Jan Aleman wrote:I have some direct and indirect experience in this area and have some questions:
- What is the device mainly going to be used for?
- What is the maximum acceptable size and weight?
- What type of autonomy are you looking at?
- What type of data input? Intensive? alpha? just numbers? just selecting buttons on touchscreen?
- What type of data retrieval? Small? Large? Complex?
- How often to you need to sync up and down? How much information is involved in those syncs?
- How many devices do you need?
- Budget restrictions?
Hi Jan - I'll try and answer those points in order:
- What is the device mainly going to be used for?
On Site data entry. Survey Engineers doing visual inspections, and recording that data.
- What is the maximum acceptable size and weight?
They currently use a Clipboard paper collection method but since they need to handle tape measures and 2m measuring sticks it needs to be single hand held, and easily carried all day. So a larger PDA would probably be max size.
- What type of autonomy are you looking at?
I assume by that you mean autonomy of syncing etc? It would be good if we could have a device sync with just 'one command' from the Engineer, but they are bright guys in the main, and some training on the sync process would not be a challenge.
- What type of data input? Intensive? alpha? just numbers? just selecting buttons on touchscreen?
Check Boxes, Radio Buttons, short Drop Downs (6 to 10 elements) will make up 75 - 80% of the data collected, but there are several fields that need written entries with up to 250 characters. I envisage with a small PDA there will be 5-6 screens to enter data into.
- What type of data retrieval? Small? Large? Complex?
Engineers will obviously need to move around in the data collected, next - previous records etc. Also search on some fields for editing etc. There will be probably 8 fields that will need to be based on a Drop Down from a table on the main Db - used as libraries and those could have up to 5k records. I suspect a write ahead type field would be better there!
- How often to you need to sync up and down? How much information is involved in those syncs?
Typically we'd sync daily but its unlikely we we'll get devices that have a 12 hour battery life, so its probable we'll sync 2 - 3 times a day, and recharge then too. The syncs will have very little data - possibly between 600KB and 1200KB per device per day - so with 3 syncs per day thats 200 to 600KB at a time.
- How many devices do you need?
Currently we don't know - we need to get some out there and tested, and we don't know if we should be going for something with a keyboard or an on screen keyboard? If we can prove the technology we'll likely be looking at 15 to 20 initially. Remembering these need to be Intrinsically Safe or we wont get to deploy them on site. They are intended to be used for initial data collections but I'm beginning to realise that the technology might well be something the Clients will want for their on-site Inspection personnel during day to day activities (the use would be reversed then of course so I don't want to cloud this main issue with that possibility).
- Budget restrictions?
Again I don't know what to expect. I've seen Intrinsically Safe units for as little as £1500 and up to £4500. Most of these have other devices such as bar code readers etc that I don't need. Though at some future date we will be adding a GPS reference to all the data collected (thats a future enhancement of course) so if they have a GPS receiver thats good but not essential right now! From a development view point I would have thought (once we understand the best direction for development) we could get the forms and functionality running in a couple of weeks.
Appreciate your feedback Jan - perhaps you can steer me based on this info?
