SCADA, Telematics & GPS Technologies

A major disaster recovery exercise in Scandinavia relied on Inmarsat BGAN to send vital images to help emergency responders worldwide.

The Triplex 2008 event on the border of Sweden and Norway used an unmanned aircraft to survey the “disaster zone”.

Images captured were sent via a BGAN terminal once the MD4-1000 mini unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), weighing just 900 grams, had landed.

Enhance readiness
The annual Triplex 2008 exercise in Scandinavia, supported by the United Nations’ International Humanitarian Partnership, aimed to enhance the readiness of emergency responders for a real event.

The UAV was provided by Scandicraft, while low resolution images were sent using the Asign satellite-optimised IP-based solution from Inmarsat application provider AnSur..

Vizada, a leading satellite communications provider and an Inmarsat distribution partner, provided the airtime, enabling the critically-important images to be sent quickly via Inmarsat to a UN server in Geneva, Switzerland.

Preparation key
Scandicraft’s head of business development, Einar Stuve, said: “The combination of our UAV and the BGAN proved highly effective, enabling the first pictures to be uploaded within 10 minutes.

“The images were published on a map covering the entire disaster area, which was available via the internet for first responders anywhere in the world to view - even before hazardous materials teams had suited up to enter the site.”

The centre of the exercise was in Charlottenberg, Sweden, 70 kilometres (43 miles) from the Norwegian capital, Oslo.

links:www.scandicraft.com

links: www.vizada.com

An Awarepoint white paper describes critical factors required to maximize your RFID system’s return on investment.

Real-time location systems (RTLSs) are an increasingly important strategic capability for a variety of business applications. RTLSs allow organizations to efficiently identify and track the location of supplies, personnel, equipment, and other items in real-time, as a cost-effective operational management tool.

With the success early adopters have had with RTLSs, the question is not whether to implement, but which technology is best suited for the many applications that can benefit from location awareness. An Awarepoint white paper, “Considering a Real-time Location System? First Consider the 5 Critical Success Factors,” can help maximize your return on investment and ensure long-term success of your RTLS investment.

“The implementation of RTLS technology should pay for itself as a result of shrinking the incidence of misplaced equipment, decreased rental costs, and increased utilization of equipment,” stated Jason Howe, CEO of Awarepoint Corp.

The five critical factors outlined in the white paper to obtain maximum benefit include:

• Enterprise-wide coverage—because assets and people move throughout your entire enterprise, to achieve maximum benefit, your RTLS deployment must cover every square inch of your enterprise.
• Location accuracy—to affect the highest impact for your strategic initiatives, room-level accuracy is a clear critical success factor.
• Installation and maintenance—a minimally invasive solution that does not compromise your existing IT network, does not interrupt daily business operations, and can be installed in days or weeks, is vital. Maintenance impact for hospital staff should be considered as well. It shouldn’t take a team of IT professionals to keep the system running.
• Interoperability—your RTLSs should be supported by standards-based technology and should offer an open application programming interface so that it’s capable of providing location and status data to both your end-users and to third-party applications.
• Low risk—you should partner with a vendor vested in your success. Look for a flexible business model that doesn’t require a large capital purchase or long-term contractual commitment, and allows you to easily expand assets as needed.

Added Howe, “In hospitals particularly, RTLSs can play an important role in automation of common tasks—improving operational efficiency, increasing patient flow, and enhancing patient safety. Knowing the location, status, and movement of equipment and people can be used to improve hospital business processes and asset utilization, reduce capital expense and rental costs, and improve staff productivity.”

The full white paper “Considering a Real-time Location System? First Consider the 5 Critical Success Factors” can be downloaded free off the company’s Web site.

