Faraday cages

Hi Guys, Just to use my tuppence worth. A car isn't a faraday cage. Take
any hand held device used inside the vehicle like a hand held amateur
radio, PMR 446, a mobile telephone, gatso detectors, a gps satellite
detector and your on glass antenna for your radio, is inside as well.
All of these work within the vehicle, so any signal that can be received
can be transmitted. A car isn't an effective faraday cage atall.

All this business about introducing Darlings system is all hyped up.
There isn't a cat in hells chance in it taking off as there's far too
much in liberty stakes alone, never mind how and who will run it and
incidentally at what cost to us the public. There 's no doubt that we
all agree the roads are filling up rapidly but surely to try and resolve
the problem short term the guverment should resort to sorting out the
public transport sectors and addressing putting freight back on the
rails and sea, a job they should have solved years ago, but as all
parties do they've faffed and farted about instead of addressing the
real problems correctly and positively. Darling's got as much chance as
this working as I have platting fog. This guverment needs to get real.
Another note, just wonder how much Mr Darling got paid for thinking this
one up? Dave

--
Amateur Radio Call Sign M1BTI, Located in Manchester England.
Locator square IO83TK
Chairman Of Trafford Radio Club. Club Call Signs G0TRG & M1BBP
Located at Umist, University Of Manchester Institute For Science And
Technology
Share What You Know, Learn What You Don't.

>
> All this business about introducing Darlings system is all hyped up.
> There isn't a cat in hells chance in it taking off as there's far too
> much in liberty stakes alone, never mind how and who will run it and
> incidentally at what cost to us the public. There 's no doubt that we
> all agree the roads are filling up rapidly but surely to try and resolve
> the problem short term the guverment should resort to sorting out the
> public transport sectors and addressing putting freight back on the
> rails and sea, a job they should have solved years ago, but as all
> parties do they've faffed and farted about instead of addressing the
> real problems correctly and positively. Darling's got as much chance as
> this working as I have platting fog. This guverment needs to get real.
> Another note, just wonder how much Mr Darling got paid for thinking this
> one up? Dave
>
One thing which no one seems to have bothered mentioning, the GPS system is
a US military system, and they can introduce errors in it whenever they
please. What happens to the Darling system next time the US military put an
error in, and all cars will be seen to be driving along rivers, and through
fields etc?

it is true, the US Military control ALL the gps satellites around the earth at this moment in time, and if one cold day they feel like turning them all off, there is not a thing we (and the rest of the world) can do about it.

however, europe is planning to send up its own gps satellites shortly, not sure when, or how many though.

i tell a lie. 2008 (thats the year we get them, not how many!!)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4085651.stm

"SimonJ" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]
> One thing which no one seems to have bothered mentioning, the GPS system
is
> a US military system, and they can introduce errors in it whenever they
> please. What happens to the Darling system next time the US military put
an
> error in, and all cars will be seen to be driving along rivers, and
through
> fields etc?

Would a river or field cost less or more than the M4 in rush hour traffic?
Maybe you could argue that you were driving from London to Bristol in fields
and rivers rather than on the motorway.
David

In message <[email protected]>
Dave Piggin <[email protected]> wrote:

> Hi Guys, Just to use my tuppence worth. A car isn't a faraday cage. Take
> any hand held device used inside the vehicle like a hand held amateur
> radio, PMR 446, a mobile telephone, gatso detectors, a gps satellite
> detector and your on glass antenna for your radio, is inside as well.
> All of these work within the vehicle, so any signal that can be received
> can be transmitted. A car isn't an effective faraday cage atall.
>
> All this business about introducing Darlings system is all hyped up.
> There isn't a cat in hells chance in it taking off as there's far too
> much in liberty stakes alone, never mind how and who will run it and
> incidentally at what cost to us the public. There 's no doubt that we
> all agree the roads are filling up rapidly but surely to try and resolve
> the problem short term the guverment should resort to sorting out the
> public transport sectors and addressing putting freight back on the
> rails and sea, a job they should have solved years ago, but as all
> parties do they've faffed and farted about instead of addressing the
> real problems correctly and positively. Darling's got as much chance as
> this working as I have platting fog. This guverment needs to get real.
> Another note, just wonder how much Mr Darling got paid for thinking this
> one up? Dave
>

It's not "they" that need to sort out public transport/rail freight,
it's us. We demand our goods next day, at the cheapest cost and this
cannot be done using rail. We need to change our expectations of
an instant lifestyle. If our mates car is off the road for some
reason we need to offer to help out (that includes employers too),
if their washing machine is on the blink we need to offer
assistance. We need to mix industrial/retail development with
residential (and be prepared to accept invonvenience as a result)
to avoid commuting to work. And so on........

