----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Frederick Noronha (FN) Nr Convent Saligao 403511 GoaIndia
Freelance Journalist P: 832-2409490 M: 9822122436
http://www.express-computer.com/20041227/technology01.shtml
Tracking ore movements with the Simputer
Mining of iron ore and tracking it from the loading to unloading points is quite a task. Vinutha V says that Encore Software's Simputer offers a simple technology to keep a track of ore movements in the mining field
The ore tracking system can be further enhanced to use a contact-free smart card, which could be Wi-Fi-enabled in the future -- Mark Mathias, President Encore Software
It's a classic example of how technology can help meet business challenges without requiring heavy investments in infrastructure. Tracking materials movement within a quarry or mine and unloading different grades of ore is a complex undertaking. Mining companies encounter enormous wastage of time and material and they have to bear the brunt of transportation and labour costs for mistakes. An ore tracking system becomes an evident requirement for optimising mining material management. Without any investment on the network infrastructure, Goa-based V S Dempo & Co, an iron ore mining company wanted to deploy a solution based on mobile computing that could solve their ore-tracking problems. The Encore Simputer has been used in many e-governance projects, e-post and traffic violation systems. An ore tracking application was developed by Deltra Software and ported on to a Simputer permitting the management of the field information flow and tracking of ore movements with minimum human intervention.
Harsh mining conditions
Eighty Simputers have been deployed at the Dempo mining field in three strategic points--loading (located at the mine pit), unloading and at the weighbridge. The entire process including the creation of routes from each location after accounting for variables such as the type of truck and the loading machinery and enforcing unloading behaviour is entered into the Simputer. Mark Mathias, president of Encore Software says, "Involvement of various vehicles and machinery at different locations was the main concern. Additionally the weather at the mining fields was extreme during the summer and monsoon seasons. Initially, the display panel would become darker when the temperature increased over 40 degree Celsius." Encore upgraded the Simputer's display panel to meet this challenge. The Simputer that was resistant to 40 degree Celsius was modified to withstand 50 degrees.
Tracking the process
On a typical run, each weighbridge, loading and unloading point is recognised by a unique location code and a Simputer is deployed at these locations. Drivers accessing these destinations will be given smart cards with details such as the type of vehicle, type of material, tare weight (net weight of the load) and the type of the loading machinery. Once the transport vehicle or loading machinery reaches the destination, a supervisor swipes the smart card into the Simputer and finds if the data in the smart card and the Simputer match. If they do, loading, unloading or weighing of material will be carried out. At the end of the shift, a field executive takes a Simputer to each of the three locations and downloads the field reports from the Simputer used at each location for capturing field data or reports using IR (Infrared). After collecting data from all three locations, the data is then uploaded to the server.
Behind the scenes
The application software used in the entire process consists of the client programme residing on each Simputer and the server programme on a back-end server. The client software programs for different entities assigns location codes and routes, reads smart cards, checks the validity of vehicles and records data on smart cards. The server application takes care of data collection, report generation, downloading of supervisory information from a PC to a Simputer and uploading of data from Simputer to PC.
The Simputer uses 16 MB of flash storage to store at least a week's data, non-volatile storage for the operating system, the application and user data. The Simputer will connect to the back-end server through its USB Slave interface. Once a Simputer is plugged into the USB port of the PC, through a USB Cable, it will be assigned an IP address. The Simputer application will use socket programming to implement data transfers. The client application maintains its data in any internal format and can then transfer this data to the server that can use a database. Mathias says, "The ore tracking system can be further enhanced to use a contact-free smart card, which could be Wi-Fi-enabled in the future."
