out where you get lots of good airflow. So I can't imagine what having maybe a slightly metalized case is really going to make a lot of difference from.
00:15:00
Speaker
I don't know either. And that's why I looked it up. I was like, does this technology exist? And I think my conclusion is no, probably not. I think most of the ones I saw were more gimmicks than anything. Yeah, that's what I'd be afraid of. Yeah. So what are you going to do? I don't really know. I mean, it's only we got another month of about hot, so I might just deal with it. It's not like the phone was failing. I'm pretty good at not letting it temperature overheat. Like I know when it's getting hot, you know, and I'll just
00:15:25
Speaker
shut it off for a while and just deal with it. The other problem that happens when it gets super hot is the graphics processor slows way down. Like everything becomes unresponsive and I almost have to just cool it down completely and then sometimes actually restart it to get it to work, which is really a shame. One of the things I did on the last projects I was on is I actually came out, I went out with two devices, which I've been trying to avoid.
00:15:49
Speaker
But I was basically doing the GPS work because I was using this new Aero 100 that I got from Matt Alexander of Anatome Geomobile Solutions, who we interviewed a few episodes ago. He traded me, which was pretty cool, and I'm willing to do this for anybody. Trading services, I love trading services because it benefits everyone. But you'll soon be hearing Anatome Geomobile Solutions ads on the APN because he traded me basically an Aero 100 Submeter GPS for advertising on the APN. So I was testing that out. Yeah, it was pretty great.
00:16:18
Speaker
I was testing that out and I ended up using that with my iPad Mini 4.
00:16:23
Speaker
And so I only needed that out occasionally. And then I could have my iPhone just off basically or the screen off in my pocket until I needed to record some field notes, take some photographs. And if I'm just using it for, for that operation, like, you know, maybe 30 minutes for doing a site recording or an hour or something like that, I didn't have any overheating problems. It's when I was doing GPS navigation and then stopping to record something while the GPS is still on in the background and then doing more GPS navigation, trying to find something and, you know, moving to the next point or whatever the case may be.
00:16:53
Speaker
doing all that, running the GPS antenna, running the Bluetooth, because of course I'm listening to podcasts at the same time. I actually had to shut that off for a little while because it helped with the battery conservation. And then the screen being on, it was too much. But once I used the iPad Mini for those other tasks and then only turned the iPhone on for the recording tasks, that actually worked out really well.
00:17:16
Speaker
because the iPad Mini was able to handle the heat better. I don't know if it's because it's a bigger device. It has basically the same battery, but it's twice the size. But it also has twice the screen, too. So I don't know what's going on there. It has twice the size of metal. The Mini 4 has a metal back, doesn't it? Yeah, it does. It does. And that's the one I have. Yeah, so hopefully that's helping keep you cool, radiating heat through that side.
00:17:42
Speaker
And you can definitely feel it too. And I've got it in a, um, not Otterbox life proof case, but when they were still making life proof cases for those, which the downside of that is they're black and it hugs it super tight. So I don't know if that's good from a, the cases taking some of the heat on standpoint or what the case is plastic. So I don't, I don't think it is, but I don't know. I don't know. Either way, it didn't have a problem.
00:18:06
Speaker
So, all right. Well, let's take a break and go over a few other things real quick. And we'll have a short
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00:18:12
Speaker
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Speaker
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00:19:38
Speaker
Welcome back to the Archeotech Podcast, episode 110. Today we're talking about random stuff that we've been thinking about. I was just thinking about you were mentioning bringing your iPad Mini 4 into the field because you're having overheating problems and how it's not ideal necessarily to have a second device. What we keep on wanting to do is have these all-in-ones that do everything great, but sometimes we're forced to do something else.
00:20:02
Speaker
I don't know if you recall, but a year and a half ago, I bought a $30 brand new Amazon Fire 7.
Fire 7 Tablet for Drone Operations
00:20:13
Speaker
I've been playing with it a little bit. I stopped using it a whole lot because my phone is generally what I use for almost everything, but I found a really good use for it. Last winter, I also purchased a used drone and I was flying it with my iPhone 8.
