Sepura visit
28
www.criticalcomms.com September 2019
Elsewhere in the lab, which could be described as a twoway
radio torture chamber comprised of ingenious Meccanolike
devices, radios are variously cooked, frozen, crushed,
(unsuccessfully) drowned and hit with steel ball bearings. As
research indicates that two-way radio users typically push
a radio’s PTT button 200,000 times during its lifetime, a
mechanical finger presses the button 500,000 times in rapid
woodpecker-like succession to simulate heavy usage. In
addition to IP testing for dust and water ingress, it is here
that the company’s waterporting feature is put to the test.
We then move to the software lab where apps are
developed – for AppSPACE, the company’s app platform,
and also more general firmware updates. As there is little to
see due to the nature of software development and coding,
we continue on to the demonstration room, where Ian
Salisbury, senior customer support engineer, and the full
range of Sepura equipment, together with many devices
from the company’s past, are waiting for us. I am quite
astonished by the weight and size of the old Simoco radios
(Sepura began its life as Simoco’s TETRA division). Yelton
explains that Sepura recognises devices have to deliver on
the needs of end-users and there is a point where there is no
value in making its portable terminals smaller, as that would
make them harder to operate.
Salisbury walks us through some of the company’s
AppSPACE apps, focusing on those that are designed
to make it easier to manage large radio fleets and their
associated equipment. He starts with the Battery Date
Checker app, which warns when a battery is nearing the end
of its useful life and helps prevent customers from discarding
batteries that have a lot of working life left in them. Ledger
says the app was developed to save customers money and
this desire overrode the fact that it would reduce battery
sales. He also holds it up as an example of an app that
doesn’t put any additional load on the user’s network.
Next up on the list is the Radio Asset Logger, which
require users to log in to a radio before use – when they do
this an SDS message is sent, to update a centrally managed
asset register. Salisbury says part of the thinking behind this
is to increase users’ accountability for the condition of their
radios – and through doing so allow organisations with
pooled radios to see some of the benefits that are normally
associated with individual issue.
Then there is the Lost Radio Alerter, which works in
conjunction with a Bluetooth tag on the user’s person to
cause the radio to emit a loud alert if it is separated from the
user, and can escalate this if it is not answered by sending a
message with ID and GPS location data to a team leader or
control room. In addition to helping to reduce the cost of
lost equipment, Croft adds that there is also a convenience
factor – for example, when extended to other equipment,
this approach could prevent an engineer from climbing
all the way down from the top of a wind turbine before
realising they have left their toolbox at the top of it.
We turn to over-the-air-programming (OTAP), which
Salisbury says has recently been launched. He adds that it is
a TETRA industry first for Sepura – “a lot of our customers
are really excited about this”. From a security perspective, he
explains that it will only work when the radio is connected
to approved Wi-Fi hotspots, uses SSL certification, and
requires a Wi-Fi/OTAP licence. Salisbury adds that it solves
issues cost-effectively, keeping radios up to date for large fleets
or where radios are located in remote locations.
OTAP covers the customisation of a radio and its
AppSPACE functions; for example, setting the text on a
radio’s display to “Firearms” to indicate that it is set up with
the talkgroups used by firearms officers. Salisbury demos the
OTAP functionality, explaining that the radio instantly starts
to receive the update, but users will also be able to set the
system to apply the updates in a variety of modes, for example
when each radio is switched off or switched on, thus ensuring
continued operational availability.
We left with a new appreciation for the amount of thought
and effort that goes into TETRA radios and ensuring they
have the resilience and robustness that many users take for
granted. While the industry’s growing focus on missioncritical
broadband is creating challenges for those traditionally
focused on TETRA, it is good to see that Sepura has given
a lot of thought to how it and its end-users can navigate the
transition from a terminal and app perspective.
Testing takes
place in an
anechoic
chamber to
ensure that
devices cannot
damage users’
hearing
The heartbeats of heroes
“One of the first AppSPACE apps we developed monitors
the user’s heart rate,” says Ledger. “One operational
use for that is if a riot squad is trying to subdue a riot
and their commanding officer sees that one of the
squad in the melee behind a riot shield’s heart rate is
170 beats per minute (bpm) and everyone else around
him is about 130bpm – they can start thinking, ‘Is there
a problem with that guy, do I need to take him back off
the front line and put someone else in there?’”
Croft adds that the value of such a system extends
beyond such critical moments as it could allow
organisations to measure the level of stress its personnel
are experiencing. Ledger also notes that it is an area
where device intelligence can make a difference – if a
police officer hasn’t called in but his heart rate has gone
up, his intelligent device might respond by switching on
his body-worn video camera and streaming the footage
from it, or by recommending that a control room operator
call him to make sure that he is okay, thereby potentially
alerting them to a threat situation.
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