Category Archives: Technology

Dec 30 0 comments
Technology, Vehicle Mount Computer

Percon Teams Up for RFID and Vehicle Mount Computer Solution

Eugene, OR and Tarpon Springs, FL (December 15, 2010) – Silent Partner Technologies and Percon, Inc. have combined their respective products to deliver a forklift computer RFID solution. By integrating SPT RTLS, RFID technology and the Percon vehicle computer products into an effective forklift locator system, a warehouse manager can now instantly locate his specific forklift in any area of his expansive operation.

“Our real time locator system (RTLS) for forklifts has been proven to be very effective”, said Ted Kostis, president of Silent Partner Technologies. “With just a few additional accessories, you can combine actuators to provide a forklift safety warning system too.” SPT has engineered their RFID RTLS for small to very large distribution areas with the objective of being effective and very affordable.

” Installation is so quick and easy that customers wonder why they have not installed it sooner.  Most installations are stand-alone and require no IT involvement.  The system can also bypass Wi-Fi systems and not rob bandwidth from current applications”  – Ted Kostis, Silent Partner Technologies

“Finding the specific forklift in a large manufacturing floor or a distribution center is very difficult and time consuming.  By adding an RFID tag within our forklift computer and assigning it to the SPT RTLS gives a warehouse or distribution manager a very beneficial tool”, said James Budniakiewicz, Senior Partner with Percon.

About Percon, Inc.

Percon is a recognized innovator in the AIDC/barcoding/RFID industries. Percon, Inc. engineers, manufactures, sells and distributes industrial fixed, vehicle and vehicle mount computer products for operations suited for the harshest of environments. Application areas would include vertical industries such as warehousing, oil exploration, manufacturing, cold storage, transportation, military and public safety. Percon products are the results of over 90 years of AIDC experience plus they are complemented with the quality support service expected from the Percon legacy.

For more information on the Percon forklift computer products, please visit www.percon.com

About Silent Partner Technologies

Silent Partner Technologies, based in Tarpon Springs, Fla., is a software developer and systems integrator of leading edge RFID applications and solutions. Our RFID products enable our customers to collect, track and manage data for various valuable assets in a variety of environments and in real time. For more information, visit www.silentpartnertech.com

May 28 0 comments
Industrial and Rugged Computer News, Technology, Vehicle Mount Computer, data collection

Rugged Industrial Computers For All Seasons

Rugged industrial computers are designed to provide data collection in all kinds of weather and environments.  When you think of the outdoor seasons and its weather, you’d come up with rain, snow, sleet, heat and bitter cold.  Fixed or vehicle computers are required to take all that punishment.  let’s look into each one;

  • Rain, snow and sleet: The casing is sealed at various level of protection depending on its IP rating.  That would include the display, keyboard and ports.
  • Temperatures: Operating in the cold winters of Alaska, or a local freezer to the tropic outdoors of Puerto Rico, industrial computers can hold up to temperatures of -30 to +60 degrees centigrade.
  • Thunder, hail, wind and other natural or man made noises can interfere in the operation of an vehicle mount computer. To compensate, ruggedized computer manufactures install high volume speakers.
  • Sunlight is good for the garden but very difficult for outdoor PC operations.  Fortunately, industrial hardware have display with anti-glare to enhance visibility.

Whatever the weather, rugged industrial computers meet the challenges of their environment.
Thunderstorms over Alexandria, VA
Creative Commons License photo credit: mehul.antani

May 27 2 comments
Industrial and Rugged Computer News, Technology, Vehicle Mount Computer, data collection

Wireless Vehicle Computer

Wireless Vehicle Computer in Warehouse

Wireless Vehicle Computer in Warehouse

A summary on using  a wireless vehicle computer with barcoding.  Data collection is performed in many environments.  Some of these environments require that information be collected while in a mobile location such as car, forklift, truck or just a cart.  Of course some or most of these locations are not so PC friendly and would require a rugged industrial computer.  Since the data is collected in a mobile fashion, the vehicle mount computer needs to be connected to a network for real time data collection.  A wireless vehicle computer can have multiple real-time connections such as cellular (GSM and GPS) and WiFi.

WiFi connection enables the rugged mobile PC to act as a workstation on wheels.  A prime example would be using  the wireless vehicle computer in a warehouse operation.  The interactive information exchange can be used for many WMS software functions:

  • Receiving
  • Putwaway
  • Cross-docking
  • Inventory maintenance
  • Picking
  • Shipping
  • Inventory Count

As each functions is used, an operator can update the host main inventory data base with the latest product movements.  With inventory being continually up-to-date, web purchasing can reflect the most current available products for sale.

