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Field Safety Tech - Ep 186
324 Plays3 years ago
In the wake of some tragic events AND an unseasonable hot summer we're talking about field safety tech. Good tech can not only keep you safer, but, it can make you more efficient as well. Sometimes just being more efficient IS being more safe. We're joined by Rachel Roden from Wildnote who will help us find some cool, useful, things.
Links
- Wildnote
- Equipment for High-Tech Camping
- Garmin Fenix 6S
- North face Etip Gloves
- Dry Guy Boot Dryers
- Hidrate Water Bottle
- Camelbak All Clear
- Grayl Water Purifiers
- Gobi Heat Apparel
- Zero Lemon Batteries
- Power Traveller Products (solar chargers)
Contact
- Chris Webster
- Twitter: @archeowebby
- Email: chris@archaeologypodcastnetwork.com
- Paul Zimmerman
- Twitter: @lugal
- Email: paul@lugal.com
ArchPodNet
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- Tee Public Store
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast and Field Safety Tech
00:00:00
Speaker
While you're listening, go to archpodnet.com slash members and support our efforts. Let's get to the show. You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. Hello and welcome to the Archaeotech Podcast, episode 186. I'm your host, Chris Webster. Paul is still trekking across the Middle East. Today, I bring on a guest to talk about field safety tech. Let's get to it.
00:00:28
Speaker
Welcome to the show, everybody. As I mentioned, Paul is still trekking around the Middle East as you're listening to this. I think he's supposed to be home soon. He should be on the next episode. We'll get a full debrief on how everything went over there and the tech solutions that they used and how that went. As much as he can talk about, he was actually working for another company, so there might be some proprietary stuff he can't talk about.
00:00:51
Speaker
Otherwise, we'll talk to Paul about that when he gets
Importance of Safety Meetings in Fieldwork
00:00:54
Speaker
back. In the meantime, we have a guest who you guys probably know. It's my wife. She works for Wild Note. Wild Note often puts together articles and helps
00:01:09
Speaker
clients and has these lunch and learn things, and they talk about in various scenarios different technologies that people can use to do different things in the field, yeah, field work. So we decided to put together this episode to kind of spin that just a little bit, but talk about field technology items that you could use, but also kind of around the idea of, you know, safety sort of. Some of these things are kind of safety adjacent. Yeah, like safety and
00:01:34
Speaker
comfort a little bit, maybe? But hey, if you're uncomfortable, you're probably not being safe. True. Very true. There you go. Anyway, Rachel Rodin, welcome to the show. Hello. All right, so how can we use technology to create a safer work environment?
00:01:48
Speaker
Yeah, that's the question and it's really, really important because we have such great technology at our fingertips these days. And sometimes I wonder if everybody's doing everything they can to keep themselves and other people safe in the field. And so we thought we would like put together a list of not only products that we think would be good, we haven't used all these, but we think they would be good in that scenario, but also just like,
00:02:14
Speaker
different software you can use and how like that intersection of technology and gear and software can be used together to make everybody safer in the field. So this isn't going to be a wild note commercial. No, no. If you're waiting for that. I mean, we are going to mention a couple of things, obviously, because you can use software like you mentioned to do certain things. And one of the things that is on our list here, and we have done this and you guys listening to this, if you're an archaeologist or even if you work somewhere else,
00:02:43
Speaker
You've probably created something like this anyway, but creating a daily safety meeting. Some people call it a tailgate safety meeting, whatever you want to call it. There's always a daily thing in the morning where you gather everybody together while you're fresh, you're getting ready to go out into the field, and just to talk about the hazards of the day.
00:03:04
Speaker
Yeah, and I have to be completely honest and say that I've been not resistant to this in the past, but I definitely have been one of those people standing around rolling my eyes like, okay, let's talk about snake bites again. Yay. Yeah, I hear you. But at the same time,
00:03:19
Speaker
I want to get that attitude out of myself and also out of other people because you just have to keep talking about this stuff because if you don't talk about it then that's the day you forget about it and then something does happen and then all of a sudden you know you've got a bad situation on your hands.
00:03:36
Speaker
I think if you have something like Wild Note or whatever you're using and you create a daily safety meeting form, you can modify that for the project that you're on to include a lot of the common hazards, like if you are working in a place with rattlesnakes and things like that, sharp rocks and falls and slip drips and falls and all those sorts of hazards.
Customizing Safety Protocols with Technology
00:03:55
Speaker
You can discuss those with your team ahead of time, get those added to a drop-down list, and then that way you have specific topics to talk about. You're just not like, hey, does anybody have a safety topic this morning? Yeah, literally nobody's gonna speak up in that scenario. They just are not gonna do that.
00:04:10
Speaker
And then one of the big reasons, like you mentioned, is just jamming it into your skull, right? Like, even if you're sitting there just kind of like not really paying attention, you're zoned out, maybe you had too good of a time the night before, maybe you're just like, you know, who knows what's going on. But if you hear it every single day, that time that your buddy gets a snake bite in the ankle and you're way out in a remote area a mile from the truck,
00:04:35
Speaker
But you maybe have a radio to get back to somebody or maybe your cell phone works. Maybe none of that works and you're still a mile from the truck. What do you do? And hopefully these morning safety discussions, some of that will have stuck in and you have an inkling of what you should do in this scenario.
