Sarasota Poker Run - Live Position and Video
Oct 4th, 2008 by EarthNC
Follow the 2008 Sarasota Poker Run by Poker Runs America with EarthNC from the Formula Factory 382 FAS3 Tech Boat. EarthNC would like to offer special thanks to Vic Spellberg, Formula Director of Sponsor Promotions, for a spot on his boat during the poker run.
Via the combination of a cell-based internet aircard, USB webcam, USB GPS, and laptop computer, EarthNC was able to live cast webcam photos and our position roughly once per minute while the laptop battery held. We also captured our track with a Garmin USB Handheld GPS as a backup to the laptop. As you’ll see in the map below, we were able to capture photos for a significant portion of the 170 mile run. Photo drop outs occurred while running in rough water in the Gulf southbound and on the return trip in the Gulf due to a dead laptop battery.
Thanks to this experience, we’ll be designing a more self-contained system suitable for extreme conditions and longer battery times. If you’ve never gotten to ride a 38′ open-cockpit boat at 90+ MPH - it’s something you won’t soon forget.
Route Log and Photos
Click on the Blue Icons below to see our webcam photos taken along the route.
For a better view with thumbnails try our Google Earth version. This map also shows our speed via the track color. The purple segments were at or above 90mph! Click HERE to open our Google Earth map. Click on the thumbnail images to view the larger pictures.
Webcam Slide Show
Here’s a slideshow of the 100+ images we captured during the poker run.
[...] that you get the opportunity to ride a fast boat in capable hands, as we did recently during the Sarasota Poker Run. To share our good fortune, we wanted to live cast our position and webcam photos during the run [...]