Re: TIRIS

Andy wrote: 
Charles Edmondson wrote:


Andy,
So, did you every visit the California site during the installation


(So.

Cal, not the bridge?)  If so, we probably met!  I was in charge of
design and installation of the toll equipment, including the FastTrak



antennas!

Charlie
Edmondson Engineering
Unique Solutions to Unusual Problems




Andy writes:

   No, not after it was installed, other than incidental trips on
other projects.  I did a site survey at SH121 in the early 90's to see
what interferers were around, but after riding around for a day over
the proposed route with a spectrum analyzer, I didn't find anything
that
looked like it would bother us....

   Several trips to Lawrence Livermore to confer with Don Davis, and
a couple others, about the system, since it was they who wrote the
Title 21 spec that the legislature passed.  I have some real problems
with
a couple of their specs (namely the field activation strength) since
even NIST at Boulder Colorado could not calibrate an antenna to the
accuracy required by Title 21 (went there, too, and talked to their
big guns. However, as a practical matter, nobody else seemed to care
that
a spec was unattainable, and were mainly concerned with whether the
system would acually work....

   I was lead design engineer, and worked mainly in the lab, but I set
up
a test track for TIRIS in an abandoned race track between Dallas and
Ft Worth (Richland Hills), and got a LOT of good , practical data from
this.  It reinforced my feelings that , no matter how smart the team
is,
or how much preparation they do, you don't know diddly squat about how
a system works in the field till you try it out.......

   Since I retired 3 yrs ago, I went back as a consultant to ETCC who
bid on a new 121 project about a year ago.... I don't work there, tho,
and
don't know how their proposal came out.....

   So, have you done any in-depth tech study of TIRIS versus AMTECH,
and
how did they compare ?   I am familiar with the AMTECH system, and am
fairly sure they can't meet the field activation specs any more than
TIRIS can, but , as I said, nobody seems to care (except design
engineers
like me (grin)  ).

  TIRIS was sold to a Canadian company, SIRIT, and has a headquarters
here in Dallas (Carrolton), and I went by last year to BS with the
engineers there.

   Even tho I had been away fromt he project for 8 yrs or so, they were

still using the same designs for the READER and the Antenna that I
built
in the lab ( subbed to TELENEXUS and SEAVY ENGINEERING companies)....
   But they told me that the lane discrimination pulses had been
eliminated from the design.   Why was that ?


  If you care to correspond further, give me an Email at

    andysharpe@xxxxxxxx , with TIRIS somewhere in the subject line, and


  we can shoot bulls till sundown.

            Andy Sharpe,  PE, etc etc,etc

Hi Andy,
So, we probably didn't meet, then. To bad. As I understand it, MFS (who I worked for) contracted with TI to create the system, and so for a while, had a partial interest in the system. My job was to take all the parts, and put them together into an integrated system.

Did you get involved the the pickup truck problem? That was where, do to the geometry of the beds of pickup trucks, the antenna beam reflected off the tailgate, bounced off the back of the cab, and would read the tag of the car BEHIND the truck when it was supposed to read the trucks tag! I know it was driving them crazy to try to fix it, and they were talking about range gating the signal to try and stop it!

Its fun to talk about this stuff, since all my NDAs are long expired, although the REALLY interesting stuff wasn't the technical issues, but all the political and management BS in the background!

Charlie

.

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