00:04:52
Speaker
Yeah, and with Wild Note specifically, and I know that there's other apps that can do this too, you can tailor the safety stuff to the environment that you're in. So in the summertime, you're going to want to be talking about heat exhaustion and have all the different symptoms of it and what you do when you encounter it and what policies the company has in place. Maybe not policies, but what equipment the company has in place to help counteract that situation.
00:05:17
Speaker
And in the wintertime, it's going to be extreme cold, obviously, and then various animals that you might encounter and all of that stuff. What about Heather on Sierra Mark? She was talking about how she basically kind of rolled her car down a cliff a little bit. I mean, not quite rolled, but slid down the cliff.
00:05:33
Speaker
What do you do in that scenario? So all that stuff, you can have it tailored for your environment in a list. And then each project, you just include the list that you think are important for that project. And then you can just talk about it every
Exploring Field Safety Technologies
00:05:47
Speaker
morning. And then everybody's on the same page. I think it's really important.
00:05:49
Speaker
And for you, your day job is with clients that are 100% focused on safety with Denseaf, right? So is there anything you've learned from that, from them, and these big massive companies and what they're doing to keep their people safe using technology? Well, I mean, the biggest thing they try to do is again, hammer in
00:06:08
Speaker
being safe and talking about safety and getting like safe work permits and doing all these things. And for every single task that somebody does, and again, it might seem tedious to do these things, but when crap hits the fan, it's going to be in your brain what to do. And that's why all this stuff does seem tedious. It's like buying insurance. Nobody wants to buy insurance.
00:06:30
Speaker
Right. But you need insurance that one time you need insurance. Yeah, totally. And it's going to cost you if you don't. Well, in this case, it could cost you your life or something else. And I suppose they probably have consequences for their employees if they don't follow the various safety regulations that the company has in place to keep everybody safe, right? I mean, most companies have consequences. They should. You should, anyway.
00:06:53
Speaker
And the consequences are not having a delegate safety meeting. I don't know too many smaller archeology companies that say, oh, you're going to get in trouble if you don't do this. But if you are working on a mine, there's at least several lines in Nevada, they require you to fill out this little card and actually turn them in. Because they want to see that you at least filled them out and then turned them in. They can't prove that you actually did the meeting.
00:07:16
Speaker
The reason they do these things, they go through the expense of printing these cards out, is so they know people are at least looking at them. So at least the person who filled out the card has been jammed into their brain a little bit more, what's going on. And that's what all this safety stuff is about. It's about jamming it into your brain at the very least a little bit. Yeah, totally.
00:07:37
Speaker
Well, we're going to talk about a whole bunch of different things. We'll have a bunch of links in the show notes, and we may not even get to everything. This is probably going to be a little bit shorter episode, because I don't want to inundate you with just facts and things. Yeah, and also products. We're not trying to tell everybody to go out and buy all of these products that we're about to talk about. They're just cool things that are advances in the technology field that could help keep people safer, maybe.
00:07:59
Speaker
Yeah, anything that takes your mind off of, I guess, the unnecessary things, but they're not unnecessary. Water's not unnecessary, but you don't want to be thinking about it all day. Anything that takes your mind off of that stuff and puts your mind back on your boots-on-the-ground job can help you out. A lot of times, to be honest, that's things. We collect a lot of products and things that can help out with that.
00:08:22
Speaker
Let's go ahead and take a short break so we can just come back fresh on the other side and talk about working in the heat and working in the cold and all kinds of stuff back in a minute.
00:08:34
Speaker
Keep this conversation going by joining our members-only Slack team. There's always vibrant conversations going on over there between members and hosts about the topics we're podcasting about and more. Also get access to our back catalog of bonus material and ad-free shows. You get all this for $7.99 a month or less than $80 US per year if you get the annual subscription. Support Argeological Education and Outreach by supporting the APN. Go to arkpodnet.com slash members for details. That's arkpodnet.com slash members.
00:09:04
Speaker
you
Hydration Technology for Fieldwork
00:09:10
Speaker
Are you listening to this podcast and thinking you'd like to start your own podcast and don't know where to start? Well, Chris Webster, that's me. I'm founder of the APN and I started podcasting back in 2011. You can learn from my years of experience and you can do it at your own pace. Head over to propodcastnow.com and click the learn to podcast image. My six to eight hour self guided course will take you from show inception to your first episode and you'll learn the tools you need to keep it all going and prevent pod fading. That's a real term.
00:09:36
Speaker
You can have access to the materials for as long as you want, and if you stay in for three months, at least, you'll have lifetime access to the graduates Slack team so you can talk to other people that have taken the course and are managing their own podcasts. Again, head over to propodcastnow.com and click learn to podcast.
