Bike

Increase Life-cycle of Your Mobile Computers

Often companies have to retire their rugged mobile computers too early, though the device is not damaged physically. This involves a significant expenditure and the total cost of ownership is affected adversely. However, there can be several ways through which we can increase the life cycle of our mobile computers and hence increase the ROI. By keeping an eye on the technological advancements in the fields of mobile computing, we can actually future proof our mobile devices.

Applications for mobile devices – OS & Software

When it comes to Operating System, the foremost option comes to mind is a Microsoft-based OS. But we do have options beyond Microsoft and there are operating systems with additional capabilities that the mobile devices can support. In most cases, the warehouses rely on the applications that have been suitable for their older models of mobile devices, and they show least interest when it comes to rewriting applications according to the new mobile device they are going to deploy. This makes it crucial to decide on the applications for a mobile device. Thus, the companies need to choose a mobile device that supports the features of terminal emulation (TE). TE makes a perfect balance between older and newer versions of an application.

So if you have decided to choose a device based on a TE application, you need to further look into its function key capabilities. You need to see, if the device has dedicated “hard” function keys, shifted keys, or there will be soft keys on a touch screen?

Decide on most suitable scanning capabilities

While choosing a mobile computer, its scanning capacities must be given due consideration. The upgradation in barcode symbologies changes the barcode scanning capabilities of a mobile device. You need to analyze your company’s scanning needs, including need for capability to read 2D barcodes, which is often recommended. Or, you just need 1D barcodes reading, or imaging capabilities, or even RFID.

Beside these features, there are several factors that you need to consider in order to future proof your mobile device. Some of them are enumerated below:

• Bluetooth features
• Wireless printing capabilities
• Networking competency
• Voice & speech support features

While selecting a mobile device, the most important thing for companies is to analyze their needs and then see the features. This will help them select the most suitable mobile devices and will help them to determine on the features that they need to upgrade in future.

Excellent GPS Receiver in Taiwan

Taiwan GPS Receiver Market

In Taiwan, GPS suppliers besides taking over most international companies’ orders, also successfully develop GPS watches for hiking, golfing and cycling.  GPS receiver navigation devices have developed rapidly in recent years and are now much more than talking maps. Auto electronics, consumer electronics, home appliances, information and communications technology (ICT), and telecoms companies have worked together to give them a much more diverse range of functions including use in those of MP3 players, digital photo albums, movie players, and real-time road-condition receivers. They now provide information on navigation, recreation, and entertainment, all in a single unit.

Taiwan’s GPS industry started to take off in 2007. After MiTAC bought Navman, they’ve become the second biggest GPS company in Europe. Also, their sales of 800 million of PND has made them become the third largest GPS supplier in the world. At the same time, TomTom and Garmin have expended their ordering to Taiwan OEM’s from components to fabrication products. The global leader in satellite navigation, Garmin Ltd. and its subsidiaries have designed, manufactured, marketed and sold navigation, communication and information devices and applications since 1989 – most of which are enabled byGPS technology. One of their principal subsidiaries is located in Taiwan. Including Japanese and European orders, Taiwan’s GPS sales were around NT1 billion. The total growth rate was 70%, which makes its growth very noticeable compared to the 2007 ICT industry growth rate of 4.6%, or 730 billion dollars.

Even though this year, European and U.S. consumer electronic product sales are still being effected by the current economy situation, IEK is still very pretty positive about the GPS market in Taiwan. The Taiwan GPS industry market will grow strongly once the market moves from Europe and the, U.S. to the newly developed countries.

GPS for Hiking

What’s a suitable GPS for cycling? Color mapping, long life battery or replaceable batteries, topo, street/road, & bike trail mapping, text-to-speech (gives me the street name), prefer selectable car vs bicycle mode, a way to pick future routes, possibly software that would use steet & topo to avoid large hilly areas on long distance biking, large SD card, fairly waterproof, screen can be seen in sunlight. One of the Taiwan GPS receiver suppliers announced their product as an all-in-one GPS receiver.