In this season of specters and spooks, what could be scarier than a steel-winged robotic spy plane shaped like a bat? The aptly named COM-BATis a six-inch surveillance device that is powered by solar, wind, and vibrations. The concept was conceived by the US military as a means to gather real-time data for soldiers, and the Army has awarded the University of Michigan College of Engineering a five year $10-million dollar grant to develop it. (more…)

Company Intamac has launched its broadband home monitoring products and services with WoonVeilig in The Netherlands. The BT Home Monitor VP1000 is easy to install DIY wireless security alarm and monitoring system. First of all it’s a security system. So, VP1000 includes a security panel and various wireless sensors: motion, smoke and flood detectors. The security panel offers a few pre-defined mode for the home security and possibility to connect to the broadband Internet to have access from everywhere. Additionally wireless D-Link IP cameras can be connected to the system to allow monitor you home.

The price of BT Home Monitor VP1000 including Main Control Panel, 2 Wireless Movement Detectors, Wireless Door Contact and Remote Keyfob is £115.99. Additionally consumer should pay £5 per month for the access to his online account and includes the cost of all outbound voice call, sms text message and e-mail notifications from our monitoring service. Additionally £2.5 should be paid for monitoring 4 IP cameras.

The new Intamac security system looks very similar to AlertMe but offers more useful features then it. However, AlertMe is based on standard home automation protocol ZigBee which is much better that using some proprietary unique one (I couldn’t find any information aboutVP1000 protocol). In any case, those two systems show a new tendency in the DIY home security and monitoring systems.

Source: HomeToys News

Auto theft can be very dangerous and this is a car thief that should have thought twice before stealing a bait car in Washington State. Check out this dramatic video.

A bait car, also called a decoy car, is a vehicle used by a law enforcement agency to capture car thieves. The vehicles are specially modified, with features including GPS tracking, hidden cameras that record audio, video, time, and date, which can all be remotely monitored by police. A remote controlled immobiliser (known as a “kill” device in law enforcement jargon) is installed in the vehicle that allows police to disable the engine and lock the doors.

The car is filled with valuable items and then parked in a high-vehicle theft area. In some cases, the vehicle is simply left unlocked with the keys hanging from the ignition. When the car is stolen, officers are alerted, who then send the radio signal that shuts off power to the engine and locks the doors, preventing an escape. The practice does not violate entrapment laws, since suspects are not persuaded to steal the vehicle by any means other than its availability and their own motivation.

The concept and technology was first developed by Jason Cecchettini of Pegasus Technologies and was used by the Sacramento Police Department in 1996, using Sedans like the Toyota Camry, and sports cars, such as the Honda Prelude.

The bait car is a phenomenon in the study of criminal behavior since it offers a rare glimpse into the actions and reactions of suspects before, during and after the crime. Unlike other crimes caught on surveillance cameras, suspects, at least initially, believe and react as if the crime has been wholly successful, until the bait car is apprehended by law enforcement personnel.

The largest bait car fleet in North America is operated by the Integrated Municipal Provincial Auto Crime Team (IMPACT), based in Surrey, British Columbia. Surrey was designated the “car theft capital of North America” by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in 2002. Their program was launched in 2004, and has contributed to a 10% drop in auto thefts since then.

A LoJack is a similar technology, in that it allows a vehicle to be remotely tracked if it is stolen. These are typically installed in police vehicles.

Bait cars can be used as part of a honey trap, a form of sting operation, in which criminals not known to the police are lured into exposing themselves. Unlike a sting operation that targets a known or suspected criminal, a honey trap establishes a general lure to attract unknown criminals.

Bait cars (and the stings they are used in) have been featured in numerous documentary or reality television programs, including COPS and World’s Wildest Police Videos. They are also the exclusive focus of a 2007 Court TV (now truTV) series simply titled Bait Car.

Links: News10, BaitCar, BSM Wireless

It’s a fun new activity to do, along with new killer applications keep on submerging on the web…

source: MAKE

GlobalTrak’s Remote Sensor Nodes (RSNs) increase the shipper’s ability to monitor cargo condition with a variable set of sensors for door status, humidity, temperature, a 3-axis accelerometer, and now an extremely sensitive gamma detector, a long term stable sensor with built-in temperature compensation and low power consumption.

