R. Veith Consulting

Sample Projects

Key Word: Utility Field Workers
Sample projects listed: 7

Purpose To create a wireless method for inspecting storm damage.
Description A utility company wanted to give field workers small handheld or tablet computers for inspecting storm damage, and selected the Itronix Fex21 with the Handheld PC 2000 operating system as the desired platform, although it was considered a plus if the same program could run on Windows 95/98 platforms as well. The solution was to create the application using MobileBuilder, with a few modules in Embedded VB and Embedded VC++. The workers can send and receive job-related information over a wide-area wireless network.
Components Pen Computers, Windows CE, Pocket PC, Handheld PC 2000, MobileBuilder, Wide-Area Wireless, Embedded Visual Basic, Embedded Visual C++
My Role Programming, documentation, testing.
Purpose Convert a Palm OS application to run on the Kyocera 7135 Smartphone.
Description An electric utility company needed a Palm OS application to be moved from a regular Palm PDA to the Kyocera 7135 smartphone. The application was a storm damage assessment program, and it included getting data via widearea wireless email and sending data back the same way. In this case, the email software was Eudora, and most of the work involved programming changes to accommodate the interaction with the Eudora email database. The programming was done using MobileBuilder and C. The wireless network that was used was Verizon's Express Network (1XRTT).
Components Palm OS, C, MobileBuilder, Kyocera Smartphone, Wide-Area Wireless.
My Role Programming, some documentation.
Purpose Within an electric utility substation, to test the use of a handheld pen computer with a built-in bar code scanner.
Description The goal was to increase the safety of workers in high voltage electric substations by giving them handheld units containing task orders, where the handheld computer would step the worker through the task, and the bar code scanner could be used to verify the piece of equipment being worked on. A protoype system was developed whereby the handheld pen computers would be placed in a docking station to get each task order from -- and later to transmit the results to -- an existing back-end system.
Components Pen Computers, Windows 95/98, MS Access, LAN, Visual Basic, Bar Code Scanning.
My Role Project management, documentation.
Purpose Add wide-area wireless communication to existing pen computer applications written in C and PenRight's MobileBuilder.
Description A utility company with a large number of pen computer applications used by field workers wanted to add wide-area wireless capability so that orders could be sent out, and results could be sent back, in near real-time. The solution was to incorporate Broadbeam's ExpressQ middleware for RF communications into the existing PenRight/MobileBuilder application environment using the C programming language. A few modules were also written in Visual Basic.
Components Pen Computers, Windows 95/98, PenRight MobileBuilder, C, Visual Basic, Broadbeam ExpressQ, RF Modems.
My Role Project management, programming, documentation.
Purpose To automate the paperwork for field workers at several utility companies.
Description Several projects were similar in that the task was to automate some of the forms that gas crew workers have to fill in while out in the field, and the development environment was DOS. The applications were developed using PenRight and C. The crews were able to receive work orders at the beginning of the day, and transmit results at the end of the day, by placing the handheld computers in docking stations connected to the LAN.
Components Pen Computers, DOS, PenRight, C, LAN.
My Role Project management.
Purpose Evaluate handheld pen computers for the electric utility industry.
Description For an electric industry organization, a study was conducted of all the handheld pen computers available at that time, and a number were selected for in-house testing. A final report was written advising the organization of the pros and cons of each of the selected units.
My Role Research, analysis, and documentation.
Purpose To automate the paperwork for corrosion control inspectors, including the ability to draw and edit pipeline schematics.
Description The final system included an administration program and a pen computer program. The administration program ran on desktop PCs and connected to a back-end Oracle database, allowing the inspectors to select data and graphics needed for upcoming jobs. The pen computer program, running on the pen computers taken to the field, allowed inspectors to collect data, call up sketches or pipeline schematics, and seamlessly invoke Visio to edit the graphics. Data was transferred to and from the pen computers by connecting them to the LAN when in the office.
Components Pen Computers, Windows 3.x, Visio, Visual Basic, Oracle, MS Access, LAN.
My Role Project management.