00:09:56
Speaker
Welcome back to episode 186 of the Architect Podcast. We've got Rachel Rodin on from Wild Note, and we are talking about basically technology and things that can help keep you safe or at least keep you safer in the field. This first one, working in the heat. Some of you guys may or may not know, but we're married. We live in a 36-foot RV.
00:10:16
Speaker
And I've mentioned that many times on lots of shows. But we started this whole, people do weight loss programs and fitness programs and stuff like that. Anyway, that's neither here nor there. But we did start one thing that was challenged you to basically drink a gallon of water a day. And I'm a stats person, and I need to know that I am actually drinking a gallon of water. And I don't want to have to keep track of how many bottles in my water bottle that I've drank.
00:10:44
Speaker
I started looking around for a smart solution to that. This goes into fieldwork as well, tracking the water that you're drinking in the field. You can find these smart bottles and things. They're not super cheap. The one we use is called Hydrate. H-I-D-R-A-T-E.
00:11:00
Speaker
And it actually has a little puck on the bottom. And again, this wouldn't work for field work at all in most cases, unless you can set it on something flat to kind of register itself. And you have to be able to fill it during the day. So it's not a super good solution for, say, survey, but it might be a decent solution for excavation or, you know, other things. Monitoring. Monitoring. Stuff where you can set your water bottle down and fill it, and where you can fill it throughout the day, too. They have a 32-ounce one, and you should be drinking
00:11:25
Speaker
at least probably 100 ounces on a hot day, if not 150 to 200 ounces. Everyone else, three to five liters, give or take. Anyway, the Hydrate bottle, basically you can use a smartphone app, you can use your watch, whatever you want to basically track how much water you're drinking throughout the day. Then it gives you a nice little
00:11:43
Speaker
We call it a party, a little light party at the bottom of it. When you hit your goal. Yeah. Well, what's cool about that too is that you could change the goal every day if you wanted. So on days when you're in the field and you know, okay, it's a hundred degrees today. I have got to drink at least three liters of water. Yeah.
00:11:58
Speaker
or more, you can set your goal to that and it'll give you a little progress bar too so that you can look at it and be like, oh no, I haven't reached my progress bar at the 11 a.m. mark. I need to drink a little bit more here because once you get behind that mark, you're just setting yourself up for possible dehydration later on in the day. So that's what I think is really cool about it. It's expensive. I think these bottles were like $70 each or something like that. You might be able to catch it on sale on like Amazon or whatever. I've seen them for like 50 to 60.
00:12:25
Speaker
Yeah. But if you're not sure that you're going to remember to drink, then it's a great idea because it'll remind you. And then if you're not sure that you're drinking enough, then it's good because it gives you that progress bar and you know how much you've actually drank during the day. Right. And if you got a Camelbak a long time ago, back when I was doing a lot more heavy survey, for all you Camelbak users, I had a flow meter basically in my tube in my Camelbak that would tell me
00:12:50
Speaker
how much water I had drank. That's important because one of the big problems about a camelback is that you don't know you're out of water until you're out of water. You don't know if you're doing out-and-back transects to a road and the truck's not too far away. Let's say we've done these where it's a mile out and a mile back. If you're starting your two-mile out-and-back
00:13:12
Speaker
And you're mostly out of water, like let's say you've got a 100 ounce camelback, like a lot of people do, and it's sitting at 85 ounces you've drank, you probably ought to need to take a break and go fill up your camelback. If you don't have the water with you, which you should, you should have another small reservoir in there that you can fill your camelback with.
00:13:28
Speaker
If you've got to go back to the truck, then you've got to go back to the truck. But I had this Flow Meter thing, and unfortunately, I can't find it anywhere online for sale. I don't think they sell it anymore. I found another Flow Meter thing for hydration reservoirs as an Indiegogo campaign, but I can't actually find where to buy them. They've got sales inquiries through their thing. But anyway, just note that these kinds of things do exist, apparently, but I can't find a good one right now.
00:13:53
Speaker
So having some sort of tracker for your, for your hydration reservoir for your bladder is kind of a cool idea. I can't tell you the number of times that I was on a long track on one of those long survey transects and you just all of a sudden like you hear the water start sloshing in your backpack. And like when you can hear the water sloshing in the bladder, it's like, Oh no, I'm getting closer to running out. So that's not good. Yeah, for sure. For sure.
00:14:19
Speaker
But there is an option, a sort of secondary option. This may not be great for desert environment, but if you are working in an area where there is water, not even running water, even stagnant water, honestly, it might be kind of gross. I mean, it would be kind of gross.
00:14:36
Speaker
But there are these water bottles out there. They're so cool that they have filtration systems in them. And you could even bring it with you empty so that you don't have the added weight. Although why would you do that? You should just always fill it up with water. But once it's empty, you can fill water from any source and filter it. And we have a couple different options here that we found that can do this for you.
00:14:58
Speaker
Yeah, there's the Camelbak all clear water bottle. It's a 750 milliliter bottle with a UV-based microbiological purification light. All you got to do is fill it and shake it up for like what, 60 seconds or something? I think so. I think it's like 60 seconds you shake it and then it says that the UV light purifies it. And I know UV is like the best way to purify water, right? So that should be totally drinkable after you do that.