May 26 0 comments
Industrial and Rugged Computer News, Technology, data collection

Bar Code or Barcode or Barcoding Data Collection

No matter how you spell it, using bar code to collect information is one of the fastest and most accurate technology we can use.  A barcode represents information that is static and usually derived from a data base.  A good example would be the UPC label you see on all your products at a grocery store.  The manufacturer has the product code in a data base.  That information is printed on a label using a unique symbology (language that interprets spaces between the black and white lines). This in effects records the product code.  When using a scanner, light is emitted unto the label and the decoding symbology provides an electronic translation into the collection device. This device can be an mobile data terminal held by a person or a vehicle mount computer mounted in a car or forklift.

In summary, barcoding is a solid and established means of data collection.  It makes our lives much easier by providing the right information instantly and accurately.

May 26 0 comments
Industrial and Rugged Computer News, Technology, Vehicle Mount Computer, data collection

Wireless Data Collection

Wireless data collection is performed using various enabling technologies.  The components would consist of:

  1. a capturing and storing device such as a mobile data terminal, or vehicle mount computer(VMT), or a handheld computer such as a portable data terminal (PDT)
  2. Data scanning ability such as a barcode scanner
  3. Optionally, a RFID reader that would collect from RFID tags
  4. A means to move collected data from the mobile data terminal to the database.  This can be as simple as a USB wired download, or a WiFi connection to the rugged  industrial computer and a GSM connection to move data through a cellular network.

Wireless connectivity can also be interactive via an application that would add, update and interpret information from the mobile computer hardware.  These real time mobile computer solutions would include warehouse management, material locator,  item tracking, and many more.  The true benefit of wireless data collection is the real time results being collected with the information at the point of origin.  This makes the data most accurate and ultimately provides any user and their community with excellent services.

I♥UIBE
Creative Commons License photo credit: myuibe

May 25 0 comments
Industrial and Rugged Computer News, Technology, data collection

Data Collection 101

Information is all around us.  It is in the form of sight (pictures), sound (music), and hand written or printed (paper media).  People absorb or interface with information through communications such as television, radio, telephone, books (published media), and now more commonly through the internet.  The process of taking information from its pure form into electronic format is called data collection.

Over the years, many technologies have been invented for the capture, processing and dissemination of information.  Our most dominant tool today is the Internet.  But how did all that data get into a data base, how and where was it collected, what are the computations and formatting performed ?  In these series of posts, I will address the various technologies used to capture information in a fixed and mobile environments.  My discussions on data collection will focus on industries such manufacturing, health care, oil exploration, transportation, mobile services, logistics and supply chain.

Topics of discussion will be:

  • Barcode, barcoding, or bar code (many ways of saying the same thing)
  • RFID (radio frequency identification) and RFID applications
  • Wireless mobile computing
  • Portable data collection (batch mode)
  • Shop floor data collection
  • Various industrial devices for data capture such as mobile data terminals, forklift computers, small industrial PCs, and vehicle computers

Read more about each data collection method and its associated industries in my posts.

Bar codes (Counting to 6)
Creative Commons License photo credit: Unhindered by Talent

May 24 0 comments
Industrial and Rugged Computer News, Phoenix 104, Technology, Vehicle Mount Computer

Just one Mobile Data Terminal product Now!

After the inaugural release of the Percon Phoenix104  (like rising from the ashes) mobile data terminals, we plan on subsequent release of two new industrial computers with 12.1” and 6.4” displays.   Although it appears that screen sizes are just the changes, we are addressing our ability to manufacture according to requested configuration(s).  The Percon goal is to “right-size” the VMT to the customers’ needs and to provide a rugged terminal with JUST the required features at the right price.  …. “kind of like Dell”

Longer term plans include a portable rugged tablet… essentially a mobile data computer that is not limited to a vehicle mount computer application.  That will open opportunities in more industries.

Percon Vehicle Computer

Mobile Datata Computer and Bar coding

Mar 01 0 comments
About Percon - The company and its people, Industrial and Rugged Computer News, Phoenix 104, Phoenix 104e, Technology, Vehicle Mount Computer

Which Industries do Percon Products Fit?

Which industries does Percon plan to concentrate in? Where does our vehicle mount computer product(s) fit?

Our initial target and plan is ‘stick” with what we know best; supply chain logistics in manufacturing and wholesale trade. We are also planning on penetrating transportation, oil production,  and public safety. In reality, the need of our partners and the clients’  demand will dictate the direction of our product. But our marketing focus will be within the industries mentioned.