But it ain't going to happen, until we're forced to, not by "them",
but by us realising we can't go on as we are.

Just my 2p's worth

Richard
--
www.beamends-lrspares.co.uk [email protected]
Running a business in a Microsoft free environment - it can be done
Powered by Risc-OS - you won't get a virus from us!!
Helping keep Land Rovers on and off the road to annoy the Lib Dems

"DavidM" <djm81@(I hate spam)cam.ac.uk> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> "SimonJ" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]
> > One thing which no one seems to have bothered mentioning, the GPS system
> is
> > a US military system, and they can introduce errors in it whenever they
> > please. What happens to the Darling system next time the US military put
> an
> > error in, and all cars will be seen to be driving along rivers, and
> through
> > fields etc?
>
> Would a river or field cost less or more than the M4 in rush hour traffic?
> Maybe you could argue that you were driving from London to Bristol in
fields
> and rivers rather than on the motorway.
> David
>
>
Another interesting by product of this technology will be the ability to
know what speed you were travelling at any given point on any given road at
any given time. Plenty of speeding fines automatically issued.
Issues to resolve will be over what distance a speeding fine will be
calculated?
For example, if you were to drive at 80mph along the entire length of a
motorway (highly unlikely on todays congested roads), would that be one
speeding fine or many thousands?
Could be banned before reaching the first junction!!
Then there is the problem that banned drivers will not generate revenue.
Martin

On 2005-06-16, Dave Piggin <[email protected]> wrote:

> Hi Guys, Just to use my tuppence worth. A car isn't a faraday
> cage. Take any hand held device used inside the vehicle like a hand
> held amateur radio, PMR 446, a mobile telephone, gatso detectors, a
> gps satellite detector and your on glass antenna for your radio, is
> inside as well.

A GPS needs to be in a position where it can get decent line of sight
to the satellites, that's the biggest problem. You can get GPS
bugging devices that you can clap on a car but they tend not to work
very well, and require a particularly sensitive GPS built to work from
satellite signals reflected from the ground. Any GPS-based tracking
device the government force us to use would have to be either
expensive to work on similar lines, or would have to have external
aerials or be displayed prominently. If they want a tamper-proof
black box then it would have to be displayed prominently behind
non-heated glass windows or covered entirely by plastic parts of the
car in a prominent position, e.g. inside the bumpers. Even then it
would be at a disadvantage in cities where satellite signals are often
weak, blocked by buildings and swamped with other noise.

I think we can forget the GPS-based systems, it's just a smokescreen.
It'll be roadside cameras or nothing as they already have the
technology and can tie it in with speeding, insurance dodging and tax
dodging all based on proven technology but will push the insurance
dodging angle with lurid stories of mown-down kiddies and other
save-the-fluffy-bunny stuff.

> All this business about introducing Darlings system is all hyped up.
> There isn't a cat in hells chance in it taking off as there's far too
> much in liberty stakes alone

Unfortunately I don't think the civil liberties issues wash with most
of the population, they're too dumb to worry about it and believe the
bogus justification. A dash of terrorism here, a bit of insurance
dodging there, a touch of avoiding traffic jams as a garnish and most
people will roll over. I get tired of hearing "what have you got to
hide", especially from people who then refuse to let me rifle through
their pockets, handbags and bedroom drawers.

--
For every expert, there is an equal but opposite expert

Ian Rawlings wrote:

> On 2005-06-16, Dave Piggin <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> Hi Guys, Just to use my tuppence worth. A car isn't a faraday
>> cage. Take any hand held device used inside the vehicle like a hand
>> held amateur radio, PMR 446, a mobile telephone, gatso detectors, a
>> gps satellite detector and your on glass antenna for your radio, is
>> inside as well.
>
> A GPS needs to be in a position where it can get decent line of sight
> to the satellites, that's the biggest problem. You can get GPS
> bugging devices that you can clap on a car but they tend not to work
> very well, and require a particularly sensitive GPS built to work from
> satellite signals reflected from the ground. Any GPS-based tracking
> device the government force us to use would have to be either
> expensive to work on similar lines, or would have to have external
> aerials or be displayed prominently. If they want a tamper-proof
> black box then it would have to be displayed prominently behind
> non-heated glass windows or covered entirely by plastic parts of the
> car in a prominent position, e.g. inside the bumpers. Even then it
> would be at a disadvantage in cities where satellite signals are often
> weak, blocked by buildings and swamped with other noise.
>
> I think we can forget the GPS-based systems, it's just a smokescreen.
> It'll be roadside cameras or nothing as they already have the
> technology and can tie it in with speeding, insurance dodging and tax
> dodging all based on proven technology but will push the insurance
> dodging angle with lurid stories of mown-down kiddies and other
> save-the-fluffy-bunny stuff.
>

Unfortunately I think I know a system that will bypass a lot of this
problems and mentioned as much to one of my colleagues who is unfortunately
doing the technology eval for it.