00:20:31
Speaker
I realized that, wait, I've got this Amazon Fire sitting around. And yeah, it's underpowered. It's slow. It's old tech. But I use that. I dedicated that to using with the drone. It works great for me with this. So one of the problems I had with my phone is that you want to turn it off of everything except for the Wi-Fi connected to the controller.
00:20:54
Speaker
But then you don't have a phone, essentially. I don't have that problem anymore. Now, I've got a phone that I can use as a phone and I can still deal with it however I want. I've got this now dedicated $30 tablet that sits on my drone controller. That's working really nicely for me.
00:21:14
Speaker
a little bit of accidental outside of the box thinking, but it's working well. So there are certain cases, beside just the overheating, where having a second device might be useful just because cramming too many things into one device means that you can't use that device in any way quite as well as you'd like to.
00:21:35
Speaker
Well, and that makes a ton of sense too, because especially if you get a bigger company that maybe has a drone program where they've got, you know, people dedicated to operating drones, which means each one of those drones or at least each one of those drone teams probably has a tablet dedicated to that operation. Why does it have to be a six to $1,200 iPad?
00:21:55
Speaker
It needs to run one program. That makes perfect sense to me to use a device like that for that one thing. Like you said, as long as that device has the capability to interact with the drone and do what it needs to do. It sounds like that one does. Yeah, it does. I'm really amazed that the DJI Go app still works on that thing.
00:22:19
Speaker
Yeah. So good for them for not abandoning this now somewhat old, antiquated piece of hardware and allowing me to use it like I need to. And that device, too, has a slot for an external card, or not for an external card, for a secondary SD card. And I don't know if I can record directly to that from the DJI Go app. I'd like to check into that. Yeah.
00:22:46
Speaker
If I can, I could toss a big one, big card in their 64 gigs or something and have lots of room to save all my missions. Well, I'm pretty sure you can record to the DJI Go app. And since that's an Android-based device, you can probably decide where that goes. So that'd be worth checking out for sure. Yeah, I haven't invested yet closely enough. That only just kind of crossed my mind after my last flight.
00:23:11
Speaker
Right. The only thing I'd worry about with an inexpensive device like that is the processing speed of not only running your device, but recording and saving video at the same time. You might run into issues there and just have to keep it recorded on the device on the, on the drone. So, and you know, one thing DJI did, and I don't know if this was a planned obsolescence or just them actually thinking, but one of the reasons the DJI go app actually still works on that device is because the DJI go app is no longer being updated.
00:23:38
Speaker
If they were to update it beyond your device, then it wouldn't work. But what they did was they're no longer supporting the old devices. So there's the DJI Go 4 app, I think it's called. And I actually had to download that because my Inspire Pro 1 is old enough that it works on the DJI Go app. But the DJI Go 4, I think it was called. I'm trying to remember the name. I think that's what it is. I needed that when I got the DJI Osmo Mobile
00:24:07
Speaker
Cosmo mobile thing, a little gimbal thing for your camera, because that was a device that was two or three years newer than the Inspire.
00:24:14
Speaker
and it didn't work, it no longer worked on the regular DJI Go app. So all the new devices like the Mavic, if you got a Mavic or something like that, they all run on the new DJI app. So instead of updating the old one and make it so all devices don't work, they just made a new app that you have to download and all the new devices are on that, which like I said, I don't know if that was strategic or just luck on our part. Yeah. Oh, since we're talking about drones, drink. Drink.
00:24:43
Speaker
I just, uh, I read some news the other day about, uh, I don't know if you recall, I told you about that Kitty Hawk app as the app of the day, uh, some time ago, and that, uh, there was some rumor about, uh, about getting your FAA authorization to a fi fly and control airspace directly through the app.
Kitty Hawk App and FAA Authorizations
00:25:01
Speaker
Apparently that came live over the last week. And so now the, uh, LA NC, I'm not sure what that stands for. Uh, you can get authorization directly from the FAA through Kitty Hawk or any of a number of other different apps.