00:15:20
Speaker
And then the other one we found, and we haven't tried either of these options, but we did see this one in the shop that we were just at, and they look really cool, but it's the Grail Geopress Water Purifier. And this has a purifier cartridge in it, and you push this cartridge down, and in eight seconds, it's just an eight second push down. I'm sure there's some pressure on it when you push it down. It removes all the bad stuff in the water, and then the water is drinkable. Right. Yeah, that's pretty cool.
00:15:46
Speaker
Yeah, and there's other options like that out there. I remember when I went backpacking, there's the old school style, like pumping the water out. But it has to be running water in that scenario. And you're not always gonna encounter actual running water. It might be more of a drinking hole kind of a scenario. Who knows, in Nevada, you could come across a cow pond, like a cow trough. That'd be pretty gross. I know, it's so gross. But if you can purify the water and you're potentially dying of dehydration,
00:16:15
Speaker
I will take that option if I'm worried that I'm going to be dehydrated and not make it back to the truck if I'm out of water. I would almost rather just purify my own urine through my socks than purify cow trough water. Pretty gross.
00:16:32
Speaker
I mean, if I'm gonna die, if it's between drinking cow trough water and dying, I think, peace out. Peace out, guys. Okay, don't take advice from you. All right, so obviously, water is
Staying Warm with Tech in Cold Conditions
00:16:46
Speaker
important. Yeah, it's important.
00:16:47
Speaker
But what about working in the cold? First off, you still need water. You do still need water. And don't forget, that's where hydrate could come into play again. It's because it'll tell you if you're not drinking enough. You might need less water, but you still need to drink it. Yeah, with hydrate, back to that real quick, that reminds me, you can set
00:17:03
Speaker
your times that you want to make your goal. So you set your goal, and then you set your day, so to speak. And if you set your day to be like a work day, say like you set it for like 7 a.m. to 3.30 or something like that, I want to drink 115 ounces of water or something, then it will, it basically has this little curve and it will flash the bottle and alert you on your watch if you have one, your Apple watch or whatever, or alert you on your phone, obviously, if you are not meeting your curve.
00:17:29
Speaker
And that's really important, too, is to drink water steadily throughout the day, not just slam a bunch of it out. But anyway, working in the cold, obviously, gloves. And we've got Wild Note on board here today. And you need to be
00:17:44
Speaker
able to use your digital devices. You do. I mean, we have worked in some extreme cold, but I feel like it was back in the day when you weren't always on screens of some sort, whether it be your cell phone or tablet or whatever. But today, these days, everybody's got some kind of screen that they're dealing with, even just a tremble. And you have to be able to use your fingers.
00:18:06
Speaker
I have
00:18:24
Speaker
generally warm all the way up to like alpine weather, keep your hands warm, but still be able to use your cell phone or your tablet. So there's some really cool technology around that stuff out there. I'm sure North Face isn't the only one doing it, but these ones in particular looked really cool.
00:18:39
Speaker
Yeah, and I would like to find, again, I think I have a set of gloves, but they're really kind of bulky, thick gloves. And what you really need is something that fits tight on the end of your fingertips if you need to type. Yeah. Yeah. Now keep in mind that a lot of devices, I know Android and iOS, most of those devices, because this is device specific, not necessarily app specific.
00:19:00
Speaker
But they will do pretty good voice translation. If you're in a cold, windy environment, you don't want to take your gloves off or you want to wear thicker gloves and you just can't handle moving things on the screen, you can type with voice and you can do it offline. So that works on most devices.
00:19:17
Speaker
You can use a stylus, pretty much anything. If you get a stylus, you can tap out. So if you design your forms with minimal typing, then you can voice type the few things that you have to speak out and then you can tap out the things you need to with a stylus. But that is the problem with these e-tip gloves is they're usually just too bulky and they're okay for
00:19:37
Speaker
If you tighten up your index finger, they're okay for just tapping on the screen, but they're crap for typing on the screen. Yeah, totally. I think it was a little bit better with the iPads and the bigger tablets because you have a bigger keyboard, so less opportunity to fat finger it.
00:19:52
Speaker
One thing this reminds me of is, this was years ago, so I'm sure the technology's gotten better, but one of my solutions for cold weather tablet usage in Nevada, like eight, nine years ago, I had the really thin under armor base layer gloves, and then I had really thick mittens, where the mitten would uncover my fingers in Velcro, and I needed any Velcro magnetized to the back of my glove.
00:20:14
Speaker
And I like the magnet versus the Velcro because Velcro just gets dirty. The magnet always works. That's right. That was a good system you had. Yeah. So when I needed to actually type, I actually had the, the E-tip kind of gloves and they weren't super great, but they were tight to my hand and they worked, they worked pretty well. And that's what I'm saying. They probably work even better now. And back in the day, I remember you could find that conductive thread and you can actually put a couple of loops of conductive thread through your end fingertips of any gloves. Yeah. If you have a pair you really like and then make them so they, so they work.
