While meeting with one of my clients this past week I identified a need for automating data acquisition in a gold mine mill. This is a harsh, dirty, noisy environment, but every shift has compliance monitoring requirements for several regulatory permits.
Now the mill workers enter values on paper forms and carry them to the environmental office where an environmental tech (with a Masters degree) spends too much time keyboarding the hand-written data into the spreadsheet they're current using (replacing that 'storage' system is what we're doing for them). One page is legal size and jammed with boxes for measurement/observations; other pages are letter size. The entire work flow is highly inefficient and error prone. I offered to provide my client with options to automate the data collection using tablet computers or, preferably, hand-helds that are ruggardized and sealed for use in industrial environments. I think that entering data via keys would be better than entering by stylus because it eliminates the unable-to-interpret problem of scrawled numbers. My perception of the tool is that these units would run linux, use SQLite as the back end, and have a simple app (python, ruby, whatever) that presents the measurements to be made, one-by-one in a yet-to-be-determined sequence, and allows the worker to key in the values (numbers or text as appropriate). The computers would then be carried to the environmental office where the data would be transferred to our permit compliance management system, or there could be docking stations in the mill. This system could also be expanded to water and air quality monitoring at various mine sites (out-of-doors) where the wells, streams, and other sampling sites are not instrumented. (It's difficult to instrument sites that are under 10-15 feet of snow at 6,500+ feet elevation.) There is also the potential to expand this type of automation to other aspects of the mine such as operations and maintenance, safety, and security. The company is very open to automating what makes sense as a way for employees to be more productive and to reduce errors. So, if you're interested in doing this hardware/software project as part of your business, please contact me off the list. This would be _your_ business opportunity, and our only involvement would be introducing you to our client and ensuring the integration of data transfer with our system. You'll also get the opportunity to visit beautiful Elko, NV, and the mine/mill site 50 miles to the northwest. :-) I'll provide hotel and restaurant recommendations. Rich -- Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D. | Integrity Credibility Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. | Innovation <http://www.appl-ecosys.com> Voice: 503-667-4517 Fax: 503-667-8863 _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