00:25:13
Speaker
So that's good news for anybody that needs to get authorization to fly their drones. So I'm glad you mentioned that because I was actually going to bring that up at some point. The Civil Air Patrol's new drone program has heavily invested, not financially but time-wise, into Kitty Hawk. That's the app they have chosen.
00:25:32
Speaker
for mission planning and mission support. And we were actually just playing with that on our drone training day last weekend with Kitty Hawk. And what was it just a few days ago? Because you're right, it did just go live. We were using a different app for those on the spot FAA authorizations, but now we can do it straight through Kitty Hawk. Because other apps have had that ability. Kitty Hawk just turned it on. You know, they probably had to go through some clearance through the FAA or whatever to get that done. But the cool thing is, I mean, you fill out your whole flight plan,
00:25:59
Speaker
You fill out all the stuff that you need to know, and they run you through a list of questions. Are you this? Are you that? You know, are you not going to run into people? Blah, blah, blah. And then it's like, bam, you submit. And as long as you're not red flagged because you're sitting on an airport or something like that or in a flight path, then, uh, bam, you've got instant clearance and it's all computer generated. No human looks at that. The computer just looks at it and says, do you meet all the parameters for safety? Yes, you do. Fine. If you don't, I'm not really sure what
00:26:27
Speaker
If you're like in a gray area, I'm not sure if that goes to a human, but there's no way that the basic clearances can go to human because it's literally instantaneous. That's great. So yeah, it's pretty neat.
00:26:38
Speaker
It's way better than it was even a couple of years ago when you had to submit a request weeks ahead of time to fly in airspace. Luckily, the FAA has gotten on top of that and prevented that from happening. We're going to have a shorter segment here, but I did want to bring up two more things real quick. One of the other things regarding heat on the iPhone, and this has been a problem with other iOS devices as well.
00:27:02
Speaker
Not as much the iPad mini, actually. And I think, again, it's because of the screen size. But one of the other really bad things that happens, and I haven't found a way around this. And if anybody knows, please contact me and let me know. But the screen dims when it gets too hot or when the light is too much on the screen. Like sometimes you just can't shade from the light. You have to stand in a certain way and certain amount of light is going to come in. So the combination of too much light and too much heat
00:27:28
Speaker
the screen dims to where if you're wearing sunglasses which you are you can barely see the screen and there's no way to override that that I can see that's what I want to know like I know I'm destroying my phone Apple I'm okay with it can I override this and turn my screen brightness back up no you can't and they just force you into this really dim screen control
00:27:50
Speaker
And there's nothing you can do about it. You can go into settings and you can jack your screen control back and forth, but now it's dimming with the dimmed version being 100%. So it's just, it's garbage. I don't know why they did that. You know, I love Apple and I love the stability of the devices and I, for the most part, am happy with using Apple devices, but there have been some things with this iPhone X that have just confounded me.
00:28:13
Speaker
I just don't understand the decision making behind it, and it's too much control. I want the ability to harm my device if I think that I can take it right to the edge and then bring it back. It destroys my ability to use it to work with, and that's not a good thing.
Critique of Esri Collector App
00:28:31
Speaker
Anyway, the final thing I'll say is the collector app from Esri is garbage.
00:28:36
Speaker
I don't think I need to elaborate on that. I used it with this Aero 100 because I didn't have any other app on my phone that would read an external GPS device. Collector does that. So that's the one good thing.
00:28:47
Speaker
Now, other apps will take in the GPS signal, but they don't have the API to actually read all the information that the GPS is giving you, you know, all the accuracy and number of satellites and stuff like that. But Collector built that in. So you just select the Bluetooth GPS that you're using, and then it pulls in all those data from the GPS satellite configuration.
00:29:08
Speaker
So, but actually collecting data with a collector app, garbage. It's actually garbage. I hated it. What made it so bad without going into a full on rant? Yeah, I know. Part of it is you have to really set this thing up on the, on the website. I mean, you have to set up every single detail and parameter. And if you forget something, there's no going back. Like you can't on the field side. It, let's say it works offline of course, but if you need to change anything or if you need to update anything or reconfigure something, you're done. You can't do it.
