Trimble's New Placer Gold GPS Receivers Available For Public Safety AVL Applications

Trimble announced recently the availability of its Placer Gold™ receiver, a 12 channel Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver that provides reliable, fully-configurable vehicle location and reporting for mission critical Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) applications. The Placer Gold receivers are used by public safety and emergency responders to more efficiently locate and dispatch vehicles in order to significantly reduce response times and help save lives.

The Placer product line includes two state-of-the-art models: the Placer Gold (APU) and Placer Gold Dead Reckoning Unit (DRU). In addition to 12 channels, the Placer Gold features indicator lights (a new feature not previously available on the Placer 450), a small form factor, and compatibility with Point to Point Protocol (PPP) data radios. The Placer Gold DRU's on-board dead reckoning sensor outputs position data in the absence of satellite signal reception using a built-in angular rate sensor, a vehicle speed input and a reverse signal input. This solution allows dispatchers to track vehicles through obstructed areas, such as tunnels, urban canyons and mountains.

"The Placer Gold offers a highly reliable GPS receiver to the public safety and utilities market for use in their AVL systems," said Rick Beyer, vice president of Trimble's Mobile Solutions segment. "The new product is a continuation of Trimble's decade-long tradition of offering high performance and robust GPS solutions to the public safety community."

Trimble Placer Gold offers:

• Reliability - the Placer product line has had a mean time between failures (MTBF) of more than 100,000 hours. This reliability results in a need for fewer spares to support a large fleet and one spare unit can typically serve as a back up for a fleet of up to 1,000 vehicles.
• Robustness - throughout its history of actual field usage, the Placer product line has proven to be extremely robust, generally unaffected by in-vehicle radio frequency interference (RFI) or a "sagging" power source.
• Full configuration - with two separate serial/USB ports, multiple output protocols (NMEA and TAIP) and a digital I/O port, the Placer Gold may be configured to work with major public safety Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) systems, in-vehicle mapping and/or CAD application software. The Placer Gold receiver can connect directly to a laptop, a mobile data radio modem, or both a laptop and modem, with each independent serial port configured to output the same or different protocols and baud rates.
• Time and distance reporting - allows triggering of position reports when time and/or distance criteria are met; this feature allows emergency responders to automatically increase the reporting frequency based on vehicle speed, which results in reduced network bottlenecks and wireless transmission costs.

Placer Gold APU and Placer Gold DRU are available now from Trimble's Mobile Resource Management (MRM) sales team.

The Trimble Placer product line is currently used by more than 500 police, sheriff and fire departments nationwide.

Trimble MRM solutions are designed to automate the management of mobile resources and to optimize the service delivery process for customers across a variety of industries. Trimble delivers MRM solutions on a global basis to vertical markets which include: telco, cable, construction supply, field service, utility, and transportation & distribution. Trimble MRM solutions are designed to provide a secure, scalable, upgradeable, enterprise-class platform, and are offered in on-demand software delivery, on-premise or hybrid environments that can seamlessly connect mobile workers in the field to real-time data.

About Trimble
Trimble applies technology to make field and mobile workers in businesses and government significantly more productive. Solutions are focused on applications requiring position or location-including surveying, construction, agriculture, fleet and asset management, public safety and mapping. In addition to utilizing positioning technologies, such as GPS, lasers and optics, Trimble solutions may include software content specific to the needs of the user. Wireless technologies are utilized to deliver the solution to the user and to ensure a tight coupling of the field and the back office. Founded in 1978, Trimble is headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif.

SOURCE: Trimble Mobile Computing Solutions Division