00:20:44
Speaker
Anyway, the point is is when it's really cold you got to keep your hands warm So you do not want to be taking your gloves on and off from a safety perspective Yeah for sure the other thing I found here I'd never heard of this company before but it's the go be heat company and they make all these different heated
00:21:00
Speaker
clothing items like accessories. There's a hat called the Crest Hat and it's got heaters over your ears. There's a sweatshirt where the body part of it is all cleaned up. I think there was a vest too, although that might've been a different brand. Either way, so cool that you can get this battery powered material to keep your body warm. That did not exist when we were working in Ohio in that horrible frigid cold where we were breaking through permafrost practically.
00:21:26
Speaker
All we have are those stupid chemical heat things that just burn your hands. Yeah. If you get them on your skin, like, Oh yeah, no, this is like way advanced. And some of you guys out there are probably like, Oh yeah, I heard of that already, but it was news to me and I'm very excited about it for the next time we're in cold weather working situations.
00:21:43
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. And the last thing before we end this segment here, once you get back into the hotel room and you need to work the next day, getting your boots and gloves dry if they've been in a wet environment or a cold environment can be pretty challenging. And oh my God, I remember working in Vermont and it was literally rain every single day.
00:22:00
Speaker
And you just be tipping your gross wet boots up onto the heater, which means you just get gross wet boots smell into the hotel room, or you're putting the newspaper in there, and that's supposed to wick away the moisture, but then you've got... It just never works. And then you're going to work the next day with wet boots. You're setting yourself up for failure, and this might tip over into the comfort side of things a little more than the safety, although maybe not though. If you're close to freezing and your boots are cold, that's no good.
00:22:26
Speaker
But if you're focusing on your comfort the whole time, you're not focusing on what you're doing. That's true. If you're constantly thinking, my boots are wet and I hate my life and I've made poor life decisions, then... By archaeology, I can go find something else to do in my life. The next day, you'll be working at the gap.
00:22:42
Speaker
Anyway, this dry guy boot glove dryers, but there's lots of different things out there. There is, but this company in particular looks really cool. They really, really focus, they're niched down into this dryers for boots thing, and gloves too, but it's primarily boots. It's a big stand, so you need to have space in your hotel room to set it up, but it's a very quiet dryer, and they say that your boots will be dry by the next morning if you put them on there.
00:23:06
Speaker
There's also a portable one that you can plug into a car lighter thing, so you could drive midday if you wanted at lunchtime if you're getting wet throughout the day. So anyway, really cool company. Take a look at it if you're in a scenario where you need to get your boots dry. Yeah. All right. Well, we're going to take a break. And on the other side, we'll come back and talk about communication and other battery tech and things like that. Back in a minute.
00:23:33
Speaker
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Speaker
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Power Solutions for Field Devices
00:24:16
Speaker
Did you know we have lots of great shows on the Archeology Podcast Network? Head over to arkpodnet.com and you can see all the shows that are currently producing podcasts. Scroll down a bit more and you'll see some great shows from the past that still have great content. Search for your favorite shows on your podcasting app or listen right on the page at arkpodnet.com.
00:24:37
Speaker
Welcome back to the Architect Podcast, Episode 186, Segment 3. And we are talking about communication, batteries, and all the things that keep you connected to not only your crew, but your devices.
00:24:50
Speaker
Yeah, there's so much cool tech out in the world these days that you can use to keep yourself connected and also keep your devices from dying. Cause if you have a dead device, like that's not going to help you much either. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of stuff out there these days and it's way better than it was when you and I were like heavy in the field, like 10 years ago. There's just so much more now that you can do to keep yourself connected to the outside world. Yeah.
00:25:16
Speaker
The first thing we should talk about is battery packs. Way back in the day, and again, legit like seven, eight, nine years ago, which is back in the day, archeology time for M.I.s, at least CRM time. For us, right? That's our back in the day. That's when batteries started to really come out, portable, rugged batteries. For the longest time,
00:25:36
Speaker
I've had zero lemon batteries, and I actually started with these little bright yellowish green ones, which I liked because if you dropped it, you could see it easily. But they also had a little solar panel on the back of them, and it was a 10,000 milliamp battery, which you could use to charge fully at least one cell phone, two maybe depending on the size of its battery, and one tablet fully charged up.
00:25:58
Speaker
We'll talk about solar panels in a minute, but those batteries have come way down. In fact, I've now got the 30,000 milliamp zero 11 rugged batteries, which can charge four devices at one time. You can just sit there at break or something like that and charge everybody up. You want to keep your stuff charged in the morning, even if it looks like you
00:26:18
Speaker
have a full charge because you don't want it to die while you're doing survey at 3 p.m. Yeah, and if you're doing that chasing thing where you let it drop to 20%, but you're still using it, you're just constantly chasing, getting a better charge on it, and it just doesn't seem to be as efficient. I might be making that up entirely. That's just how it feels when the battery drops that low. If your screen is on, you're tracking with GPS, and you're doing a lot of things continuously, then the battery's just gonna be maintaining for you most of the time. And then it's gonna be heating up your device, and if you're using it in the sun,
00:26:47
Speaker
that charging while you're doing that is really not good for your device. So it's better if you can just, every time you stop and take a break, which should be at least three times a day, two breaks in your lunch, just plug it in. Just plug it in. Yeah. And try not to use it while you're doing that. You know what I would do when I was doing pedestrian surveys. So this is kind of specific to that. Although I suppose shovel testing would kind of be the same thing.