00:29:37
Speaker
Now I work for WildNote and you also can't change a lot of stuff on the mobile side for WildNote, but there's fewer things that are really going to destroy your ability to work, you know, from a WildNote standpoint. But with Collector, like if you don't set up the ability to say name your point or do something like that, you just can't do it. There's some basic things.
00:29:56
Speaker
that I think collectors should be able to do out of the box without configuration. And it just doesn't do that. You know, Esri basically said, here's an empty box. You fill it with stuff. We're not even going to put a base level of things in there for you to deal with. It's like everything has to be nickel and dime to meticulous. And I hate that about overly complicated programs. Right. So I know there's some collector lovers out there and I apologize, but I didn't like it at all. You're not one of them.
00:30:23
Speaker
No, I like field work to be simple. I like to focus on the archaeology, and I want the tools that allow me to not think about the tech. That's what I want my tech to do. I want my tech to fade into the background so that I can just focus on the science, and I don't have to worry about batteries and overheating screens and whether or not my application is configured properly. I don't want to worry about that when I get in the field. I just want to worry about concentrating on the archaeology and getting that done, and that's my ultimate goal here in the future.
00:30:52
Speaker
All right, well, I'm going to bring up an app that mentions that in the app of the day segment, and we're going to start that right after this break. You may have heard my pitch from membership. It's a great idea and really helps out. However, you can also support us by picking up a fun t-shirt, sticker, or something from a large selection of items from our tea public store. Head over to arcpodnet.com slash shop for a link. That's arcpodnet.com slash shop to pick up some fun swag and support the show.
MotionX GPS App Review
00:31:20
Speaker
All right, welcome back to episode 110 in our app of the day segment. So I'm going to talk about an app that I actually didn't even look up to see if I've done this before. But it's been so long if I have that it's changed now because they update it quite frequently. But it's MotionX GPS. Now, I was using this app a little bit when I was on those projects. And as I mentioned, we were on the boat on like Tahoe last weekend. I used it extensively there because one of the nice things about MotionX GPS is
00:31:47
Speaker
For some reason, it seems like I don't remember paying for this app. And I looked at my Apple subscriptions. I don't have a subscription to it. But I get all different kinds of maps for free. Basin maps. And one of the ones I got was the NOAA marine maps. I mean, the USGS topos are in there. There's for aviation, there's like IFR sectionals and VFR sectionals in there. And it's just they're all free. Like, I'm not sure how they're doing that.
00:32:11
Speaker
But one of the things that, again, when I mentioned at the end of the last segment, I like tech to just fade into the background and work, right? But two things that were infuriating me about this application this weekend, because Lake Tahoe is a big lake. And when you get out into the middle or you get over onto the edge where there's not very many houses on like one of the Nevada sides and there's some parts in California side where there's just not a lot of residential areas.
00:32:35
Speaker
There's no cell service, which is fine. You know, I don't need cell service. That's why I cashed my maps. I selected this entire region, the entire lake. I select the minimum and maximum zoom levels and I cashed the map. Well,
00:32:48
Speaker
they say right in their own instructions that all you have to do is have that map selected and then if you're not online it will use the cached map, right? It wasn't doing that. It wasn't doing that at all. Like I just had these that blocky square thing where it like loaded part of it and then not even the rest of it and then I thought well maybe I had a problem with the cache and we had some spot of wi-fi on on Saturday and I recached the maps and it still didn't work and I just don't understand
00:33:14
Speaker
Why that's so hard to put a cache map in the background layer. Now there might be some other thing where if I have a hint of cell service, it's trying to just default to the refreshed most current downloaded maps and won't use the cache map. Maybe I had to go into airplane mode and I'm just thinking of that as I'm saying this, but that would still be irritating because they didn't tell me that.
