SCADA, Telematics & GPS Technologies

Want to help save some lions in Kenya? Well, help these guys make some open source lion-tracking collars, complete with GPS and GSM on board.

Lions are not doing too well in Kenya, with only 2,000 or so left. Two groups called Lion Guardians and Living with Lions are dedicated to studying and saving the diminished lion population. In order to help them out, Justin Downs of Brooklyn’s GRND Lab built them a solar-powered treehouse last year. Now, he’s working on some of the aforementioned collars to help them track the lions.

He’s looking for donations on Kickstarter for the project now, so if your passions create a Venn diagram between open-source hardware and lions, well, here you go.

Source Kickstarter via Clay Shirky

Sparky with his hack to allow interaction with the core of an Aldi GO Cruise 4300 GPS Windows CE OS. All that’s required is a few programs and registry edits to the GPS, which anyone can accomplish within a few minutes. But, suggested you go slow and double-check your work, anyway; nobody wants a bricked system. After you’re done you can run such great programs like the one Sparky suggest for 4WD enthusiasts,Ozi Explorer.

via Hack a Day

In an attempt to create more interaction with our vehicles, researchers have created AIDA. AIDA is basically a car computer and GPS that has some well designed personification. That cute little face will learn your daily habits and schedules and make recommendations to keep you out of traffic. We really like the idea, and the little bit we see of AIDA already has us falling in love, but won’t the placement be a distraction? We already know some people who give their car a name and treat it like a person, we don’t want to imagine what would happen if their car actually had some interactive personality. AIDA’s motion and emotive display are worthy of the crabfu challenge for sure, but do we want AIDA on our dashboard? Yes, most emphatically. She can sit right by the little hula girl.

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Nissan has announced a new driving aid system called the Navigation-Cooperative Intelligent Pedal which basically uses data from the car’s satellite navigation system to help smoothen the drive when it comes to a curving road.

How many times have you approached a bend and then suddenly realised you’ve gone in too fast? Can you see ahead past a blind corner in a bend? Some bends can sharpen mid-way… and then you panic and have to deal with understeer or worse! If the system detects that you are about to do this, it sounds an audible warning.

If you persist, the system moves the accelerator pedal upwards to assist the driver to release it. Once the foot is lifted off, the system will smoothly reduce vehicle speed by braking. The system will debut on the new Nissan Fuga when it is unveiled in fall 2009. As it currently is, the Fuga is the Japanese name for the Infiniti M.

A similiar system was introduced earlier this year on the Toyota Crown Majesta, though it doesn’t work exactly the same. The Toyota system uses gear changes and engine braking to help slow the car down in anticipation of a corner (the car is aware of this via the in-car GPS system too) or a toll booth.

In addition to that, the Toyota system will activate a brake-assist function if it thinks the driver is too late in decelerating when approaching a stop sign or a junction.

Here’s more info on the Connex Stolen Vehicle Recovery system that is currently an option with the Accord.

The system is actually by the Cobra vehicle security company, and is pretty reknown. For example, the Italian company’s Connex systems are being used by alot of companies such as Audi France where they use Connex as the standard alarm and recovery solution for the Q7, A8, S, RS and V8-engined cars.

When you buy the package from Honda at RM3,660 inclusive of installation, first year annual service fee (RM360) and a compensation guarantee (optional and worth RM140), it will be installed at the Honda dealer. This package is currently for Peninsular Malaysia cars only, and comes with a 3 year warranty.

Now what is the compensation guarantee? Basically if your car is recovered within 72 hours of theft management notification, you get cash of up to RM5,000 and bills of up to RM5,000. This covers bills for repair and replacement of damaged parts.

If the stolen vehicle is not recovered within 72 hours, you get a cash compensation of RM15,000 and a RM15,000 subsidy at Honda dealers for a new car if the car is not recovered at all. If recovered after 72 hours, you get a RM5,000 compensation for repair and replacement of parts related to the theft.

The system operates based on GPS to track the vehicle location and a GSM-based communication device that runs on the cellular networks to communicate with the Cobra Connex operation center. The annual fee of RM360 (first year free) covers the GSM device charges, you will not have to pay any extra cash to maintain the Connex system’s GSM SIM card.

Source: Paultan.org

[florin] was given the task of repairing a gps unit that wouldn’t boot up. what he found was unfortunately a bad processor. fortunately, he was able to make a project out of it. after scavenging the good bits, the gps module and the lcd, he set about making it a usb device. he now has an eeepc with gps.

Source: Hack A Day

The Mumbai terrorists used an array of commercial technologies — from Blackberries to GPS navigators to anonymous e-mail accounts — to pull off their heinous attacks.

For years, terrorists and insurgents around the world have used off-the-shelf hardware and software to stay ahead of bigger, better-funded authorities. In 2007, former U.S. Central Command chief Gen. John Abizaid complained that, with their Radio Shack stockpile of communications gear, “this enemy is better networked than we are.” The strikes that killed at least 174 appears to be another example of how wired today’s “global guerrillas” can be.

As they approached Mumbai by boat, the terrorists “steered the vessel using GPS equipment,” according to the Daily Mail. A satellite phone was later found aboard.

Once the coordinated attacks began, the terrorists were on their cell phones constantly. They used BlackBerries “to monitor international reaction to the atrocities, and to check on the police response via the internet,” the Courier Mail reports.

The gunmen were able to trawl the internet for information after cable television feeds to the two luxury hotels and office block were cut by the authorities.

The men looked beyond the instant updates of the Indian media to find worldwide reaction to the events in Mumbai, and to keep abreast of the movements of the soldiers sent to stop them.

Outside of Leopold’s Cafe, “one of the gunmen seemed to be talking on a mobile phone even as he used his other hand to fire off rounds,” an eyewitness told The New York Times.

The terror group then took credit for the bloodshed with a series of e-mails to local media. They used a “remailer” service to mask their identities; earlier attacks were claimed from cyber cafes.

[Photo: AP; plugged in: CA, Giz]

Gizmo is a remote-controlled toy monster truck which has been tricked out by Calit2 UCSD researchers. At just 20″x14″x11″ in size, it is tiny when compared to regular trucks, but it can deliver something that they cannot: an adaptable and reliable research platform which is reconfigurable for the task at hand.

Gizmo’s “tricks” are treats for researchers. Each truck has a Calit2 CalMesh ad-hoc network board which is equipped with both wireless local area network (WLAN) and global positioning system (GPS) cards. Basic features currently include full motor capabilities (forward, reverse, braking), an override circuit for manual remote control and a web-enabled camera.

The underlying motivation of the Gizmo project is to create an autonomous multi-radio platform that can be controlled by many kinds of interfaces and can be used for a wide variety of applications, such as, disaster response environments, radio frequency (RF) mapping, data gathering and educational purposes, as well as others.

Source: Calit2

The idea of this technology is to develop collision free traffic in the future where cars are control by centralized traffic controller, following the successful of fly-by-wire technology that have been applied in aviation field for years. In the future where most areas are covered by WLAN or WIMAX wireless signals, all vehicles are controlled by central traffic controller where passengers only need to key in their destinations into the cockpit control panel.