Project54 Brad Bell on 27 Sep 2007 11:20 am
Project54 for the NH Marine Patrol
On August 23 Project54 was installed for the first time on a NH Marine Patrol boat. This installation is Project54’s first attempt to adapt to the marine environment and is the result of close collaboration with NH Marine Patrol officers.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with Project54, the system was created to improve the safety and effectiveness of police officers by introducing advanced technologies into police cruisers. The project has been very successful in this domain, however, the police vehicle environment differs greatly from that of the marine patrol boat. Correspondingly, these differences present a new set of challenges in the development of a Project54 solution.
Pictures of the marine patrol installation can be seen below. The top picture shows shows the ruggedized waterproof tablet that is being used to run the Project54 software, and the bottom picture shows the hardware that we have installed. This includes third party hardware (e.g. control boxes for lights) as well as Project54 hardware, such as the three smaller black boxes in the bottom right of the picture. These boxes act as translators between the CAN bus that Project54 uses for inter-device messaging, and the native messaging of the individual devices (e.g. RS-232). The physical installation is the work of Dan Jones, Project54 technician.
The system that was installed is only a prototype. There are a number of questions that remain about the effect the environment will have on the use of Project54. Currently, Marine Patrol officers are evaluating the system. As we receive feedback the system will evolve to meet officers’ needs and improve their effectiveness and safety. I’ll keep you posted on our progress.
Brad Bell
on 28 Sep 2007 at 8:21 pm 1.andrewkun said …
In the bottom picture you show devices that still seem to be exposed to the salty air. Is this a concern?
Andrew Kun
on 01 Oct 2007 at 12:51 pm 2.Brad Bell said …
Exposure to the salty air is definitely a concern and the hardware shown should be more protected. One solution that was discussed beforehand was to keep all Project54 hardware in a well sealed, easy to access case. However, going into the install we did not know exactly where anything would be going, or how much space we could use, so we did not bring one. Now that we know how much space we have to work with we can search for an appropriately sized case.