00:27:08
Speaker
But we were using tablets in the field. And that's another thing that you have to make sure you keep charged up throughout the day. Maybe not for communication so much, but just for getting your work done. And I would have one of those zero-lemon batteries in one pocket of my vest on the inside. I'd have a cord running through across the vest to the pocket on the other side. And that's where I would tuck the tablet or my phone or whatever I was using while I was walking. And it kept it tucked away so that it was out of the sun. And it just kept it charged up. So that would be my recommendation.
00:27:38
Speaker
Something like that. The basic takeaway is try not to charge it while you're using it if you're in the heat. If you're in a cold environment, then it's probably not going to be a big deal. But in the heat, anytime you've been charging your phone or tablet, you know that there's a heat loss there. Well, it's a law of conservation of energy. That energy that's not going into the battery has to go somewhere and it goes as heat. So that's just the way batteries work.
00:27:59
Speaker
Now, I meant to be talking about solar panels, because some of these have solar charged solar panels on them. There's solar chargers. There's hand crank things. We'll link to a few things in our notes here. But you just have to remember one thing about solar. It is stupid slow. It is. Don't rely on that to charge your battery throughout the day. If you've got the ability to put whatever panel you have or your battery pack that has a little solar panel on the backside of it, if you can strap that to the backside of your backpack, not a part that's shaded by your hat,
00:28:28
Speaker
then you'll probably be okay. It'll trickle charge that throughout the day. But it's just, solar's just not like super efficient and those are big batteries and it's gonna take a long time to solar charge those. But hey, if you've got a little bit of a trickle charge on it, it's better than nothing. Yeah, definitely.
00:28:43
Speaker
I was thinking from an emergency perspective, right? Like if something really goes down in the field, you at least can use that solar charger portion of it to hopefully charge up whatever device you're using to reach the outside world if it has died. So it's more of like an emergency thing. You and I have never had real great luck with the batteries with solar panels on them, I don't think. They just don't tend to, like you said, they don't charge very fast. And I remember having one that like barely even charged at all. You remember that little white one you had that would like fold up?
00:29:10
Speaker
It barely even worked, right? Yeah, it was terrible. But the one that we found, the Power Monkey Extreme, has great reviews online. It sounds like it's a really great solar charger. And you can charge it up ahead of time, too. So you're not only relying on the sun. Keep in mind, any solar panels, their maximum efficiency is achieved when they're A, clean, B, not shaded, and C, a 90 degree angle to the sun. So if it's anything other than a 90 degree angle, you're losing solar efficiency.
00:29:38
Speaker
Exactly. If it's dusty, you're losing solar efficiency. If a portion of your hat or if you strapped it down to your pack and the strap is going across the panel, you're losing solar efficiency and you're losing a lot. They decrease from their maximum of probably 50% of energy recovery down to 10%, 5%. It comes down significantly. It does. It really does. We've learned that with the solar panels on our RV.
00:30:03
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Ours are flat to the roof, and we never get the 1,800 watts we're going to get because, quite frankly, the sun is almost never directly overhead. Exactly. You know, wherever you're at. And they get dusty. I found one other really cool option for power in the field. This thing scares the hell out of me. Does it really? The MyFC Power Trek, and it comes with a replaceable fuel cell cartridge that converts hydrogen gas into electricity.
00:30:28
Speaker
It just feels like Ghostbusters to me. Like switch me on. The problem with it is you have to buy these, these cartridges, right? And you have to, you know, if the cartridge runs out, then you're out of luck. You can't use it anymore. I think it does maybe have a little solar panel on it too, but it's like almost useless. So anyway, that was kind of more for backpackers, but I thought if you're on like a camping project or something and like power is really going to be a problem that could be good for cloudy weather, you know, cause cloudy weather happens and then you can't rely on the solar stuff either. So it would be a good backup in that scenario.
00:30:58
Speaker
And that was a good note you made too about power is like if you're going back to an office or a hotel room every day, if you just don't forget to charge your stuff up and walk out with a hundred percent on your batteries and your devices in the morning, more than likely power is not going to be an issue for you. You know, unless you're really doing some.
00:31:13
Speaker
some energy-hungry stuff, then you're going to be having an issue later in the day. But if you're charging like we said you are to do, whether it's in your pocket or at a break or something like that, you should be able to maintain enough of a charge to get on it. One other note, I know some chargers have this, but also the zero lemons do as well. They usually have a 1.0 and a 2.0 or something like that for charging efficiency. It just means the speed of the charge.
