I bought one of these Velocity Micro T301 7” Cruz Tablets and I think it’s a great value at $60. Seriously under-powered for high performance Android apps, it’s still perfect as a book reader, web browser, e-mail reader, or even for listening to music (through headphones, not the wimpy speakers) or watching YouTube and other non-flash media. Woot is a one-deal-a-day commerce site, so act now if you want one. Enjoy!
May 022012
Q-Track’s A-Team traveled to upstate New York the other day to show off NFER RTLS for tactical training at Tactical Conference 2012. Here’s the press release:
May 01, 2012 -
Verona, NY – Q-Track Corporation, the pioneer in Near-Field Electromagnetic Ranging, will demonstrate NFER Real-Time Location Systems (RTLS) products in and around Booth 515 at Tactical Conference ‘12 today through May 3 at Turning Stone Resort in Verona, NY.The high accuracy and low cost of NFER RTLS products allow Q-Track’s Dosimulation™
Systems to provide unprecedented realism in simulated dosimetry and radiation worker training. Now NFER RTLS is available in products suitable for Military Operations Urban Terrain (MOUT) training or for other tactical training applications indoors, underground, or anywhere GPS is not available. NFER RTLS may be deployed as a stand-alone system in support of after-action reviews, or integrated for use in other training systems. In a demonstration at a MOUT training range, Q-Track deployed four QT-550 Locator-Receivers to track tags to a typical accuracy of 30cm-1m within a 50m x 50m (165ft x 165ft) city block, including in and around three buildings. A video is available below:
About Tactical Conference 2012: Sponsored by the New York Tactical Officers Association (NYTOA) and New York Association of Hostage Negotiators, the 6th annual Tactical Training Conference and Exposition is a culmination of what the NYTOA is all about: training, sharing information, and networking with peers and companies who make tactical officers’ jobs safer and more effective. The program brings together an exceptional instructor cadre, conference training agenda, and vendor show. Visit http://www.nytacticalexpo.com/
for details. About Q-Track and NFER RTLS: Q-Track, a privately held company located in Huntsville, AL, has been pioneering NFER technology since 2002. Q-Track’s NFER technology is the basis of the Dosimulation system piloted at Southern Company’s Plant Vogtle nuclear facility. RFID Journal recognized the breakthrough nature of Q-Track’s innovative NFER RTLS offering with a “Best-In-Show, Finalist,” designation for the third annual RFID Journal Awards. The Nuclear Energy Institute awarded Southern Company the 2010 Top Industry Practice (TIP) Award for Training for their use of Q-Track’s NFER RTLS-based “Dosimulation”
system. Q Track’s NFER RTLS is also employed in a proximity detection system and other location awareness products. For more information, visit the company’s website at http://www.q- track.com . “NFER” “Dosimulation”and “Q-Track” are trademarks or registered trademarks of the Q-Track Corporation.
Satellite navigation was first described in U.S. Patent 3,172,108 (1965).
A couple of years ago, I surveyed the origins of the GPS system in a Sputnik-inspired satellite navigation system that operated using Doppler shift measurements of satellite signals. The TRANSIT or NAVSAT system yielded 100m – 400m location accuracy (accounts vary).
The system included several firsts: the first nuclear powered satellite (Transit 4A) as well as the first satellite damaged in a nuclear blast (Transit 4B damaged by the United States Starfish Prime high-altitude nuclear test in 1962).
Transit was increasingly overshadowed by the superior performance of GPS and ceased operation in 1996.
Here’s a very informative Navy training video dating back to 1967 providing an excellent overview of the system and how it worked.
Michael Faraday (1791-1867) devised the concept of electric and magnetic fields and discovered the principle of induction which makes possible electric motors and generators (image courtesy, Wikimedia Commons).
Any student of electromagnetics knows the story – Michael Faraday devised the ingenious concept that electric and magnetic effects were due to “fields” pervading space. Applying this simple concept, he was able to devise and demonstrate the phenomenon of induction, discovering the physics that gives rise to electric motors and generators. Faraday’s fundamental insight inspired James Clerk Maxwell who, a generation later, cast Faraday’s nebulous field conception in rigorous mathematical form. By so doing, Maxwell predicted the existence of electromagnetic waves – the properties of which Hertz established and proved yet another generation later.
As usual, there’s more to the story.
One hundred eighty years ago today, on March 12, 1832, Faraday wrote a secret letter predicting the existence of electromagnetic waves. Faraday submitted his letter to the Secretary of the Royal Society of London where it lay for over a century in a strong box. The letter only came to light when it was opened by Sir William Bragg on June 24, 1937. The only online publication of this letter in its entirety appears to be in Google Book results such as for Garratt’s The Early History of Radio, the text in which I found it, or in journal articles behind pay walls. Faraday’s magnificent foresight deserves more attention than it has thus far received, so I’m delighted to share Faraday’s letter in full, after the break.
Today's Google Doodle honors Heinrich Hertz on the 155th anniversary of his birth.
Today’s Google Doodle honors Heinrich Hertz (1857-1893), discoverer of radio waves, on the 155th anniversary of his birth.
Heinrich Hertz was not the first to experiment with radio waves. Contemporaries such as Charles Hughes and Oliver Lodge performed similar work in parallel. What set Hertz apart, however, was his tenacity in teasing out the properties of electromagnetic waves from the brilliant use of crude instrumentation – up to and including attempting to use frog legs as RF detectors. Hertz further provided a comprehensive theoretical framework for understanding radio waves. Among Hertz’s antenna discoveries were the half-wave dipole, end-loaded dipole, and the parabolic reflector. He also employed loop antennas. Hertz also first worked out the near-field physics that makes Q-Track’s NFER® Real-Time Location Systems possible.