Richard C. Meyers, CEO of GlobalTrak, described how the sensors on an RSN add important cargo data for GlobalTrak’s customers, “Remote Sensor Nodes send reports and real-time alerts to any GlobalTrak AMU over a ZigBee protocol wireless network, allowing the data to be communicated to stakeholders. This is a flexible and convenient way of placing sensors where they need to be within a loaded container, truck trailer, or railcar.”

In a radiation monitoring application, the GlobalTrak AMU is mounted on the exterior of the container, truck trailer, or railcar with one or more RSNs equipped with the gamma detector positioned inside the load in best detection positions. The detectors have low and high alarm thresholds to accommodate varying levels of background radiation, such as might be encountered in an ocean transit versus a land route.

The same ZigBee wireless network that allows RSNs to report their status through the AMU can be used to enhance shipment security by monitoring the status of EJ Brooks’ electronic strap seals on individual packages within the shipment or bolt seals on the door of a container, truck trailer, or rail car.

Source: MarketWatch

Image: MaritimeInstituteOnline

In a move toward controlling datacenter energy consumption, Microsoft is deploying sensors that will trace work distribution to help plot for optimization

To better control energy consumption in its datacenters, Microsoft has deployed 2,000 internally built temperature and humidity sensors in several of its facilities.

The sensors use ZigBee wireless technology to transmit the data to databases that analyze the information. Data-center administrators can look at a graphical image of the datacenter that is color-coded based on temperature and at a glance see areas that are getting hot.

Ultimately, Microsoft would like to be able to distribute computational load in the datacenters based on the temperature of servers, and it is beginning to work on such a system, said Jie Liu, a Microsoft researcher working on the deployment. He showed off the devices and a view of the database at the annual Microsoft Research Faculty Summit in Redmond, Washington, on Tuesday.

Source: InfoWorld

Carspotting: Part of a mesh network, this sensor node embedded in a San Francisco street can detect when a car parks in the spot beside it. It also monitors passing traffic. See following image credit to Streetline.

This fall, San Francisco will implement the largest mesh network for monitoring parking to date. Around 6,000 wireless sensors from the San Francisco company Streetline will be fixed alongside as many parking spots, monitoring both parking availability and the volume and speed of passing traffic. The city hopes that displaying information from the sensors on Web maps, smart phones, and signs on the street will reduce the traffic and pollution caused by circling cars.

A mesh network differs from a typical wireless network in that there’s no central transmitter: every node can transmit to every other node. Mesh networks have generally been used for environmental monitoring, or to grant wireless devices Internet access.

When sensor networks have been deployed roadside, it’s usually been to monitor traffic, not parking. In urban areas, traffic-monitoring systems have been used for congestion pricing: during business hours in downtown London, for instance, the license plates of cars are photographed, and the drivers are sent a bill. Some parking garages also have signs that tell drivers where the available spaces are, but such systems generally rely on manual car counting, not sensors.

In San Francisco, however, clusters of plastic-encased, networked sensors are embedded in the surface of the street. The main sensor in the cluster, which is commonly used to detect cars, is a magnetic one, says Jim Reich, the vice president of engineering at Streetline. Magnetic sensors detect when a large metal object locally disrupts Earth’s magnetic field. One challenge with magnetic sensors is avoiding false positives. “We rely on the magnetometer the most, but in order to fix errors, we use other types of sensors [that] give you much higher reliability,” says Reich. He won’t elaborate on the supporting sensors, but he says that the Streetline system has a high ninety percent accuracy in recognizing parked cars. (more…)

Smart home, or intelligent homes, technology is no longer just for the technophile hobbyist. It’s right on the cusp of becoming mainstream.

Of course, some of this stuff has been around since the 1970s in the form of X10, the industry standard for TV remote controls.

But new wireless standards (like Insteon, ZigBee, and Z-Wave) and cheaper chipsets have enabled two-way, low-cost communication between devices.

Source: Gulf News