Tuesday 16 July 2013

Tracking technology

Kudos to Cardiff City Council's Highways Department. The Meadow Street hole in the road reported by Clare on Friday was patched yesterday morning, before I was awake enough to notice.
What's going on under the surface to create subsidence is anybody's guess, and digging up the entire road to investigate may absorb the street's road maintenance budget for the next few years. The subsidence is not as bad as last time, but the reason for it remains as hidden as before.

I went into College at lunchtime to deliver a text I'd written for Peter to read, and catch up on the news. I hope to forge some useful links between Cowbridge Benefice Ministerial Development programme and St Michael's Core Skills training activity in the coming year.

Today, I drove Ashley to the Chepstow headquarters of our suppliers PMR Products with a couple of dozen radio handsets for re-configuration. Some of our radio handsets need to be adjusted so that their GPS tracking capability can be utilised, to make sure that lone radio users can be tracked on duty around the city centre.

We had an interesting conversation with Phil, one of their engineers about the use of 'mesh' technology to track tagged equipment in an area covered by a linked series of reception devices, not in an industrial warehouse, but in an American retirement village that needs to track defibrillation equipment, and other strategic items to ensure inhabitant safety.

A few days ago there was a news item on Radio Four about tagging Alzheimer's sufferers using a 'mesh' network so that if they wander off they can be found without raising too much anxiety. Somehow this acquired a new significance after our little chat.
   

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