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Vehicular Monitoring| Category | | | Summary | | If you ever drive down a major highway in the U.S. take a look at the back of the sleeper of any 18-wheeler that is owned by a major trucking company such as Swift, J.B. Hunt, Schneider, etc.. |
| | Body | There you will see a small dome antenna housing that is about 8" (20cm) in diameter. That is the antenna for a two-way satellite communications system. The largest provider of the this service is Qualcomm.
The Qualcomm system though does more than just messaging and vehicle tracking. Some trucking companies also offer their drivers in-cab e-mail, but there are other features that this system has that few people know about or care to discuss openly.
The vast majority of the heavy trucks on the road today are equipped with fully computerized engines. Nearly all of the troubleshooting and adjustments on these engines is done with a computer through a serial port under the dashboard, via satellite or via cellphone.
A user at a remote location can monitor a truck's speed, location, direction of travel, engine RPM, the gear that the transmission is in, fuel consumption rate, oil pressure, water temperature, battery voltage, outside air tempterature, inside air temperature, air brake pressure, air suspension pressure and more. In addition to real-time reading of these, the onboard computer also maintains a history of these values which can also be read remotely. The Detroit Diesel Electronic Control (or DDEC) is known to maintain a detailed history for several years.
The user at a remote location can also take control of some of the operation of the vehicle. The remote user can: start or shutdown the engine, apply the parking brake and change some of the internal features of how the engine operates.
This system has been in use in heavy trucks now for several years and is beginning to find it's way into passenger cars as well. I has been reported that a similar onboard monitoring and control system is being used on rental cars, but the is no reliably sourced information on this.
Big brother is coming to your car, are you ready to meet him?
Links of interest:
Caterpillar Truck Engines
Detroit Diesel
Cummins Diesel
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This article was imported from zZine. (original author: funnyfarmer)
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