XTREME Solar Challenge
But for this team, innovation doesn’t end with the cars. They also have ambitious requirements for the vehicle support convoy to enable live streaming of the five-day race on YouTube, as well as broadcasting a live daily Facebook show. Team Vattenfall also wanted to send live updates via social media and remain in constant contact with their convoy of support vehicles, to ensure they received up-to-the minute weather data – crucial in a race where a few clouds can dramatically alter a car’s target speed. All this required connectivity – a scarce resource in the Outback, where cellular mobile is limited to a handful of towns. The only alternative is satellite. Vattenfall enlisted the help of Netherlands-based Stream My Event, an all-round technology-driven video production firm, to help them with their streaming and connectivity goals. Founded by video producer Thom Verdenius and chief technology officer MOVEABLE NETWORK THAT SPANNED ACROSS VEHICLES, ALLOWING FILES ANDMEDIA TO HOP FROMONE CAR TO ANOTHER THE DEVICES ENABLED YOU TO CREATE ONE LARGE
From this central vehicle – which also contained an upload computer – two pipelines were established, one for media delivery of assets to Europe and another for streaming. The pipeline for the European delivery began with central storage in the SAT1 vehicle, from which Stream My Event organised and monitored a centralised upload queue. “We set up a system where the assets were uploaded onto a computer via the H3e satellite to a station in Perth, which was sent to the host [Amazon] servers in Sydney,” says Stream My Event’s Verdenius. “It was then transmitted via a direct high speed connection to Frankfurt, and then onto the team’s media stakeholders in the Netherlands.” LAN CONVOY While this central vehicle acted as a hub for bandwidth, there were also several other vehicles in convoy gathering content and critical data. For the 2017 race, a LAN was established for the first time using directional antennas that covered a modest radius. This time, the Vattenfall team wanted to increase the range. Stream My Event partner Porro came up with a solution after meeting Australian tech distributor Amber Technology at a trade show, who introduced the team to Silvus radio transmitters. Using a proprietary self-healing, self-forming mesh technology, Silvus MN-MIMO radios work in both licensed and unlicensed frequency bands, and have been used by the military for complex broadcasting situations.
Floris Porro, the company had previously provided connectivity and coverage for the team in the 2017 Challenge. The brief this time, according to Verdenius, was to “take things to the next level”. The production firm wanted to widen the range of the moveable LAN used by the team’s support convoy, so that they had constant and reliable internet access. SATELLITE ON THE MOVE Some of the framework had already been established for the last WSC in 2017. Stream My Event had created a central satellite support vehicle, installing a lightweight and flexible satellite dish on its roof from US manufacturer Thinkom. This kind of dish is normally used on military tasks that require satellite- connectivity-on-the-move – applications suitable for aircraft carriers, or Air Force One. The Thinkom dish was connected to Intelsat’s H3e satellite, with space on it rented through Telstra.
ON THE LAN From a central vehicle two pipelines were established: one for delivery of assets to Europe, the other for streaming
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