Camp for Climate Action 2008 Extras

Things to do and ideas to explore

To Do / questions?

• look into audio blogging and maybe using it for the info line latest news feature

• research re-purposing asterisk voice mail as a way to do 'latest news' on info line

• see if there are better ways of doing text to speech or should we avoid it?

• can callers send texts to basterisk? and how would that be useful if possible?

• what use can we make of 'unlimited' texts? (something comms might find useful?)

• could we do a 'useful numbers request' text back service?

• phone based access to camp radio stream? is that stupid? (for listening maybe, but not the other way round)

• any way to make conference rooms more useful in our context? (by combing them with text message invites?)

• what can twitter do? can people set up unmoderated twitters?

• how can we asterisk call logging as a tool for dispatch? (using grep and pipes?)

• what can we do with skypephones, 4000 free minutes and skype to sip?

(send it out in the field for free access to blasterisk (via voxeo) for audio blogging/reports?) (use it as a roaming microphone/outdoor broadcast unit for the radio?)

General Ideas

• using twitter to announce important more detailed news on infoline

• twitter announced teleconferencing for working groups / affinity groups

• group voice mail for working groups / affinity groups

• audio blogs for individuals / affinity groups

• automated questionnaire for arrest reporting

• provide a call back service to legal support team / medics

info line specific ideas

• days news summary (different from latest news)

• todays workshops broken down into morning / afternoon

• next workshops and locations

• next meal - planned menus for each neighborhood

• site wish list (useful before people arrive perhaps)

• site job list (useful during the camp itself perhaps)

• audio press statements?

• reporting line guidelines / howto

• tide times and weather

Budget and spending

Total £975 (there must be something missing.... about another £200, what is it?)

Would be good if we under spend somewhere so I can reimburse myself for 3G antenna and other expenses.

The power related stuff was take out of the budget proposal and moved to the power groups budget.

£450 for internet provision

To cover mikes costs of getting the sat truck there, data tarrif etc

£150 for reporting lines telephony

£30 (to £60) - I've signed up for a Solo contract (1,400 minutes, unlimted texts), which has 30 days notice for cancellation so may end up having to pay two months.

£45 - Purchased two GSM Fixed Cellular Terminals (hope they are unlocked!) so that the cheap outgoing calls are available from the on site voip phones. Will need another cheap sim deal, perhaps the 02 simplicity for a bit of network diversity (add another 25 - 30 quid unless we can borrow a contract SIM off somebody).

£70 - On top of that there are two PAYG skypephones which, with a bit of offsite windows magic, I should be able to rig up as two concurrent incoming trunks providing free forwarding from blasterisk.

Total spent or expected to spend... £145 to £175 (depending on cancelling the solo contract)

£200 for media team phones

This was based on last years spending, credit, phones etc. Hopefully it will actually cost less and cover any over spend on the reporting lines budget.

£100 for media pool

This is to cover storage media for the photo and video pool. Looks like we will get two 500gb drives at £50 each.

£100 for sundries, blank cd/dvds etc

Doubt we will really need this much. If we exceed our data transfer caps we could take any additional PAYG 3G top up from this budget (it's a consumable).

Tech Notes & Power

Power Calculations

First attempts here...

Minimum

This is bear minimum to provide on site phones and internet access on demand at any time when nothing else is in use. The figure is lowest if 3G works on site. The sat kits uses about 70 watts compared to 15 watts for the 3G wireless router.

• 15w 3G router (or 70w if satellite is the only option)
• 40w server plus drive
• 30w ip phones and pbx box (this is a guess as I don't know what the pbx is running on)

Total = 85w - 140w for perhaps 16 hrs/24

1.36kwh to 2.2kwh over 16 hours

Average

In addition to the bear minimum which would be used even when nobody is using anything, we can add a minimum typical use of two or three thin clients being used during the day by the media team, people needings to look something up etc. Beyond that, average use might also include the photo desk, the full thin client suite and the TV studio.

• 35w for two thin clients
• 85w minimum with 3G and sat

plus

• 200w for the full thin client suite plus sat

or

• 45w photo desk
• 85w for tv studio
• 60w for one person with their own laptop

Total = 310w - 320w for 6 hrs/24

~1.9kwh over 6 hours

(add minimum and average together to get 1.36 + 1.9 = 3.26 kwh per day)

Maximum

The peak use will probably be during the day of action with all the public public access terminals in use, all possible internet connectivity up and running, people using all the additional thin clients for newswire work, press statements etc plus the photo desk and people using their own machines to process and upload photos or video.