There's no difficulty at all rigging a beacon on every road intersection and
just seeing which cars pass which beacons. The infrastructure largely
exists - you use lamp posts to mount the things and the uplink's the easy
bit. Don't have the cars do anything other than broadcast an identifier, or
if you're feeling sneaky rig it for challenge/response so that you can
secure the ID beacon.

Would be a hell of a lot cheaper, piece of **** to rig (IR will pass through
even heated windscreens!) and would still tell you which cars are using
which roads and when without needing to track the car down to the meter. It
will also give you measured distance calculations, so will act as a speed
trap in the same manner as SPECS does now.

Yes - I do do this stuff for a living - specifically, try and come up with
solutions for seemingly insurmountable problems. Sorry.

P.

Still doesn't get round the problem of someone who does not have one affixed
to the vehicle or has one that is faulty, and the system is certainly not
tamper proof.

Most likely we will see more of what Red Ken has already doen in London,
effectively a tax on using city centres, but without the incentive of
reduced fuel duty or no road fund licence.




--
Larry
Series 3 rust and holes





"Paul Brown" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> Ian Rawlings wrote:
>
> > On 2005-06-16, Dave Piggin <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> >> Hi Guys, Just to use my tuppence worth. A car isn't a faraday
> >> cage. Take any hand held device used inside the vehicle like a hand
> >> held amateur radio, PMR 446, a mobile telephone, gatso detectors, a
> >> gps satellite detector and your on glass antenna for your radio, is
> >> inside as well.
> >
> > A GPS needs to be in a position where it can get decent line of sight
> > to the satellites, that's the biggest problem. You can get GPS
> > bugging devices that you can clap on a car but they tend not to work
> > very well, and require a particularly sensitive GPS built to work from
> > satellite signals reflected from the ground. Any GPS-based tracking
> > device the government force us to use would have to be either
> > expensive to work on similar lines, or would have to have external
> > aerials or be displayed prominently. If they want a tamper-proof
> > black box then it would have to be displayed prominently behind
> > non-heated glass windows or covered entirely by plastic parts of the
> > car in a prominent position, e.g. inside the bumpers. Even then it
> > would be at a disadvantage in cities where satellite signals are often
> > weak, blocked by buildings and swamped with other noise.
> >
> > I think we can forget the GPS-based systems, it's just a smokescreen.
> > It'll be roadside cameras or nothing as they already have the
> > technology and can tie it in with speeding, insurance dodging and tax
> > dodging all based on proven technology but will push the insurance
> > dodging angle with lurid stories of mown-down kiddies and other
> > save-the-fluffy-bunny stuff.
> >
>
> Unfortunately I think I know a system that will bypass a lot of this
> problems and mentioned as much to one of my colleagues who is
unfortunately
> doing the technology eval for it.
>
> There's no difficulty at all rigging a beacon on every road intersection
and
> just seeing which cars pass which beacons. The infrastructure largely
> exists - you use lamp posts to mount the things and the uplink's the easy
> bit. Don't have the cars do anything other than broadcast an identifier,
or
> if you're feeling sneaky rig it for challenge/response so that you can
> secure the ID beacon.
>
> Would be a hell of a lot cheaper, piece of **** to rig (IR will pass
through
> even heated windscreens!) and would still tell you which cars are using
> which roads and when without needing to track the car down to the meter.
It
> will also give you measured distance calculations, so will act as a speed
> trap in the same manner as SPECS does now.
>
> Yes - I do do this stuff for a living - specifically, try and come up with
> solutions for seemingly insurmountable problems. Sorry.
>
> P.

and all cars will be seen to be driving along rivers, and
> through
> > fields etc?