00:31:38
Speaker
And the reason they do that is some devices simply won't take the higher speed charge. It's bad for them. But all your phones and tablets will take the faster charge. So plug it into the port that has a bigger number on it. Yeah, definitely. Whatever your system is. It'll drain your battery faster, but it'll also charge your device faster. So you know. Right. All right. So talking about communication now and keeping in touch, one of the cool things, and I saw this, first time I saw this was probably like seven, eight years ago. And they were in like a Kickstarter phase at that
Communication Technologies in Remote Locations
00:32:04
Speaker
point. But the Gotenas system, basically. And they have a lot of different
00:32:08
Speaker
Levels now you can get basically yeah And I think there's even like subscriptions and stuff that you can get you so like there's a lot to look at there But the basic Gotenna comes with two devices because it doesn't work with one they talk to each other. They don't talk to anything else Yeah, the basic one comes with two devices. It's 200 bucks So basically a hundred bucks a device, but you have to buy the first two together After that, I think you might be able to buy one at a time I don't know if you stuff about it. Just like Adam into your you need at least two to four to work, but yeah, essentially what they do is they use
00:32:36
Speaker
satellites and they use sort of line of sight if it's quicker, which means you have to be able to see each other, or not see each other physically, but be within, you know, straight line of each other. Whatever that device's line of sight is, basically. Right, don't have like a mountain in between you. It won't work as good, but either way, it has a pretty good range, four miles at least, but they've been tested up to like 26 miles in optimal conditions.
00:32:59
Speaker
And what it does is the Gotenna links to your smartphone or tablet through Bluetooth. And then through their app, you can use that to see where everybody else is that has a Gotenna, right? Because it's transmitting continuously their GPS location. And also you can send, they call it private chat, but it's basically text messages in between each other. And I believe that's going through the satellites. Okay. Yeah. And it's either going through the satellites or it probably prioritizes the mesh system first.
00:33:29
Speaker
Because these two devices are making this mesh system together, right? Well, they're linked to each other, and it becomes a mesh when you add a third one. Oh, I see. Because what mesh means is it's not like a hub and spoke deal where you've got a transmitter that's reaching out to different things. That's what a satellite basically does. But when you've got a mesh system, you could have one crew on one ridge line, another crew on another ridge line, and a third crew that the first crew can't talk to.
00:33:53
Speaker
because they're too far away. But the first cruise message will relay through the second cruise onto the third cruise. So it kind of transmits around the different devices and uses all of those to come in. It looks like you can use, as they build their network of Gotenna users, you can actually bounce that off of other Gotenna users. And they don't even know that's happening. If you register your device on their website and you say, I'm willing to be a relay, it's not like you're
00:34:20
Speaker
You're not going to get a message from somebody you don't know, right? They're not going to know where you're at either. All that's encrypted. Your devices have to be linked to each other, but your device can be used as a relay for somebody else. As far as field practice goes, this is, again, something that might be a little bit better for backpackers because you could see a bunch of backpackers.
00:34:37
Speaker
having these and then they're able to like use them to either talk to each other or relay messages like you said but for crews we were thinking it would be really cool if each crew had had one of these things and then all of a sudden they have communication within each other and maybe one of those crews has cell service maybe one of them
00:34:55
Speaker
So if something goes wrong with crew number one and crew number three has cell service, then they can get a message to two and then to three and then three can get the help that is needed for crew one or whatever the scenario is. And the more crews you have out in a remote location, the more chances you have of being able to reach the outside world, which I think would be really cool. It's kind of like an insurance policy a little bit because it may or may not work, but I don't know, for only 200 bucks, it seems like it would be a good investment for a company to make just to be safe.
00:35:24
Speaker
I know a neat thing is too, they've got like obviously way more advanced systems where you can get like a, like a Pelican style box that charges them all with the battery inside. And then they just kind of plug into this box at the end of the day. Then you just pass them out in the morning and it would actually be beneficial for every crew member to have one. You know, especially if you're on big survey out in different areas and you're, you know, you're spaced out apart and just something happens. We'll talk about an example of that here in a second, but also with some of those higher end setups, they have actually a screen, like a little,
00:35:54
Speaker
like a little device basically that shows your map and shows where people are on the screen without using like your phone or tablet. But I remember a story when we first worked in Utah, there was a person on one of the crews who she went way off her line because she didn't want to get her boots wet crossing a creek. And then she like found a place to cross, but then was completely lost and ended up following the creek out to the road and was picked up by a trucker and taken to the nearest gas station.
00:36:18
Speaker
That's right. And the rest of the crew had no idea because they had no cell service. Yeah, and I guess they didn't have radios either. Yeah, or the radios weren't working because they weren't... This is 15 years ago when radios maybe weren't as great as they are now. Yeah, and radios were still pretty good though. I just don't know what was happening. They were. She was a young field technician who hadn't quite learned the ways of the field yet, but anyway.
