I was walking through the park the other day, and I noticed a few people were out working
on their laptops.
And I'm talking about 2pm on a Wednesday.
Well, thanks to the pandemic, we know home office is 100% possible with today's technology.
But what about park office?
Is that even a thing?
It's probably not, but..
I found the whole idea rather intriguing, so today we’re giving it a go!
Before we continue, I’d like to thank the sponsor of today's video monday.com.
More on them, later in this video!
So a vital part of this experiment for me was making sure that all the technology I
brought to the park, could be transported conveniently and in one load.
Now I don't own a vehicle, but I managed to fit all my gear into this cart, and honestly
bringing it there was a walk in the park.
For office furniture I used a fold-out table and a camping chair.
Not the most ergonomic set-up, but hey if you want that fresh air and vitamin d while
you're working, you’ll have to be willing to make some sacrifices.
Now with this current set-up, I would only be able to work for about an hour to an hour
and a half before my laptop's battery would run outta juice.
But if I'm gonna do park office, I want to be able to do it the whole day.
A dying battery is a modern day evil and my iPad was already at 25%.
Well that's where the Jackery Explorer 1000 comes into play.
This Power Bank boasts 1002 Watt hours of power with a running output of 1000 watts
and up to 2000 in surge Wattage.
The Jackery 1000 does offer two AC power outlets, however, I brought along my power tower, you
know, just in case.
So as you can see, once my laptop and iPad were plugged in, I was only drawing about
45-55watts of power.
Which is no sweat for the Jackery.
So I was back in action and could continue working.
But one thing we need to keep in mind is that even the Jackery 1000 has a finite amount
of energy it can offer, right?
Well it's a good thing, I also brought with me two Jackery 100W Solar Panels, which can
feed into directly the Jackery 1000.
You simply fold these bad boys out like so..
Pull out these little legs…
Connect the cables up to this adapter, plug it into the Jackery 1000 and... booyah - we
now have 115 watts of green energy feeding back into the power bank.
So now my office is being powered by the sun, epic!
Now while I was in the planning stages of this video, I was looking for the right power
bank for this project.
And after digging through a bunch of reviews, the Jackery stood out to me the most.
But I'll be honest, this project was getting pretty darn expensive.
And there was no way I was going to be able to afford all this tech.
So I hired my favourite storyboard artist to draw up this concept image of my idea.
I then sent the concept in an email to Jackery, hoping it would convince their team to get
behind my project and support me by sending me some of their gear.
Luckily for me, they loved the idea and sent me out these awesome products!
And what I really respect is that they did this with no strings attached.
They simply sent the gear out to me and said have fun.
Not all companies are willing to do that, so a massive thanks to the team at Jackery,
you guys are awesome!
Alright, so with the power issues resolved for my office, it was time to kick start the
work day.
And what better way to do that than with some good ol’ caffeine.
So I brought along my little Nespresso coffee maker.
I hooked her up, filler her up, popped in a cap, and a few moments later I had myself
a freshly made espresso.
Now this little coffee maker chews up to 1200 watts of power, but it wasn't a problem for
the Jackery.
Even with my laptop and tablet still plugged in.
So now that I had my caffeine fix for the morning, there was one other big issue I needed
to address.
Internet.
Now I could have set up a wifi hotspot on my smartphone, which is not a terrible solution,
but my phone's prepaid plan only gives me 3 gigabytes of data, and additional data is
rather expensive.
And, well who likes Vodafone.
Well thankfully Elon Musk has been busy launching thousands of low earth orbit satellites into
space and as a result, we have a thing called Starlink.
An internet service provided by SpaceX designed to help solve the issue of slow or no internet
access in rural and remote areas of the world.
And also to provide internet for those of us who wish to work from the park, obviously...
Now I'll be honest, I was a little worried about how long the Starlink would take to
get set-up and connected.
But it literally took no longer than five minutes from the moment I opened the box.
I plugged the starlink dish into my power tower, opened the starlink app, set my WiFi
name and password.
Next thing you know, the dish was automatically locking onto a satellite, and boom I was connected.
Just like that.
With the starlink connected to the Jackery, I was now drawing 90 - 105 watts of power.
Just under what I was getting in input from the solar panels which was pretty cool.
So now that I'm connected to the internet, now's the perfect time to tell you about the
sponsor of today's video, monday.com work OS!
I've been happily using monday.com to organise my production workflow, for about a year now.
So when they reached out to me about doing a sponsorship, I couldn't say no!
And what really excited me, is that they offered me exclusive access to their new beta feature
Monday workdocs!
A revolutionary online doc tool, built for collaborating, sharing ideas and creating
workflows.
Workdocs Realtime engine allows for over 100 people to collaborate together without overwriting
each other!
But what makes workdocs really special for me, is how it's beautifully integrated with
Monday.com's workflows.
You can embed live objects right into your work documents, which will always stay updated.
For example, check out this next project I'm working on.
Spoiler alert, it's another AirTag video.
Now when writing my scripts for my AirTag videos, I have to keep close tabs on where
my AirTags have been traveling, right?
Well instead of me having to go back and forth constantly to check my AirTags location history,
I can simply add my AirTag tracking board right into my script document, making my life
a whole lot easier!
I love it!
And that's just one example of how you can utilise this very intuitive tool.
If you'd like to give Monday.com and workdocs a go, you can get yourself a free one month
trial by clicking the link in the description below.
With the Starlink up and running, naturally the first thing I had to do was a speed test.
Now Starlink claims to offer between 50 to 150mbits in download speeds, however, as you
can see from my speedtest, I was getting up to 260mb/s.