Some of us do that anyway....
TonyB

In message <[email protected]>
Paul Brown <[email protected]> wrote:

> Ian Rawlings wrote:
>
> > On 2005-06-16, Dave Piggin <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> >> Hi Guys, Just to use my tuppence worth. A car isn't a faraday
> >> cage. Take any hand held device used inside the vehicle like a hand
> >> held amateur radio, PMR 446, a mobile telephone, gatso detectors, a
> >> gps satellite detector and your on glass antenna for your radio, is
> >> inside as well.
> >
> > A GPS needs to be in a position where it can get decent line of sight
> > to the satellites, that's the biggest problem. You can get GPS
> > bugging devices that you can clap on a car but they tend not to work
> > very well, and require a particularly sensitive GPS built to work from
> > satellite signals reflected from the ground. Any GPS-based tracking
> > device the government force us to use would have to be either
> > expensive to work on similar lines, or would have to have external
> > aerials or be displayed prominently. If they want a tamper-proof
> > black box then it would have to be displayed prominently behind
> > non-heated glass windows or covered entirely by plastic parts of the
> > car in a prominent position, e.g. inside the bumpers. Even then it
> > would be at a disadvantage in cities where satellite signals are often
> > weak, blocked by buildings and swamped with other noise.
> >
> > I think we can forget the GPS-based systems, it's just a smokescreen.
> > It'll be roadside cameras or nothing as they already have the
> > technology and can tie it in with speeding, insurance dodging and tax
> > dodging all based on proven technology but will push the insurance
> > dodging angle with lurid stories of mown-down kiddies and other
> > save-the-fluffy-bunny stuff.
> >
>
> Unfortunately I think I know a system that will bypass a lot of this
> problems and mentioned as much to one of my colleagues who is unfortunately
> doing the technology eval for it.
>
> There's no difficulty at all rigging a beacon on every road intersection and
> just seeing which cars pass which beacons. The infrastructure largely
> exists - you use lamp posts to mount the things and the uplink's the easy
> bit. Don't have the cars do anything other than broadcast an identifier, or
> if you're feeling sneaky rig it for challenge/response so that you can
> secure the ID beacon.
>
> Would be a hell of a lot cheaper, piece of **** to rig (IR will pass through
> even heated windscreens!) and would still tell you which cars are using
> which roads and when without needing to track the car down to the meter. It
> will also give you measured distance calculations, so will act as a speed
> trap in the same manner as SPECS does now.
>
> Yes - I do do this stuff for a living - specifically, try and come up with
> solutions for seemingly insurmountable problems. Sorry.
>
> P.

I'm amazed that everyone here is talking as though this is some sort
of future technology. The haulage industry has been using it for some
years. "Control" just types in the ID of the truck and up pops a
map showing where it is, what speed its doing etc. With that info
driving hours, distance travelled, next-service due etc is easily
calculated - tying in the vehicles CAN bus could even give you
the weight from the self-weighing equipment increasingly being fitted,
way-points could be checked to see if deliveries have been made etc.

The system interrogates the vehicle periodocally, so if a transmitter
becomes defective and warning can be raised - it would be easy to
tie this into an automated system to telephone/write to the registered
keeper telling them to get it fix in x days or get an automatic fine.

The technology exists and is being used - no need for road side
equipment or cameras.
Whether it's a good idea or not is another issue though - personaly
I think not.

Richard
--
www.beamends-lrspares.co.uk [email protected]
Running a business in a Microsoft free environment - it can be done
Powered by Risc-OS - you won't get a virus from us!!
Helping keep Land Rovers on and off the road to annoy the Lib Dems

> I'm amazed that everyone here is talking as though this is some sort
> of future technology. The haulage industry has been using it for some
> years. "Control" just types in the ID of the truck and up pops a
> map showing where it is, what speed its doing etc. With that info
> driving hours, distance travelled, next-service due etc is easily
> calculated - tying in the vehicles CAN bus could even give you
> the weight from the self-weighing equipment increasingly being fitted,
> way-points could be checked to see if deliveries have been made etc.

You seem to be missing the point; with the type of system that you are
describing small position errors or some outages are not a serious problem.

However, a position error due to poor view of the satellites that put you on
the expensive motorway rather than the cheap minor road running alongside
would have serious cost implications.

How long an outage do you accept before the system logs it as an error?
Where was the vehicle? How much do you charge it?

The whole thing is fraught with errors, as well as being open to major
fraud.

Regards
Jeff

>>
>Another interesting by product of this technology will be the ability to
>know what speed you were travelling at any given point on any given road at
>any given time. Plenty of speeding fines automatically issued.
>Issues to resolve will be over what distance a speeding fine will be
>calculated?
>For example, if you were to drive at 80mph along the entire length of a
>motorway (highly unlikely on todays congested roads), would that be one
>speeding fine or many thousands?
>Could be banned before reaching the first junction!!
>Then there is the problem that banned drivers will not generate revenue.
>Martin
>

My vehicle tracking system sounded a dangerous driving alert the other
day. I was doing 144 mph in our office car park. Even better, I was
sat at my desk with the keys in my pocket....