00:36:44
Speaker
Anyway, speaking of radios, there are some more advanced radios out there. There are. Yeah, there's these cool ones. The Motorola talk about MR350RVP. Catchy. Yeah, totally. No, we've had Motorola radios the entire time we've worked in the field. Yeah, we still do. But they're just constantly advancing with technology. And these ones specifically, they're flashlights. They can send an emergency alert. They can tell you the weather from NOAA. And they have a super long battery life and a really long range coverage.
00:37:13
Speaker
So I can remember trying to use radios and you're just getting like that every three seconds you get a sound and it's not words that you can understand because it's just cutting in and out. So if those work as well as they say, then that would be a great addition for safety purposes to a field crew and also just helping you do your work better too.
00:37:33
Speaker
And then finally, one of the things that can actually help save battery power on your devices is to not have to look at the device all the time, especially if you're just navigating or you're getting notifications from the device, you can get that on a smartwatch. Smartwatches have other functionalities too. My Apple Watch will actually, if I have a hard hit or something like that, even if I step really hard sometimes, or if it's just the right way, it'll come up with an emergency thing on the screen that says, did you fall? And if you don't respond to this, we're calling 911.
00:38:03
Speaker
Obviously, if you're not in 911 range, then that's not going to work. The nice thing about some of these is mine's also connected to cell service. If my phone dies, my watch is going to last all day regardless. I'll be able to make a call from there if I can get to a hilltop or something, but it's still going to be connected. It's still going to be working.
00:38:25
Speaker
And back to the water consumption thing too, like our hydrate bottles, they connect to our phones and then we get push notifications to our watch from our phone, which is using minimal battery from our phone, but it's also reminding you to take a drink of water too. And you can also track your water right there as well. So you can make sure that you're bringing in enough during the day. And I bet there's other apps that do stuff like that too, that you could just connect right to your watch if you don't have the hydrate bottle, but you still want to like track things.
Listener Engagement and Closing Remarks
00:38:49
Speaker
Yeah. Then there's a Garmin Fenix 6 Pro Solar Edition. What's that about? Yeah. Well, the Garmin Fenix 6 is, it's a Garmin watch, right? It's got the navigation built in all the navigation that you would expect from a Garmin product, but it's in a watch version.
00:39:04
Speaker
really neat and will help you with navigation and not getting lost and all that. But the Solar Edition also has this solar battery in it, which when it's fully charged up, it gives you 14 days of power so that you don't need to charge it every night. Great for backpackers, again, obviously, because you don't want to be charging your smartwatch every night while you're backpacking.
00:39:21
Speaker
But yeah, I thought that was really cool. That way if you forget to charge something or if you're in a camping situation and you can't charge, you know, this should get you through the whole session. And now if you're heavy maps using or tracking things or whatever that maybe that battery life goes down with it, but then you can just charge it up with the solar device too. So anyway, I thought all that was really cool.
00:39:43
Speaker
the maps are really slick on it, just from looking at the images. We're Apple users, so we haven't tried out the Garmin stuff, but I've heard such good things about these Garmin watches from a navigation perspective, and the maps are really great. They look just like a Garmin device.
00:39:58
Speaker
I mean, it's a small screen obviously, but you know, if everybody in the crew had one of these, like you're going to previously recorded sites or something, then you can use that to get there. I just think that it's such a really cool, really cool thing. The one downside to the garments, and I haven't seen their full line, so maybe they have some smaller ones, but they always seem to be a little bit bulky.
00:40:16
Speaker
They are, they're getting better. The one that I saw was like white with gold trim, which I thought was really cute. What are you doing? I love it. But no, they have multiple sizes. Kind of like how the Apple watch does and you choose your face size. So they aren't as big and bulky as they used to be. Okay. Well, someday I won't be as big and bulky as I used to be. So
00:40:38
Speaker
Wow. Throwing shade on yourself today. I know, right? Well, thanks for coming on to talk about field safety with us. Yeah, totally. And if you want to check out Wild Note, of course, we'll have the link in the show notes, wildnotenap.com. And if you want to check out anything else that we talked about, those links will also be in the show notes. And I'm interested to hear what
00:40:59
Speaker
kind of interesting tech you guys use to make yourself safer and more efficient in the field. Hit us up on our Slack channel for members. It's pretty active on the ArceoTech channel over there. We have a few people that like to go back and forth on things. And I'm interested in our one member from Flanders to find out what he uses in the forests and things of that area.
00:41:19
Speaker
And if you guys didn't know, Chris and I do the archaeology show together. So if you've enjoyed listening to me give him crap throughout this whole podcast, then just go listen to that show and you can hear me do that to him every single week. It's amazing. Plus way more pop culture references. Way more pop culture references. Very true. All right. Well, thanks, everybody. Thanks for listening. And we'll see you next time. Paul should be back on the next episode.
00:41:47
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.
00:42:12
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, DigTech LLC, Culturo Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Rachel Rodin. 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 chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.
00:42:40
Speaker
This is Chris Webster, founder of the APN and one of the chief editors. Thanks for listening all the way to the end. If you want to keep the conversation going and support us along the way, go to arcpodnet.com slash members. That's arcpodnet.com slash members. And thanks for listening.