Dedicated massive-correlator signal parameter search engine within the baseband enables rapid search of all the available satellites and acquisition of very weak signal. An advanced track engine allows weak signal tracking and positioning in harsh environments such as urban canyons and under deep foliage.

With very fast signal acquisition speed, it has very low average power consumption for locate on demand type of applications.

GPS for Golfing

Golf GPS systems are rapidly evolving from only player enhancement to complete course management systems. The primary goal of a golf GPS system is to provide players with distances to all kind of features on the course and especially to the green they are playing. Some courses are better fit to use the capabilities of GPS than others. In order to obtain a satisfactory accuracy the GPS receiver must have a non-obstructed view of the sky. This makes that courses with lots of trees are less suitable for golf GPS.

Golf GPS system should contain the following:

Provides you with GPS distances from “any” location on the hole to the 200, 150, 100 yard / meter markers, to the front, centre, and back of the Green.

Record the GPS distance, club used and landing position for every stroke you make.

Stroke length Statistics: tells you the average and longest distance you hit each club in your bag. You know exactly how far you drive the ball.

Club Selector! Suggest which club to use for your next stroke based on the historical stroke data already stored from previous scorecards!

Taiwan GPS suppliers, Mobile Action Technology Inc and Polar have released their new GSP products for sport.

GPS for Cycling

Whether you are a road biker or a mountain biker, there’s a GPS that will work well for you, and it can mount right on your handlebars. All of them have high-sensitivity chipsets for superior satellite reception in urban canyons and under canopy. While they are excellent cyclometers, they aren’t all that great as navigation devices. If you are primarily wanting to track your performance though, Taiwan suppliers who make sporting GPS receivers would be your excellent choice. They are suitable for whoever wants data acquisition and a dashboard lap timer.

To get a complete report on Taiwan GPS, please go to http://gps-receiver.ready-online.com/index.html

The Workings of your Bike’s Gears

The gears in mountain bikes just keep getting more and more intricate. The bikes of today have as many as 27 gear ratios. A mountain bike will use a combination of three different sized sprockets in front and nine in the back to produce gear ratios.

The idea behind all these gears is to allow the rider to crank the pedals at a constant pace no matter what kind of slope the bike is on. You can understand this better by picturing a bike with just a single gear. Each time you rotate the pedals one turn, the rear wheel would rotate one turn as well (1:1 gear ratio).

If the rear wheel is 26 inches in diameter, then with 1:1 gearing, one full twist on the pedals would result in the wheel covering 81.6 inches of ground. If you are pedaling at a speed of 50 RPM, this means that the bike can cover over 340 feet of ground per minute. This is only 3.8 MPH, which is the equivalence of walking speed. This is ideal for climbing a steep hill, although bad for ground or going downhill.

To go faster you’ll need a different ratio. To ride downhill at 25 MPH with a 50 RPM cadence at the pedals, you’ll need a 5.6:1 gear ratio. A bike with a lot of gears will give you a large number of increments between a 1:1 gear ratio and a 6.5:1 gear ratio so that you can always pedal at 50 RPM, no matter how fast you are actually going.

On a normal 27 speed mountain bike, six of the gear ratios are so close to each other that you can’t notice any difference between them.  

With actual use, bike riders tend to choose a front sprocket suitable for the slope they are riding on and stick with it, although the front sprocket can be difficult to shift under heavy load. It’s much easier to shit between the gears on the rear.

If you are cranking up a hill, it’s best to choose the smallest sprocket on the front then shift between the nine gears available on the rear. The more speeds you have on the back sprocket, the bigger advantage you’ll have.

All in all, gears are very important to mountain bikes as they dictate your overall speed. Without gears you wouldn’t be able to build speed nor would you be able to pound pedals. The gears will move the pedals and help you build up speed.  

There are all types of gears available in mountain bikes, all of which will help you build up a lot of momentum if you use them the right way.