The GPS had gone wobbly and jumped me across Barnsley and back in 18
seconds.




--

Tim Hobbs

'58 Series 2 88" aka "Stig"
'77 101FC Ambulance aka "Burrt"
'03 Volvo V70

In message <[email protected]>
"Jeff" <[email protected]> wrote:

> > I'm amazed that everyone here is talking as though this is some sort
> > of future technology. The haulage industry has been using it for some
> > years. "Control" just types in the ID of the truck and up pops a
> > map showing where it is, what speed its doing etc. With that info
> > driving hours, distance travelled, next-service due etc is easily
> > calculated - tying in the vehicles CAN bus could even give you
> > the weight from the self-weighing equipment increasingly being fitted,
> > way-points could be checked to see if deliveries have been made etc.
>
> You seem to be missing the point; with the type of system that you are
> describing small position errors or some outages are not a serious problem.
>
> However, a position error due to poor view of the satellites that put you on
> the expensive motorway rather than the cheap minor road running alongside
> would have serious cost implications.
>

That could be verified by sanity checking - implausible data could
be run through an expert system (as used very efftively by insurance
companies), and in the worst case simply generate an error for human
intervention. How that should be dealt with is a political matter,
not technological.

> How long an outage do you accept before the system logs it as an error?
> Where was the vehicle? How much do you charge it?

Again, that's politics.

>
> The whole thing is fraught with errors, as well as being open to major
> fraud.

All systems are open to fraud - we accept that to some extent in all
our daily lives. At what point is becomes unacceptable is again a
political (social?) judgement.

As I said earlier, I don't think the whole idea is a Good Thing at all,
but it can be done. I suspect it would end up costing, in admin terms,
far more than its benefits - just like parking meters!.

>
> Regards
> Jeff
>
>

Richard
--
www.beamends-lrspares.co.uk [email protected]
Running a business in a Microsoft free environment - it can be done
Powered by Risc-OS - you won't get a virus from us!!
Helping keep Land Rovers on and off the road to annoy the Lib Dems

On Thu, 16 Jun 2005 19:45:43 +0100, "Larry" <[email protected]>
wrote:

>Still doesn't get round the problem of someone who does not have one affixed
>to the vehicle or has one that is faulty, and the system is certainly not
>tamper proof.

Oh yes it does... You just take the same technology used by traffic
light cameras to sense the presence of a vehicle. If the beacon
doesn't have a signal and there is a vehicle there, you photograph it
and issue a fixed penalty.


--

Tim Hobbs

'58 Series 2 88" aka "Stig"
'77 101FC Ambulance aka "Burrt"
'03 Volvo V70

> That could be verified by sanity checking - implausible data could
> be run through an expert system (as used very efftively by insurance
> companies), and in the worst case simply generate an error for human
> intervention. How that should be dealt with is a political matter,
> not technological.
>

How can you sanity check, say a 100m error, when a road exists at that
location??

Jeff

GPS systems are just too fragile for this type of use, it takes very little
to screen or jam a gps receiver.

For instance some radio receivers when tuned to specific frequencies will
jam a gps. So just tune to your favourite local radio station and hey
presto the gps stops working.

Driving in steep valleys or between high buildings is enough to reduce the
visibility of satellites such that significant position errors result.

These problems are enough to make gps road pricing a very poor option.

Jeff

On or around Fri, 17 Jun 2005 12:00:00 +0100, "Jeff" <[email protected]>
enlightened us thusly:

>> That could be verified by sanity checking - implausible data could
>> be run through an expert system (as used very efftively by insurance
>> companies), and in the worst case simply generate an error for human
>> intervention. How that should be dealt with is a political matter,
>> not technological.
>>
>
>How can you sanity check, say a 100m error, when a road exists at that
>location??

if the system shows you travelling on a minor road, then jumping across to
the motorway where no junction exists, then jumping back again...

--
Austin Shackles. www.ddol-las.fsnet.co.uk my opinions are just that
"Quos deus vult perdere, prius dementat" Euripedes, quoted in
Boswell's "Johnson".

>>How can you sanity check, say a 100m error, when a road exists at that
>>location??
>
> if the system shows you travelling on a minor road, then jumping across to
> the motorway where no junction exists, then jumping back again...
>
> --


True if that were the case, but what about starting your journey from there,
or coming from a junction where both roads intersect? Or the signal being
lost and then re-acquired in a incorrect position after an outage some
considerable time later?

Jeff