That's faster than what I get on my internet at home.
Pretty impressive!
The only issue with Starlink is latency.
My ping was at 40, so not the best for gaming, but man, for satellite internet that's really
impressive!
And Starlink claims latency will only get better as they continue to launch more satellites
into space.
As for upload speeds I was getting up to 26mb/s which was also better than what I get at home.
I was able to stream YouTube at 4k and watch Netflix at full quality on two different devices
simultaneously without a hitch.
Now I have to confess I actually shot this project twice.
The first time I shot it, I wanted to this talking i nthe park.
And well for the most part it worked pretty well.
Now I have to confess, I actually shot this project twice.
The first time I shot it, I wanted to do this talking in the park.
And well, for the most part it worked pretty well.
Awesome!
So I have my laptop here which is connected to my mobile hotspot.
But there were several issues…
It was quite windy that day we were shooting, so the audio quality wasn't the best…
Awesome so I have my laptop here, my iPad.
Awesome!
So we have a bit of wind but I’ve got my… *laughs*
Cut..
Wind..
And also we ran out of time at the end of the day.
The sun started setting and I hadn’t finished recording everything I needed to.
Essentially poor production planning on my part.
However, during that first shoot in the park, we did an interesting test to see how well
the Starlink would handle a good old Zoom call.
The only problem was, I'm a one man team and didn't have anyone to zoom call.
But then I realised I have you guys.
So posted my personal zoom link onto my YouTube feed to see what would happen...
And well... it worked..
I didn't know what to say to them, so I just gave them a tour of our park office set-up.
The Starlink handled the zoom call really well!
And we were even lucky enough to connect with a subscriber who was also using Starlink for
their home internet, which was really cool to see!
all to myself was just outright greedy.
So I figured, I may as well share my solar powered high-speed internet with the public.
Meanwhile, around the time we were shooting this for the second time, I was also in the
process of testing the theft protection capabilities of the Vanmoof S3, which is an E-Bike.
I had been leaving the bike outside and unlocked for a few nights to see if someone would try
to steal it.
Now I just so happened to have left the Bike in the park near our shooting location, and
it's battery was running low.
So I decided to bring it over to my office and give her a charge.
Once I had her plugged in, I was now drawing a total of 280 watt of power.
But the jackery was still at 95% so no problemo.
I should also mention that half way into the shoot, my main camera was running out of power,
so we actually connected the camera we shot this on into the Jackery.
Not only that, but we also plugged in a little refrigerated cooler, so we could celebrate
at the end of this project with a nice cold German beer.
Now that’s what I call a productive day at the office.
So I know this was a very extreme example of something that I imagine very few people
are currently doing or would consider doing especially to this degree.
But I thought this was a great way to showcase how one can get creative with today's technology.
And after actually going through the process of shooting this video and using all this
tech, it made me realise how powerful this set-up could be in a variety of use cases.
For example, perhaps you're organizing a music festival, and you want to provide your glampers
with high speed internet.
Well I could see something like this being perfect for that.
Or perhaps you're a production company, and you're shooting in a remote location and you
want to provide the cast and crew with high-speed internet, well this could also be a viable
solution doing that in the future.
Why do I say in the future?
Well, currently, Starlink is kind of Geofenced to what they refer to as a “cell” .
In my case, I was using Starlink about a kilometer away from my registered address with no issues.
But I've seen videos from other Starlink users who have been able to use theirs from much
further distances.
Now I didn't get the chance to test how far away I could take my Starlink from my registered
address before it would stop working, so I'm really not sure how large this so-called "cell"
is.
However I imagine anything within a 10km radius should be doable.
But for those of you who really need the freedom to be able to take your Starlink anywhere,
fear not.
Earlier this year Elon Musk stated that Starlink eventually plans on removing these so called
“cell” restrictions later this year.
Whether or not he can stick to that time frame remains to be seen, however, it’s great
to see Starlink are thinking ahead and will eventually allow their users to use their
Starlink wherever they like.
If you find this technology as fascinating as I do, I stumbled across this really cool
website which shows a live view of where Starlink's satellites are situated in space.
I did a screen recording of the website for an hour and a half so that I could make this
timelapse.
And this is what the satellites look like when moving in orbit.
Pretty cool to see!
If you want to check it out yourself, I'll leave a link in the description below.
Lastly, I have to say I was extremely impressed with the products that Jackery sent me.
We had shot in the park both times about 7 to 8 hours, and on each occasion we left the
park with still 80 to 90% battery left on the Jackery 1000, which is really impressive.
I will be doing a more in-depth review of the Jackery products to touch on the pro's
and cons, so stay tuned for that!
And if you're interested in checking out their products, I'll leave a link in the description
below as well.
I hope you guys enjoyed the video.
I'll See ya in the next one!
Cheers.
So I know this was a rather extreme example of something that I imagine very few people
are currently doing or would consider doing especially to this degree.
But I thought this was a great way to showcase how you can get creative with today's technology.
With technology constantly evolving, I think it's important that we also evolve the ways
in which we utilize that technology.
And to tell you the truth, I honestly never thought this park office project would translate
into something I would actually consider doing in a real world scenario, but after actually
going through the process of doing it, and seeing how surprisingly easy it is and also
how much fun it is, I can see a few use cases where it could make a lot of sense.
For example, perhaps you're organizing a music festival, and you want to provide glampers
with high speed internet.
Well I could see something like this being perfect for that.
Or perhaps you're a production company, and you're shooting in a remote location and want