5 ms·

As someone who builds telecommunications systems for first responders, I'm not convinced that a chat service, and online technology is better than narrowband 2-

by Aloha 6y ago

As someone who builds telecommunications systems for first responders, I'm not convinced that a chat service, and online technology is better than narrowband 2-way radio, and paper maps. These backcountry places often have no cell service, and paper maps don't have technical difficulties - and are easy/cheap to duplicate and hand out, in addition to being naturally rugged. So this means, expensive non-terrestrial communications, and expensive ruggedized devices. While this is purportedly the problem firstnet is supposed to solve, I'm skeptical that it will solve it, or that the other issues (technical and otherwise) blocking adoption will be overcome.

frogblast 6y ago
I'm not involved in firefighting, I just spend a lot of time with maps planning out hikes: I find that paper maps are dramatically better for me than anything on a screen, simply because they can be so much bigger and higher resolution at the same time. It is far easier to get a feel for an area on a table-top sized map printed at high PPI than on my 4K 27" monitors. As for rapidly tracking the fire perimeters: Despite what the original article says, this mapping process is already happening. You can see the very outlines updated daily, with lots of fine detail, on inciweb.
- jbay808 6y ago
  And the paper map doesn't run out of batteries!
- superhuzza 6y ago
  Same in my experience, for both climbing and hiking paper maps and topos are much better than digital.
- klyrs 6y ago
  When I was in search and rescue, we made extensive use of paper maps. Nice rite-in-the-rain jobbers, useful in a downpour. And sometimes we'd need to take notes on them. With a pencil! In the rain! grumble grumble kids these days. Try that with a capacitive touchscreen...
  - duiker101 6y ago
    I am one of the kids of these days, but I know absolutely nothing about anything so I don't mean this in a mean spirited way but I am genuinely curious: if you have paper in the rain, can't you have a water resistant device? Generally, they are both thing that I wouldn't necessarily associate with doing well in the rain...
    - klyrs 6y ago
      My phone works fine in the rain. The touchscreen is garbage, because it can't differentiate my finger from a puddle on the screen. Granted, there are pressure sensitive touchscreens out there. If you want a good map that you can take notes on, you'll need a custom app. In my experience, writing on screens is very fussy business. So you might be able to a custom app, custom hardware, maybe spending thousands per unit. But, paper. I mentioned a brand name. It's wonderful stuff, nothing like the paper you're thinking of. This solution costs a few bucks per person. https://www.riteintherain.com/ https://www.riteintherain.com/ Edit: this "rain" crap is a digression from the "fire" problem. I don't have experience there, but I imagine "the electric infrastructure and cell towers burnt down" is more of an issue... again, paper and pencil wins.
      - TeMPOraL 6y ago
        > Edit: this "rain" crap is a digression from the "fire" problem. I don't have experience there, but I imagine "the electric infrastructure and cell towers burnt down" is more of an issue... again, paper and pencil wins. WRT. paper vs. touchscreens and fire, I imagine two extra factors come into play. One, protective equipment may not play well with touchscreens (are there capacitive screen-friendly pads for gloves that won't burn off?). Two, heat in general. Phones and tablets don't like it all that much, and can easily start behaving weirdly and/or shut down when being used in a car in summer, much less next to an actual fire.
    - vidanay 6y ago
      Try this: Put on your winter gloves, climb in the the shower, turn the water on ice cold, and see how well you are able to operate your iPad. At least with paper maps and a #2 pencil, you have a fighting chance in those conditions.
rsync 6y ago
I am a firefighter/EMR in California. There is nothing wrong with two way radios, per se. The issue is the FCC "typing" rules that disallow a single device operating on multiple, disparate frequency bands. Imagine I respond to a car accident and need to call for a helicopter and arrange a landing zone. In this situation, I will be juggling four brick sized radios throughout the duration of that call.[1] Possibly while driving. We have started to funnel most comms to "tablet command mobile" on our personal phones, which is all text based and ties into GPS map on the phone, etc. - this is very efficient and works very well, but it is heavily dependent on infrastructure we don't control (the mobile phone network). Anything complicated and we're juggling four bricks again. It's very frustrating, especially in an era of SDRs that could very obviously give me p25+calcord+GMRS all in one simple device. [1] Pager that the call came in on, county P25 radio that we use all the time, Hi-Band radio to speak on "calcord" to the helicopter, GMRS handheld for traffic control.
- FireBeyond 6y ago
  > Imagine I respond to a car accident and need to call for a helicopter and arrange a landing zone. In this situation, I will be juggling four brick sized radios throughout the duration of that call.[1] Possibly while driving. Oof, that's painful. Airlift here has their choppers programmed with all the VHF and UHF frequencies for effectively every county in Western Washington.
- hatsunearu 6y ago
  One of the proposed benefits of 4G/5G is that they can make microcells that can do exactly that, with the client devices being regular phones.
  - e_d_e_v 6y ago
    Well, it seems ridiculous to say that, because there have been 3g microcells (openbsc, for example) forever. It seems bizarre that we couldn't have a switch in every truck that turns it into a mobile microcell for <$100. The backhaul is the problem, because normal microcells are connected to the internet via hardline IP communication . . . . which could be done with modern satellite. The problem is that if you are selling anything to any kind of government agency, you absolutely want them _not_ to be able to use any commodity component like a "cell phone"