00:33:35
Speaker
The other thing I didn't like about it was, well, kind of a positive. It does waypoints really well and waypoint navigation really well, but it also has a bunch of folders that I didn't set up that were automatically created. And then I was able to create a folder for waypoints, but I can't find any way to A, collect waypoints into that folder and B, move waypoints into that folder. And also I can't find a way
00:33:58
Speaker
to display all the waypoints I've collected at one time on a map, like a certain waypoints from a folder on the map. Because we were trying to record around Lake Tahoe, where are the boat launches? Where are the gas docks? Where are the restaurants that you can boat up to? You know, where are the Wi-Fi spots? Where are the bathrooms? You know, that you can hit a dock and hit a bathroom for free.
00:34:19
Speaker
That's important information folks. But I was using this for work too, trying to do some waypoint information and pick up some stuff just using the application. And for the most part, I like a lot of what it does, but it just, it had some, some defaults and inefficiencies. I do like though that you can take a route that you recorded and you can send that to somebody. Like I wanted to go somewhere one time and I knew a friend of mine used MotionX GPS and he just air dropped me or like I messaged me the route and I was able to open that straight up into MotionX GPS and that worked really well.
00:34:47
Speaker
So check it out. It's got some, it's definitely got some idiosyncrasies, but it's one of those programs that's really powerful and probably is overly complicated. But once you figure out the few things you need to do, it's actually a really good application and I like the way that it's set up. So I think I just need to honestly work with it a little more and get it to, get it to work the way I want it to. So quick question for you. Why were you using that instead of GPS tracks, which I know you've also used?
00:35:13
Speaker
The only reason was GPS tracks. There are no marine maps for this particular for Lake Tahoe. They only had coastal maps and the Great Lakes. They didn't have Lake Tahoe. So I would have used GPS tracks because I know how to use that and I know how to drop the waypoints and into a folder and that works really well. And I've had MotionX GPS a lot longer than GPS tracks and I always kind of want to go back to it and make it work a little better and figure it out. And that's another reason I went to it this weekend.
00:35:42
Speaker
but it was not, it was not user friendly from that standpoint. So yeah, that's the only reason I moved to it. Cause they didn't actually have the maps I needed at motion X well at GPS and I'm paying $20 a year at GPS tracks for all those maps. So I don't know why it didn't have the Noah Marine maps for Lake Tahoe, but it did for the Great Lakes and the, and the coastal environments. So, um, yeah, I don't know. It's just a weird thing. So yeah. Yeah. What do you got?
Google News App Review
00:36:11
Speaker
Okay, so I've got, again, a very quick one here. Google News, which is, you know, it's an app that's been around for quite a while and a lot of people use it. And I had looked at it in the past but never used it myself because I didn't like something about the interface. I can't even remember what, but I know I've downloaded it a few times over the last few years and each time I delete it pretty quickly because it's not usable to me. Now, I know you use the Apple News.
00:36:39
Speaker
yourself, right? I've tried using that and I've got a few problems with it too. So basically what I've done for the last few years is both on my browser at work and on my iPhone, I've saved a link to the Google News webpage and I use that.
00:36:57
Speaker
It gives me the same sort of stuff that Apple News does, and it tries to customize it based on some information that you put in, sources that you want to use, sources you don't want to use. It tries to learn from you, all the stuff you'd expect nowadays.
00:37:09
Speaker
But Google News had one killer feature that Apple News didn't, which is that, you know, I spent a lot of my time up in Brewster, New York, and it would give me local news up there. Apple News, I could put in a few news sources that supposedly covered Brewster, New York and the Lower Hudson Valley. And they'd update every few months, which really isn't very good for keeping current. So I use Google News because of that. But I found some problems with the other web page is that
00:37:40
Speaker
For no apparent reason, every few days it would log me out. Yeah. You know, and so then I have to go and log back in and it's just a little irritating at work. Sometimes I'd open it up and it would open up under my personal personal Google account. Sometimes it would open up under my work Google account. I have to go switch it. I just it was inconsistent about it. I don't have this trouble with other Google products. It's just Google News. But so anyhow, I looked at Google News again the other day.