One of the best summaries of Hertz’s work I’ve seen may be found in Glenn S. Smith’s An Introduction to Classical Electromagnetic Radiation. But really, every student of electromagnetism and antennas ought to read the master straight from the source, his Electric Waves, published in 1893.
Hertz accomplished more in his all-to-short life than most, and I applaud Google for honoring the debt we all owe him.
The FCC incorrectly connected the horizontal antenna when they updated the seal in their conference room last year. Despite having the error brought to their attention last year, they have not corrected the wiring error.
LightSquared, the company that sought to re-purpose their satellite spectrum adjacent to GPS to a terrestrial wireless network appears to have suffered a fatal blow to their plans. Matthew Boyle at the Daily Caller describes the politics behind LightSquared’s maneuverings as the FCC’s Solyndra. Ars Technica has a good summary of the technical reasons why LightSquared failed. But I was struck by the fact that the FCC still has not corrected a technical flaw in their logo.
Look closely at the FCC seal behind the commissioner in the Daily Caller photo. One of the three horizontal antenna wires has two connections. Another has none. Amazingly, the FCC has known about this issue with their seal for nearly a year now. Spectrum guru Michael Marcus sent broke the story last April, reporting how broadcast consultant Dane Eriksen advised them of the mistake and asked them to correct it. As Marcus notes:
The seal in the Commission Meeting Room may not bother lawyers, but drives engineers crazy and may be a symbol of the state of technical things at FCC.
The technically flawed seal is an apt metaphor of politics trumping technology at the FCC. Fortunately in the LightSquared case, the GPS community was able to muster enough political push-back to keep LightSquared from causing substantial interference to the existing community of GPS users. Hat tip: Glenn Reynolds.
Update: I see the Daily Caller also picked up on the FCC’s seal problem last year.
Entrepreneur Steven Gary Blank delivers an outstanding lecture on “The Secret History of Silicon Valley.” The story is in large part how Frederick Terman invented the culture of entrepreneurship at Stanford and Silicon Valley in the aftermath of World War II. Blank’s lecture is peppered with fascinating details. For instance, I was interested to learn that DARPA backed radio astronomy in the 1950s so as to gather intelligence on Soviet radar signals using moon bounce techniques. I could quibble a bit with his characterization of WWII as the “first electronic war.” That honor rightly belongs to WWI where key battles like Tannenberg and Jutland hinged on signals intelligence (see: RTLS: Direction-Finding Goes to War). And a purist might go back to the use of telegraphy in the American Civil War. But that’s a minor complaint. Watch and enjoy below, or click through for this transcript of Blank’s talk.
Hat tip: Dewayne Hendricks.
Dec 022011
When Bob Cringely produced Triumph of the Nerds in 1995, he interviewed Steve Jobs. This was back when Jobs was with NeXT Computing and before he’d retaken the helm at Apple. Cringely used only a small portion of the interview and the rest was feared lost when the master tapes were missing. Back in October, however, the director of the show found the original footage in a box in his garage. Cringely details the story of the lost interview here.
Now, the interview is coming to the big screen in select theaters. Here’s a trailer:
I’m passing on another press release from my company, Q-Track. The Q-Track team at I/ITSEC is having a great show and wanted to share this video, filmed yesterday, of their live demonstration.
ORLANDO, FL – December 1, 2011. Q-Track’s NFER Real-Time Location System (RTLS) demonstration wowed attendees during the first days of I/ITSEC 2011 — the world’s premier modeling, simulation, and training conference. Q-Track’s live NFER RTLS demonstration tracked not just within Q-Track’s booth, but also throughout the adjacent area. NFER or “Near-Field Electromagnetic Ranging” exploits the near-field physics of low frequency signals to deliver highly accurate real-time tracking at substantial ranges, even in difficult non-line-of-sight environments. The real-time updates, low latency, and low cost have drawn particular praise. In addition to U.S. attendees, visitors from the UK, China, Belgium, Sweden, Canada, the Czech Republic, and Israel all witnessed the demonstration. Today, December 1, is the last opportunity to see the demonstration live at Booth #2737, but a video is available at this link.
NFER RTLS is available in products suitable for Military Operations Urban Terrain (MOUT) training or for other training applications indoors, underground, or anywhere GPS is not available. The Q-Track system may be deployed in a stand-alone fashion in support of after-action reviews, or integrated for use in other training systems.
About Q-Track and NFER RTLS: Q-Track, a privately held company located in Huntsville, AL, has been pioneering NFER technology since 2002. Q-Track’s NFER technology is the basis of the Dosimulation system piloted at Southern Company’s Plant Vogtle nuclear facility. RFID Journal recognized the breakthrough nature of Q-Track’s innovative NFER RTLS offering with a “Best-In-Show, Finalist,” designation for the third annual RFID Journal Awards. The Nuclear Energy Institute awarded Southern Company the 2010 Top Industry Practice (TIP) Award for Training for their use of Q-Track’s NFER RTLS-based “Dosimulation” system. Q Track’s NFER RTLS is also employed in a proximity detection system and other location awareness products. For more information, visit the company’s website at www.q-track.com. “NFER” “Dosimulation” and “Q-Track” are trademarks or registered trademarks of the Q-Track Corporation.
