Re: Tracking vehicles by GPS (LONG)
Discussion
This - possibly salutary tale and related to other posts herein - is taken from a forum to which I subscribe and edited to reduce its length:
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Headline news [last week] in Germany, as well as in papers with an eye on Europe, has been the failure of the Toll Collect consortium to deliver a toll-collection system for heavy goods vehicles that use the German Autobahn network.
The system is based on GPS tracking of heavy goods vehicles, using boxes ("On Board Units", OBU) carried in the vehicles. The OBUs contain GPS receivers, and forward their data to a central data installation using European standard GSM mobile telephony.
In-service date was supposed to be 31 August 2003. There are estimated to be 1.4 million trucks which should pay a toll, of which 400,000 are from other lands. It was planned to deliver 450,000 OBUs by the in-service date; other users were to use static machines at entry points. There were problems with the OBUs, and even five weeks after in-service date only 210,000 had been installed. There were also problems with the bookkeeping software at the data center, which turned out not to have appropriate interoperability with other systems used by truck operators.
The development costs are said to lie somewhat over EUR 600M (which is the value of the low-price offer from a Swiss toll-system company, that couldn't provide the necessary insurance and was eliminated early).
Many technology-savvies have no problem in believing that such a system could be delivered in good working order in three or four years.
Oh, yes, a word or two on the technical issues. Putting the blame on "software problems" tells us little. It could have been that the software development process did not measure up to best practice; it could also have been that difficult engineering issues that could not be solved in the hardware were pushed into the software and the software development team didn't know how to solve them either. It could also have been that there were design or specification problems which first manifested themselves, or needed to be solved, in SW. Most likely, it was all three.
The Economist says that "important features were left out of the software, such as the ability to work with the payment cards and accounting systems used by most trucking firms. Worse, gremlins charged trucks for being near motorways, rather than on them, or drained batteries while engines were switched off". German sources give a more specific, longer list of particular problems.
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Clearly it's not just the UK that has no difficulty in spending taxpayer's money on technology schemes that fail to work.
And whilst the correspondent says that "such a system could be delivered in good working order in three or four years", the history of such schemes tells against that happening.
Note also the emboldened text. Are you surprised?
Streaky
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Headline news [last week] in Germany, as well as in papers with an eye on Europe, has been the failure of the Toll Collect consortium to deliver a toll-collection system for heavy goods vehicles that use the German Autobahn network.
The system is based on GPS tracking of heavy goods vehicles, using boxes ("On Board Units", OBU) carried in the vehicles. The OBUs contain GPS receivers, and forward their data to a central data installation using European standard GSM mobile telephony.
In-service date was supposed to be 31 August 2003. There are estimated to be 1.4 million trucks which should pay a toll, of which 400,000 are from other lands. It was planned to deliver 450,000 OBUs by the in-service date; other users were to use static machines at entry points. There were problems with the OBUs, and even five weeks after in-service date only 210,000 had been installed. There were also problems with the bookkeeping software at the data center, which turned out not to have appropriate interoperability with other systems used by truck operators.
The development costs are said to lie somewhat over EUR 600M (which is the value of the low-price offer from a Swiss toll-system company, that couldn't provide the necessary insurance and was eliminated early).
Many technology-savvies have no problem in believing that such a system could be delivered in good working order in three or four years.
Oh, yes, a word or two on the technical issues. Putting the blame on "software problems" tells us little. It could have been that the software development process did not measure up to best practice; it could also have been that difficult engineering issues that could not be solved in the hardware were pushed into the software and the software development team didn't know how to solve them either. It could also have been that there were design or specification problems which first manifested themselves, or needed to be solved, in SW. Most likely, it was all three.
The Economist says that "important features were left out of the software, such as the ability to work with the payment cards and accounting systems used by most trucking firms. Worse, gremlins charged trucks for being near motorways, rather than on them, or drained batteries while engines were switched off". German sources give a more specific, longer list of particular problems.
========================================================================
Clearly it's not just the UK that has no difficulty in spending taxpayer's money on technology schemes that fail to work.
And whilst the correspondent says that "such a system could be delivered in good working order in three or four years", the history of such schemes tells against that happening.
Note also the emboldened text. Are you surprised?
Streaky
I know a german co with a few trucks, its been a nightmare.
Plus some clever chap has devoloped a little box of tricks that blocks the signals of the satelites over an area about 100km square. Which cocks up anyone passing through the area.
Obviously those little boxes could be made by hundreds of people & save an awful lot of people some cash.
In the UK all we need do is make use of the TrafficMaster systems already in place.
Plus some clever chap has devoloped a little box of tricks that blocks the signals of the satelites over an area about 100km square. Which cocks up anyone passing through the area.
Obviously those little boxes could be made by hundreds of people & save an awful lot of people some cash.
In the UK all we need do is make use of the TrafficMaster systems already in place.
gremlins charged trucks for being near motorways, rather than on them
Someone didnt do their homework
The accuracy of the civil GPS system is directly controlled by the US Dept of Defence. They can switch it anywhere between a couple of metres and 'where the feck am I?'
Any time there is some political/military event somewhere where 'unfriendly' countries may use the system it WILL be degraded.
anyone mention Iraq??
Someone didnt do their homework
The accuracy of the civil GPS system is directly controlled by the US Dept of Defence. They can switch it anywhere between a couple of metres and 'where the feck am I?'
Any time there is some political/military event somewhere where 'unfriendly' countries may use the system it WILL be degraded.
anyone mention Iraq??
Le TVR said:Which is why the EU is working on its own system ... to the great annoyance of the US - Streaky
gremlins charged trucks for being near motorways, rather than on them
Someone didnt do their homework
The accuracy of the civil GPS system is directly controlled by the US Dept of Defence. They can switch it anywhere between a couple of metres and 'where the feck am I?'
streaky said:
Which is why the EU is working on its own system ... to the great annoyance of the US - Streaky
And the tax payer! Who will have to stump for a third GPS system (the rusians also have one).
The SA feature of GPS is now turned off and unlikely to be turned on during anything short of WWIII as many critical US civ apps as well as their own military (due to lack of hw / cost) rely on off the shelf civ units
I'm sure I read somewhere (on a Whitehouse / Pentagon site, not some micket mouse thing) that the US had pledged to not re-instate SA. I think they can turn it off, or encrypt the signal, in specific areas as they need to. So in times of conflict it might go missing in the conflict area, but not worldwide.
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