A compact travel kit

General
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This is a reply to this post in the Where Are You thread. It was split out into it’s own topic so we can talk about travel kits!

Its good to have the feedback that the transit was still worrying. I think we work on that for the next time you go travelling and hopefully soon Portugal will be pink :crossed_fingers:

Here is my travel kit:

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1 Nanuk 918 case, 1 microscope, an Android tablet, a GL iNet travel router, a USB power bank, a mains power block (3 outputs), a sample box, and wires.

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Where are you? (OFM location survey)
Connect to OFM without internet
Microscope case solutions for field kit and travelling
2

This looks so neat! I will strive for the same balance of elegance and security.

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3

I have a naive question - how did you cut the padding material to size? Just with an “exacto knife”?

I would prefer using an external display instead of dealing with routers and networks, plus it is cheaper than a tablet, but for some reason mine keeps switching off after a few minutes of working.

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Not at all naive. We bought the case with “Pick ‘n’ Pluck” foam. It is 3 layers of cuboidal foam that can nominally be pulled out by hand. However, for some of the microscope I needed 2.5 layers, because removeing all 3 would not be enough support. Also for the tablet I needed the space slightly wider than a row.

So it was a combination of “plucking” foam by hand, cutting with scissors, carving chunks out with a pen-knife. I then found that once it was done the thin walls by the tablet kept bending away from the wall, so this involved a bit of hot glue to hold them together.

All in all it was not a quick process, and not one where it would be quick to describe how to perfectly replicate it. :sad_but_relieved_face:

However, I am delighted with the final result. The microscope has been on flights to Berlin and New York. It has been on multiple walks to other venues. I can carry it about 3 miles before I start questioning my stubborn decision not to consider other modes of transport.

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For v3 we haven’t yet compiled the OS to run with its own screen.

This said there are some benefits to an external device for our specific purposes:

  • No cables from tablet to microscope so we can physically separate it to minimise vibration transfer.
  • Decent quality touch screen
  • Tablet has a battery built in for when we have no power
  • On demos we can have 2-3 different microscopes on the travel router and then switch between them on one device
  • Keeping the web-app on a different devices minimises graphics overhead leaving it free for the camera

Much of this could be solved with a touch screen travel monitor, but these seem to cost about as much as a cheap tablet.

On the flip side the tablet has given me a lot of pain as:

  • No android browser I can find actually allows native full screen, so we will need to add a full screen button in the settings.
  • We can’t run connect on the tablet so it is all in the browser
  • Android tablets are “smart” and notice when networks have no internet and auto-disconnect to find a “better one”. You normally can tell an android device to stay connected to a network even with no internet, but there is a Lenovo bug that it ignores this. The workaround is to use a static IP, but this breaks MDNS, so you can’t connect via microscope.local.

So I think it is a case of pick your poison :skull:

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Thank you for sharing all these experiences! A couple of weeks ago I flew my precious OFM from Basel to Amsterdam and back in hand luggage wrapped up in a… fluffy towel! I am happy to report no damage. I configured the rpi to connect to my hotspot on the iphone and used the same for the laptop, so it worked very well :slight_smile:

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