ColdTrak, the leading Cold Chain vehicle tracking system from market leading GPS tracking specialists CMS SupaTrak is helping UK businesses save money on cold chain running costs thanks to the tracking applications
The cold chain monitoring solution enables fleet managers to get more control of their cold chain fleets by tracking the exact location of their vehicles whilst allowing their drivers to monitor the precise temperatures of refrigerated cargo saving them considerable costs.
In accordance to EU regulation EN 12830:1999 all cold chain businesses must now supervise the exact temperature of chilled or refrigerated goods whilst in transit ColdTrak has proven to be an indispensable business asset.
ColdTrak works using the very latest ZigBee technology and uses robust sensors that send precise temperature recordings from the refrigerated trailer to a central information hub or system in the cab with the driver. Should there be any changes in temperature the driver will be notified and the correct action can be taken.
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.
ZigBee is a low-power communication system using digital radios. It’s intended to be easier to work with than Bluetooth. Adafruit recently added an adapter board for Digi’s XBee product line and has put together a great how-to to show the devices potential. Using two XBee radios and adapters you can wirelessly program an Arduino board. This would be great if your Arduino was installed in an inaccessible area or maybe it’s over 100feet away from where you’re working. The radios do serial communication just fine. What the how-to covers is getting the reset line working so the Arduino can restart automatically after you program it. Once the radio pair is configured properly, it will pass the RTS line state directly from one device to the other.
[nmarquardt] has put up an interesting instructable that covers building RFID tags. Most of them are constructed using adhesive copper tape on cardstock. The first version just has a cap and a low power LED to prove that the antenna is receiving power. The next iteration uses tilt switches so the tag is only active in certain orientations. The conclusion shows several different variations: different antenna lengths, conductive paint, light activated and more.
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.
GainSpan has a chip that can curb energy consumption in the home, and notify your doctor if you’re about to have a heart attack.
The company has produced an energy efficient WiFi chip that it hopes to install in dryers, electrical meters and other devices in the home. The idea is that utilities and consumers will shut off and/or power down appliances with wireless signals remotely to curb electricity consumption.
GainSpan is currently working with manufacturers to insert its chip into cold storage units, meters and other devices. Hitachi Plant Technologies, the industrial technology arm of the Japanese giant, makes sensors incorporating GainSpan’s chips. The company was spun out of Intel.
Source: GreenTechMedia
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.
Using the ZigBee wireless protocol, Fourier Systems’ DataNet wireless data loggers offer 4 recording inputs for direct measurement and recording of PT-100 thermocouple (J, K, and T), voltage, current, frequency, and pulse. The devices come with internal temperature sensors, a 4-channel RF logger, operating keypad, LCD display, and a monitoring network. Long range monitoring is possible with multiple alarms, including SMS and e-mail, to any location. Each unit serves as a transmission repeater to neighboring units to form a mesh network of up to 65,000 nodes.
When engineers tackle a project that uses ZigBee communications they may get a surprise. Unlike point-to-point communications, ZigBee involves a network that can establish nodes, repeaters and complex mesh topologies. The proper test tools–often called “sniffers”–help engineers diagnose ZigBee-network problems that could otherwise turn into nightmares.
Microchip Technology includes the ZENA Wireless Network Analyzer with its PICDEM Z demonstration kit so engineers can see what goes on among ZigBee devices. The ZENA tool also can sniff and decode Microchip’s MiWi protocol that, like ZigBee, uses IEEE 802.15.4 radios. According to Steve Bible, an applications engineering manager at Microchip, ZENA time stamps packets and displays them in a graphical format. ”
The screen shows the destination and source addresses, the payload and the data,” explained Bible. “We add some color coding and provide data as hexadecimal values. Users also see a received signal strength indication, or RSSI–an uncalibrated relative value.”
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“ZigBee and IEEE 802.15.4 technologies require a shift in how we analyze and manage ad-hoc wireless networks,” said Matt Perkins, VP of technology development at Awarepoint, a supplier of wireless asset-tracking systems. “An analyzer should take time-sliced snapshots of network traffic, ‘mine’ the traffic for metrics such as throughput, bottlenecks and end-to-end delays, and presents information in a concise graphical form.”
Company Intamac has launched its broadband home monitoring products and services with WoonVeilig in The Netherlands. The BT Home Monitor