Thread: Warning Messages, and Auto start GPS

My programming language of choice, for pure simplicity is Visual Basic. Cant beat it in terms of simplicity which is great for me since i am a simple self taught programmer. Cant say i know much, but i do have the ability to pick up and learn so i can see how i go.

I totally agree, i think systems that could be put in place that assist emergency personnel would be fantastic. I come across so many issues within my fire department that would easily be solved with some CarPuter systems, if you look at congested radio traffic, why not bring the standard radio messages (on scene, give incident a name, give incident info - false alarm, going etc) leaving a more simplistic approach. Have dual touchscreens, one for GPS / main, the other for a radio app that would let the radio operator touch the screen when they were responding, and it would send a data message to the dispatch, send more info on the screen to cut down on non urgent radio traffic. Just a few ideas.

Then there was looking at applying a mesh network, between vehicles and fire stations and repeaters etc much like the army have, it would help reduce communication blackspots by re routing radio / data traffic through the mesh network.

And my personal favorite, have a virtual radio system, so it forms a mesh network between trucks, and you have sort of like a confrence room style system. So say my truck is part of a strike team (team of 5 truckts + leader vehicle) called 1334, have a confrence room on the system for 1334, so comms goes across that, you can program in GPS tracks that get sent to all trucks in the same team, so everyone has same maps and directions, and finally, if there is a plan on how to attack, and associated maps, the leader could send them to the 1334 confrence, and all vehicles get it. If one vehicle gets it but the other doesent, next time the one who doesent have it could get near a vehicle that does, it would send the map to the one who didn't have it. kind of like Peer to peer VOIP, file sharing, etc.

And whilst it would have a cost associated with it, when you look at costs of radios they buy, our brigade looked at getting a new radio, at a cost of $3000 per unit, a simple CarPuter is actually not far out of the realm of budget. In order to apease the department, you could apply lockdowns, so that only certian things could be changed. Could even interface into the truck vehicle systems so in a breakdown it sends the vehicle diagnostics to the district mechanical officers. Or like you guys mentioned, have plugins to control pumps etc, one carputer, a few touchscreens, one outside for pumps, another inside for gps, another inside for radio, maps etc

All concepts, but the idea of a carputer is fantastic, and has such brilliant capacities.