00:38:08
Speaker
and logged in with my personal Google account. And this is the app version of it. And suddenly, it's actually really hitting all the buttons for me. It's doing everything that it's supposed to. The one thing that I don't really care about it is that it shows videos. Pretty much every picture on it is animated. So I'm not sure what's going to happen with that, if it's going to use up a lot of data when I'm off Wi-Fi network. I haven't used it long enough to know if it's going to make a difference in that respect.
00:38:37
Speaker
Yeah, if you've looked at the Google News on the iOS app before and have given up, it might be time to take a look at it a second time like I just did. And you might find like I'm finding that it's actually quite good. And hey, it's still after a few days here, it's still kept me logged into the proper account. So that's a win too.
00:38:59
Speaker
There you go. That's always good. The one thing I'm disliking about it, specifically disliking, is that when I was using the web app, I would just open up an article in a new tab in my browser and then read it later. And there's Google News. I can open it up. It says open in browser, but it opens it up in the internal browser within the Google News app. And then I have to press another button to open it up in Safari so I can have it cached someplace else to read you.
00:39:25
Speaker
on my own leisure. So it's a few extra clicks than I'd expect to be able to get that. But the interesting thing is that once you do that, it
00:39:34
Speaker
pops up another panel just below the one that you clicked on with similar related articles. I don't know what algorithms they're using to decide what's similar or related, but the hints that they've had under there seem to be getting better and better. It's interesting. It's always a little creepy when you have news that gets overly tailored and that you might be siloing yourself and getting yourself just in an echo chamber. But again, I'm finding it quite good so far.
00:40:02
Speaker
Well, there you go. That's a good tip. I've actually never looked at Google News because, you know, I had Apple News. So even though Apple News hasn't been out all that long, I think I just used other sources to look at my news and I never really thought about Google News because I don't have an Android device. So I didn't really think about it. But, you know.
00:40:18
Speaker
For a good decade, I used RSS feeds and various different aggregators. And so basically, I customized my own newspaper. I actually like the automatic algorithmic curation of articles that it shows me. I wish that they would give me fewer articles about celebrities because I never, ever click on these and I don't care about it. Yeah.
00:40:44
Speaker
And the sports, there's only one sport that I follow and I don't need all the sports ones that they give me. But overall, it's interesting.
00:40:54
Speaker
There you go. Well, I think that's it for today. If you're using a GPS app on your phone or tablet, let us know which one you're using and what you like and don't like about it. It would be nice to do a kind of a GPS app roundup episode, which I'm sure we've done similar in the past. Yeah. But that'd be really cool. And I'd love to do it from listener feedback because we can only test so much. I mean, I kind of try to stick to one thing like GPS tracks and occasionally motion X GPS, but
00:41:21
Speaker
It's pretty hard, actually, to download all of them and use them because a lot of them have subscriptions for advanced maps and things like that. So if you're using something, let us know. Comment on the episode or wherever you found this podcast, Twitter, Facebook, wherever. Chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com. All our contact info's in the show notes. And then if you're using different news apps, other than Google News or Apple News, let us know. So all right, Paul, I think that's it for today, huh? Yeah, I got a train to catch, so I'm going to run. That's right. All right. Thanks, everybody, and we'll see you next time. Take care.
00:41:56
Speaker
Thanks for listening to the Archaeotech Podcast. Links to items mentioned on the show are in the show notes at www.archpodnet.com slash archaeotech. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com and paul at lugall.com. Support the show by becoming a member at archpodnet.com slash members. The music is a song called Off Road and is licensed free from Apple. Thanks for listening.
00:42:21
Speaker
This show is produced and recorded by the Archaeology Podcast Network, Chris Webster and Tristan Boyle in Reno, Nevada at the Reno Collective. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com.
00:42:43
Speaker
Thanks again for listening to this episode and for supporting the Archaeology Podcast Network. If you want these shows to keep going, consider becoming a member for just $7.99 US dollars a month. That's cheaper than a venti quad eggnog latte. Go to arcpodnet.com slash members for more info.