by Aloha 6y ago

frogblast 6y ago

I'm not involved in firefighting, I just spend a lot of time with maps planning out hikes: I find that paper maps are dramatically better for me than anything on a screen, simply because they can be so much bigger and higher resolution at the same time. It is far easier to get a feel for an area on a table-top sized map printed at high PPI than on my 4K 27" monitors. As for rapidly tracking the fire perimeters: Despite what the original article says, this mapping process is already happening. You can see the very outlines updated daily, with lots of fine detail, on inciweb.

jbay808 6y ago
And the paper map doesn't run out of batteries!
superhuzza 6y ago
Same in my experience, for both climbing and hiking paper maps and topos are much better than digital.
klyrs 6y ago
When I was in search and rescue, we made extensive use of paper maps. Nice rite-in-the-rain jobbers, useful in a downpour. And sometimes we'd need to take notes on them. With a pencil! In the rain! grumble grumble kids these days. Try that with a capacitive touchscreen...
- duiker101 6y ago
  I am one of the kids of these days, but I know absolutely nothing about anything so I don't mean this in a mean spirited way but I am genuinely curious: if you have paper in the rain, can't you have a water resistant device? Generally, they are both thing that I wouldn't necessarily associate with doing well in the rain...
  - klyrs 6y ago
    My phone works fine in the rain. The touchscreen is garbage, because it can't differentiate my finger from a puddle on the screen. Granted, there are pressure sensitive touchscreens out there. If you want a good map that you can take notes on, you'll need a custom app. In my experience, writing on screens is very fussy business. So you might be able to a custom app, custom hardware, maybe spending thousands per unit. But, paper. I mentioned a brand name. It's wonderful stuff, nothing like the paper you're thinking of. This solution costs a few bucks per person. https://www.riteintherain.com/ https://www.riteintherain.com/ Edit: this "rain" crap is a digression from the "fire" problem. I don't have experience there, but I imagine "the electric infrastructure and cell towers burnt down" is more of an issue... again, paper and pencil wins.
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      > Edit: this "rain" crap is a digression from the "fire" problem. I don't have experience there, but I imagine "the electric infrastructure and cell towers burnt down" is more of an issue... again, paper and pencil wins. WRT. paper vs. touchscreens and fire, I imagine two extra factors come into play. One, protective equipment may not play well with touchscreens (are there capacitive screen-friendly pads for gloves that won't burn off?). Two, heat in general. Phones and tablets don't like it all that much, and can easily start behaving weirdly and/or shut down when being used in a car in summer, much less next to an actual fire.
  - vidanay 6y ago
    Try this: Put on your winter gloves, climb in the the shower, turn the water on ice cold, and see how well you are able to operate your iPad. At least with paper maps and a #2 pencil, you have a fighting chance in those conditions.

rsync 6y ago

I am a firefighter/EMR in California. There is nothing wrong with two way radios, per se. The issue is the FCC "typing" rules that disallow a single device operating on multiple, disparate frequency bands. Imagine I respond to a car accident and need to call for a helicopter and arrange a landing zone. In this situation, I will be juggling four brick sized radios throughout the duration of that call.[1] Possibly while driving. We have started to funnel most comms to "tablet command mobile" on our personal phones, which is all text based and ties into GPS map on the phone, etc. - this is very efficient and works very well, but it is heavily dependent on infrastructure we don't control (the mobile phone network). Anything complicated and we're juggling four bricks again. It's very frustrating, especially in an era of SDRs that could very obviously give me p25+calcord+GMRS all in one simple device. [1] Pager that the call came in on, county P25 radio that we use all the time, Hi-Band radio to speak on "calcord" to the helicopter, GMRS handheld for traffic control.

FireBeyond 6y ago
> Imagine I respond to a car accident and need to call for a helicopter and arrange a landing zone. In this situation, I will be juggling four brick sized radios throughout the duration of that call.[1] Possibly while driving. Oof, that's painful. Airlift here has their choppers programmed with all the VHF and UHF frequencies for effectively every county in Western Washington.
hatsunearu 6y ago
One of the proposed benefits of 4G/5G is that they can make microcells that can do exactly that, with the client devices being regular phones.
- e_d_e_v 6y ago
  Well, it seems ridiculous to say that, because there have been 3g microcells (openbsc, for example) forever. It seems bizarre that we couldn't have a switch in every truck that turns it into a mobile microcell for <$100. The backhaul is the problem, because normal microcells are connected to the internet via hardline IP communication . . . . which could be done with modern satellite. The problem is that if you are selling anything to any kind of government agency, you absolutely want them _not_ to be able to use any commodity component like a "cell phone"