From: Billy Brown (bbrown@conemsco.com)
Date: Mon Mar 08 1999 - 13:50:44 MST
Michael S. Lorrey wrote:
> The unit could have a kinetic battery that uses a solenoid to
> generate power
> from the movement of the wearer.
Maybe. Current radio systems (based on cell phone tech) would need more
power than you could generate this way, but the power requirements are
dropping as the technology continues to improve.
> Only if it doesn't have a tolerance built in. Say 5 minutes. The wearer is
> notified when a signal is lost, and they MUST get to a hardwired station
to
> report their location within that time frame.
I'm picturing a system that sends a brief message at varying intervals
(otherwise the energy drain is too large to be practical). Since you don't
want the wearer to know when the next transmission is due, there will be
times when it gets blocked for perfectly legitimate reasons (subway trips,
for instance). Ideally we would like this situation to be handled by some
automated system, in order to minimize costs.
The hardwired-station idea would work, but we'd have to build an awful lot
of them (probably several hundred thousand just to cover major urban areas
in the U.S.), and even then you have to give the wearer enough time to get
to one (maybe 10-15 minutes?). Otherwise there will be lots of "false
alarms" due to innocuous activity, which will require human attention and
thus cost money.
Billy Brown, MCSE+I
bbrown@conemsco.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:03:16 MST