Send data cheap over 100km,in combination with GPS

I am currently starting a project in which people play outside and control a virtual game this way. I am sure I am going to use electronics for this, to recieve data from the people outside.
I want a module for my arduino that sends data to my laptop.
This can be either through internet or some way else where there is also an arduino connected to my laptop.
I want to create multiple modules, and since I am a student my budget is not very high. I want to use GPS anyway, maybe fixed packages are cheaper than both seperate? Xbee or something like that is not a solution because ranges can get up to 100 km.
Does somebody have an idea how I can send this data in a cheap way?
Thanks!

How cheap exactly?

Your not going to find anything with a 100km range that is cheap.

Public wifi?

3G? - not too cheap...

Mowcius

Two questions that make a huge difference:

  1. Does everybody playing this game have a laptop/netbook/PC nearby?

  2. Does the communication with the Arduino need to be 2-way?

One possibility would be to use one of the cheap 433MHz 1-way radios to send data from the Arduino to something PC-ish, which would then relay it over those long distances to other players. But it's impossible to tell whether that (or any, really) suggestion makes sense without more specifics.

Ran

Pigeon? What does the baud rate have to be?

[edit]Maybe pigeons are too expensive with multiple players...[/edit]

Mowcius

how about a bluetooth unit that can interface with a mobile phone.

The ardiuno is paired with the game players mobile and then you can use the phones gsm radio to send data back and forth globally. Everyone has a phone with bluetooth and you may well be able to leverage location services on the phone negating the need for and extra gps unit.

Sorry for being unspecific.
Some more details:

I want to make a device that sends data to a laptop, maybe better call it a server. The position of the device can be totally different than the server. That's why Xbee or something like that is not possible. The solution I have found so far is GPRS and if I am right it's about 70 euro's per device (without arduino and other hardware). The reason why I am asking for another solution is because I can not imagine that it has to be this cheap. Mobile phones can do things like this (I think also using GPRS?) and there are lots of complete phones cheaper than this! I was thinking in the direction where I have connection over the telephone network, and because I only send a small amount of data, a small data pack (10 E a month?) would suffice.
Maybe there is a cheap hack for this?
The more devices the better, by budget will be around 150 Euro
Thanks!

the phones are cheaper cause they make a million of them a day, and bulk rate parts rock...

you can get a celphone connection to the arduino, but its not cheap, you might want to look into hacked cellphones with this capability

then you can use all its radio goodness and pipe the data out of the serial/usb port on the bottom

If I understand you well you are
saying, hack into a current very
cheap mobile phone and use that
one to send the data to another
"hacked" phone connected to a server?
Logically, but is it possible, with the whole
fixed chips? Any good sources?

you would need to write a custom app for the phone but there is no reason why you can do this with bluetooth.
This would provide you with a serial connection to the phone
http://www.coolcomponents.co.uk/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=376

then you write you app in java (plenty of example code for serial and socket connections) or whatever you phone target uses.

when the arduino sends a serial packet to the phone it relays it back to the server using gprs. You could even uses sms and it could be cheaper.

hi all, i registered just to reply to this lol.

how about something like this?

that particular phone is GSM (AT&T here in the states) so it should work where you are if you can source enough of them, but i'm sure there are other phones that can be used the same, maybe even cheaper.

according to some the links from there (dont remember which lol) if you find the right phone, you should be able to get the gps coords from the phone itself.

Hope that helps!

if the problem is defined as a radio with 100KM range, then GSM is likely all that you are going to be able to use. The problem is not just the cost of the device, it's the cost of the service for the device, and you will also have latency problems. Bluetooth is only an alternative way to connect to a device that connects to GSM. That can work, but you have the same service costs and latency issues.

Perhaps you should redefine the problem. If you can require that the users each have a local WiFi connection to the Internet, then your arduino could have a wifi connection, and then you are using the Internet to bridge the 100KM.