On Monday, May 11, I was honored to present my work at a very prestigious IEEE conference on Homeland Security technologies, held in Waltham, MA. During the technical session on the interoperability and field deployable communications, I gave a presentation on the design and development of a software defined Project 25 data base station. Here is a picture taken during my presentation:

First, I took a couple minutes to introduce data communication and talk about potential benefits of having data messages in public safety communication system. I continued my presentation by talking about the problem of very expensive Project 25 equipment that hinders the implementation of data communication in small police departments. Our approach towards a software defined data base station seems a promising and cost effective way for local departments to bring data messages into their cruisers. A very precise and rigorous testing procedure performed in our laboratory showed the compliance of the base station with commercially available P25 radio equipment. Also, the test procedure produced promising and encouraging results prior the real world deployment in a local NH police department. Finally, I concluded my presentation with a demo video which demonstrates an application of querying a remote server using the data base station and Project54’s speech user interface. Here are the slides:

After the presentation I answered a few great questions and received a lot of positive comments about our work on the radio interoperability at UNH and Project54.

Special thanks to Dan Farfan from KinetX Inc., who was so kind to take pictures of me presenting.

Ivan Elhart

Last Thursday we held a Project54 Open House celebrating the ten year anniversary of this effort. The event was held at our new garage facility in Morse Hall, on the UNH Durham campus. We’ve just recently moved into this facility, which was renovated for our use with the generous support of UNH CEPS Dean Joe Klewicki.

The turnout was excellent: 26 first responders, as well as around 40 faculty, staff, students, industry partners (our colleagues from 54ward) and friends attended the event. Ross Lenharth (picture below, left), the person in charge of the Project54 technology deployment effort, greeted our guests and Tom Prasol (picture below, right), Project Director in Senator Judd Gregg’s Portsmouth, NH office conveyed Senator Gregg’s congratulations and hopes for continued success.

Several first responder agencies helped out by demonstrating various aspects of the Project54 system as it is deployed in their vehicles. Lieutenant Mark Liebl of the New Hampshire State Police was on hand to demonstrate the Project54 system in a cruiser. Cruisers of the Lee, NH Police and the Merrimack County Sheriff’s office are equipped with mobile network cards that allow officers to access remote databases using a commercial wireless network. Sergeant Tom Dronsfield from Lee and Corporal Brendan Merchant from Merrimack County Sheriff’s were on hand to demonstrate this capability. The Project54 system is also used in firefighting applications as demonstrated by Inspector Brendan O’Sullivan from the Durham Fire Department and Chief Tom Perly from the Madbury Fire Department.

All of us at Project54 want to thank the first responders who helped us make this open house a success. We also want to thank all of our guests for helping us celebrate our anniversary. Finally, we thank Senator Gregg for his continued support of Project54.

You can see more pictures from the event on Flickr.

Andrew Kun

Last week an interesting lecture was held by Dr. Frank Rudolph of Beacon Power about flywheel energy storage systems as part of the UNH’s energy club series of seminars on renewable energy.

Flywheels are not a new concept, but the technological development in the last 10 years or so made it feasible to become a commercial product. How a flywheel storage system works? The concept is actually pretty simple: it absorbs energy from the grid and stores it in a high-density rotating flywheel. The flywheel thus acts as a kinetic energy battery. Since it spins at very high speeds (>20000 rpm) it is capable of providing very high bursts of energy in a very short period of time. It consists of an electric motor enclosed in a vacuum container and suspended on magnetic bearings. This way almost no losses are encountered due to inertia in the bearings and the surrounding air. After the power loss the motor acts as a generator, converting stored kinetic energy into electric energy.

There are many possible uses for flywheels: trains, cars, uninterruptible power supplies, pulse power, but one of the most interesting is the frequency regulation of the grid. By observing frequency changes it is possible to determine if the power demand is higher (frequency drops) or lower (frequency rises) than the supply. Given the property of the flywheels to deliver high amounts of energy in short periods of time, it sounds like a very promising solution to a very complex problem of power management.

Zeljko Medenica

On Thursday, April 30th 2009, the Office of International Students and Scholars‘ Circle Group visited our lab to learn about Project54 and to try the simulator. I am a regular member of this group of students and scholars that meets every Thursday at noon in the MUB Entertainment Center when school is in session. It’s a great way to meet other international students and share our experiences. First we started off with demonstrating the lab car:

Next, Dassie tested the speech user interface of P54.

Then we moved on to the simulator. Here Morgen is driving through one of our city scenarios.

The above image has a cool space-warp speeding effect, courtesy of Hyomin Kim, who was kind enough to take the photos for us. More pictures of the visit can be found here.

It seemed to me that everyone liked the simulator and were happy to experience something new. I surely enjoyed showing them our lab.

Oskar

Last Wednesday the Project54 lab hosted the April meeting of the New Hampshire Usability Professionals Association (the NH section of the Usability Professionals Association). What does the NHUPA do? Here is what Michael Hawley, Senior VP for Experience Design at Mad*Pow, and NHUPA president, has to say on this topic:

The New Hampshire Chapter of the Usability Professionals’ Association (UPA) provides networking and professional development opportunities for usability professionals, information architects, interaction designers, and other user experience professionals and students in the Seacoast and Southern NH regions. The professionals are dedicated to designing technology and software that is easy to use, useful and engaging. Our mission is to foster the growth of the local usability community and to provide an environment for members to exchange information on job opportunities, tips, tools, methodologies, and technologies related to usability.

The meeting started with a lab open house during which Oszkar Palinko, Zeljko Medenica and I discussed aspects of the Project54 effort related to user interface development and deployment in vehicles. After the open house I gave a presentation introducing two of our studies (Oszkar’s PTT glove study and a study exploring the use of navigation aids in cars). Here are a couple of pictures from the event (more on Flickr):

The 20 people who attended this meeting had excellent questions and suggestions for us, and it was a pleasure to talk to so many of them. Thanks to Michael Hawley for bringing this meeting to UNH, thanks to Kyle Soucy of Usable Interface for recommending the Project54 lab as a good venue for a NHUPA meeting, and thanks to UPA members who visited and spent time talking to us.

Andrew Kun

UPDATE: More pictures on Flickr by Kyle Soucy.