• 500w for all the average stuff
• 35w for two additional thin clients
• 25w for random cameras and phones left on charge
• 60w for another laptop in the video suite
• 100w for stuff in the radio suite
• 180w for three more people using their own laptops

Total = 900w for 8 hrs on day of action

~7kwh during that 8 hours alone!!

Power Calculations, attempt 2

The Phone System

20w * Asterisk PBX box (Lloyd) 5w * Six IP phones (Lloyd) 5w * Two ATAs with FXO&FXS (Ben's Zoom plus one other, Lloyd?) 5w * Two TELULAR SX53e GSM gateways (Ben) 5w * Two WP-S1 Skypephones (Ben)

(be useful to know the what the PBX is running on as I've just guessed the power)

Total 40w 24/7 = 0.960kwh

Offsite, the phone system will also make use of Blasterisk (in Colorado) and two always on windows boxes anywhere with broadband.

The Internet System

1w * Draytek 2910 VG dual WAN router with Wifi (Ben) 14w * Haewui E220 unlocked 3G modem with hi gain antenna (Ben) 70w * Satellite TX RX modem (Mike) 5w * Switch (BW? Mike? or Ben?) 30w * Server running squid, apache, LTSP (BW or Mike?)

Total 50w 24/7 with 3G only = 1.2kwh or 105w 24/7 with Satellite only = 2.52kwh or 120w 8/24 with both, plus 50w 16/24 3G only over night = 1.76kwh

Computers

130w * 8 thin clients for web suite (BW) Total 130w 4/24 = 0.52kwh

70w * 4 thin clients for other uses (BW) 70w * Three IBM Thinkpad X20 (Ben) Total 140w 8/24 = 1.12kwh

Total So Far

1.76 + 0.52 + 1.12 +0.96 = 4.36 kwh per day

This doesn't include tv studio, random charging or anyone using their own laptops.

To put that into perspective my two 80w solar panels would produce 0.96 kwh per day assuming 6 hours of full on sunshine. That means we'd need nine 80w panels to provide the power - lets call it ten, or 800 watts of solar (assuming plenty of sunshine).

Or look at a wind gene rated at 200w at 6m/s (about 1m/s over the average windspeed in that location) and for ease of calculating, lets be conservation and say it achieves that rated speed for 50% of the time. That would mean 2.4kwh per day, about half our needs.

TV studio

10w * Three video cameras (Undercurrents) 5w * video mixer [that's a guess] (Undercurrents) 60w * Laptop for direct to disk capturing

Total 75w 7/24 = 0.53 kwh per day

That's assuming seven hours of work each day shooting, mixing and capturing but not including any editing time or additional equipment use beyond that time.

Radio Studio

Note sure about this. Think the LTSP server will provide their streaming box so is already covered and I've already factored in the thinkpads which they might use for audio editing. I don't know anything about their decks, amps etc but that can't be much and won't be running for long either.

Providers we know about

Provider	Type/set-up	Max hours @ 200w	Max hours @ 800w
Sat Van built-in	12volts x 220Ah, 2 x 85w panels
Ben	6 x 100Ah 12v batteries, 2 x 80w pv, 2 x 30w pv, 4 x 10w pv, 20amp pv regulator, 600w cont invertor, 300w cont invertor, wind turbine 200w@6m/s plus dump regulator,
Sam	UNTESTED - Brand new rig, Batteries in a slightly unknown state. 24v/ 240v x 2000ah. 340w panels. 1kw wind turbine. Inverter rated 3kw.

Whos Bringing What

Ben

 * Draytek dual WAN/3G router (with unlocked 3G modem, three & t-mobile PAYG sims) with wifi and higain omnis plus 11dBi directional 3g antenna = 15 watts
 * wifi client/ethernet bridge (so we can connect LAN to another nearby tent without wires)
 * x3 Thinkpad X20 (PI/II, 800mhz), PSU, no drives but boots over PXE = ~25 watts each
 * x1 sub notebook PII 333mhz celeron runs on 15v, firewire, pccard ethernet, needs hd, no os currently = ~20 watts
 * 2ghz dual core laptop with firewire = ~80 watts
 * Peavey RQ200 mixer for radio (can run on x2 9v PP3 batteries) = ~5 watts
 * 24 port gigabit switch
 * power stuff listed elsewhere

Bristol Wireless

 * x8 newer thin clients for open access suite = ~140 w total
 * x4~ older thin clients for media team, news desk, reception = ~60w total
 * ltps server, switch, psu, cables etc = ~40w