"Get Grip on your Business"

Questions about our web based remote track & trace application

In the FAQ we explain the meaning of some perhaps commonly used but often not well understood words from the field in which zircos operates.

GPS

The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a worldwide radio-navigation system formed from a constellation of 24 satellites and their ground stations.

GPS uses these satellites as reference points to calculate positions accurate to a matter of meters. In fact, with advanced forms of GPS you can make measurements to better than a centimeter!

In a sense it's like giving every square meter on the planet a unique address.

GPS receivers have been miniaturized to just a few integrated circuits and so are becoming very economical. And that makes the technology accessible to virtually everyone.

For Zircos, position is just one -be it very important- piece of information which is collected and transmitted by our units to our servers. For a lot of our clients it is important to know where there vehicles are at a certain moment, or where they have been in the last few weeks. Very often they'd like to see this information combined with other measurements, for example who was driving that vehicle at that position, or who was driving that vehicle at that position for how long?   The strength of Zircos is that we not only measure one or two parameters, but that we combine them in reports, in real time and easy accesible on the web, just login with you credentials and you see all relevant information from your vehicles.

Telematics

The term telematics is used in a number of ways:

• The [integrated] use of telecommunications and informatics, also known as ICT (Information and Communications Technology). More specifically it is the science of sending, receiving and storing information via telecommunication devices.
• More narrowly and commonly, telematics is applied specifically to the use of Global Positioning System technology integrated with computers and mobile communications technology.
• Most narrowly, the term is used to refer to the use of such systems within road vehicles, in which case the term vehicle telematics may be used.

Zircos applies telematics in all three meanings of the word, with a strong focus on the third (for road vehicles)!

But throughout our projects we send, receive and store information from all kinds of installations, for example fountains or yachts.

Internet based system. Browser based.

Zircos applications are internet based. It means that you access it over the internet. Second, we make our applications browser based, which means that we run all the code on the server, you need a webbrowser (Internet Explorer or Mozilla based browser like netscape or firefox) to access the pages, showing your information.

The advantages?

• no need at all for downloading programupdates,
• no installation of software on your local infrastructure
• A plain internet explorer (or mozilla based browser) on a normal workstation will do fine
• we keep your data in a secure environment

Telemetrics

This means the automatic collection of measurement data and transmitting them to storage and/or processing facilities at remote locations.

Zircos uses wireless devices to automatically collect measured data as temperature, hydraulic pressure, position, worktime, load, windspeed,... and transmit it to our servers for storage, processing or reporting. In this way our clients have easy access to up to date, live information from their installations or vehicles.

Wireless means:

• GPRS based. The majority of our units are equipped with a modem that sends it's information over GPRS networks to our servers. In this way we have a continuing flow of data resulting in realtime information on the webpages.
• SMS based. Some projects do not need live data, a connection via SMS at regular intervals is sufficient. Of course we take care that there is still the possibility to gather information ad hoc: a simple sms to the unit and in no time you find the updated information on your webpage.
• satellite based. Sometimes your vehicle moves out of reach of GSM based communication channels, then our satellite based units can still deliver you the data (ie position) you might need