West Texas Sunset
Creative Commons License photo credit: Pimento Of Doom

Dec 16 0 comments
Industrial and Rugged Computer News, Phoenix 104, Phoenix 104e, Technology, Vehicle Mount Computer

Advantages of Windows Embedded CE 6.0

Let’s talk a little about the advantages of Windows CE 6.0 R3.  It is the latest release from Microsoft. But there are important advantages to the newest version and we will try to shed a little light in this area.

Microsoft lists 6 reasons why WinCE 6.0 is superior to 5.0

  1. Process address space is increased from 32MB to 1 GB.
  2. Number of processes has been increased to 32K from 32.
  3. User mode and kernel mode device drivers are possible.
  4. Device.exe, filesys.exe, GWES.exe has been moved to Kernel mode.
  5. SetKMode and set process permissions not possible.
  6. System call performance will improve

These highly technical reasons focus exclusively on the internals of the operating system and are mostly invisible to the developer or end user, with one exception.

The kernel is the core of the operating system. When Microsoft originally developed WinCE it was believed that many of the systems using it would be “headless appliances”, that is devices without displays or mass file storage. So the designers placed everything related to user interface and file systems outside of the kernel. This allowed the 32MB kernel memory space to contain more real core os features including monitoring and communications drivers, but keyboards, graphics, touch screens and file storage drivers all resided in the “Files” portion of memory and require a task switch to access the rest of the OS. Moving everything into the kernel means less task switching for the OS, resulting in faster execution of applications. Some estimates go as high as 20% faster execution for applications with high levels of graphics interface, such as on screen mapping.

But there are additional reasons why WinCE 6.0 is superior to 5.0.

  1. WinCE 6.0 is fully integrated with Visual Studio 2005. This allows application developers to use the same tools for Windows development as was used for the WinCE development. Visual Studio 2005 also contains an emulation feature which allows application development to begin before hardware has been purchased.
  2. .NET 3.5 in natively supported in the OS and doesn’t have to be added by your application, keeping your applications smaller.
  3. WinCE 6.0 R3 includes Internet Explorer Embedded and Silverlight which allows more robust browser applications to be written.
  4. WinCE 6.0 includes AYGShell API, which ensures compatibility with Windows Mobile applications. This can be important for applications intended to be used by both Vehicle computers and Windows Mobile based handhelds.
  5. Bluetooth is an integrated driver in WinCE 6.0 and works more seamlessly in the OS and faster as its part of the kernel as described above.
  6. WinCE 6.0 R3 includes Touch Gestures, similar to what is used in iPhones, opening up the possibly of a whole new generation of exciting applications.

So while many hardware vendors are still selling forklift computers and mobile data terminals  based on Windows CE 5.0 or even 4.2, it’s important to look for devices that use WinCE 6.0 to get the most out of your application!

If you want to learn more visit http://www.e-consystems.com/WindowsCE5vs6.asp or http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee504812.aspx.

Dec 09 0 comments
Industrial and Rugged Computer News, Technology, Vehicle Mount Computer, forklift computer

Understanding the Nema and IP Rating Systems

Contribution by Ujiro

Electricity and water do not go together well, as I am sure that most people are aware. But dust is just as bad for electrical components as is water. Dust hangs in the size of tiny dust particles to larger particles that fall and nothing to hold. Dust can also consist of any materials from the benign skin cells in household dust, conductive metals and liquid particles, harmful for the electrical equipment. Dust also has the nasty habit of blocking filters.

Dust and water are often combined in an industrial environment, which is why electrical equipment, which is produced is operating in circumstances is a rating by both the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). The European IP rating is a numerical standard, a piece of electrical equipment to the level of protection given the ERGO.

The IP–Rating is a two-digit number each digit a separate number code to indicate the protection, the lower the number, the lower the protection and the higher the number the harsher environment it can withstand. The first digit stands for the dust-protection that is granted, the second digit stands for waterproof protection. For example, is an IP65-computer with the highest possible protection (dust IP rating of 0 to 6), with a moderate level of waterproof protection enabling the unit to be protected from water jets, but not enough by immersion in water (water protection of 0 to 8).

The NEMA is very similar to the European system except that in most cases a single ascending number higher (13 is the highest), the number of higher degree of protection is granted. Although some ratings such as Nema 4 which to similar protection that does not offer protection IP65 Nema 4xoffer additional anti-corrosion protection (in most cases, the housing units would be made of stainless steel rather than mild steel therefore able, in the catering and manufacturing) are used.

Check the ratings on the Percon fixed and vehicle mount computer products.