Kenaz and Touch Inspect: Must-Have Products for the Warfighter

December 9, 2009 By: Don Jewell

Defense PNT Newsletter, December 2009

Here we are in the month of December. This is where I usually recap the articles and events of the past year, but this year I would like to look ahead and allow you to peruse past issues to your heart’s content, because I have come across a couple of critical new capabilities for our warfighters. One is an upgraded Trimble Nomad, and the other is an incredible new software program that will make life so much easier for our warfighters.

Handheld USA: Kenaz N100

There are literally thousands of Trimble Nomad handheld GPS units in theater, serving many purposes, from basic positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) and beyond. The Nomad is not just a handheld GPS device. Rather, it is a mil-spec hardened, full-fledged, extremely capable Windows Mobile handheld computer that is also one of the best GPS units our warfighters have access to today. The U.S. Marines order them by the thousands, as well they should, but it gets even better.

The Trimble Nomad is manufactured in Corvallis, Oregon, and also in Corvallis is another company, with its home base in Sweden, called Handheld USA, Inc. They have offices around the globe, but for the U.S. it is in Corvallis. Why Corvallis, you may ask, and well you might, but the answer is simple: it is just a great location with lots of outdoor activities available and — oh, yeah — Trimble is just down the street.

During a recent visit to Trimble in Corvallis I was able to spare a little time and visit the folks at Handheld USA as well. I had dinner with Dale Kyle, the president of Handheld USA, and Amy Urban, the director of marketing, and they both basically said, “Hey we love it here, one of our major partners is here and frankly in today’s interconnected world it really does not matter that much where your business is located.” They are right, of course, and as it turns out Corvallis is a pretty good place to be, with lots of opportunities to not get lost in the woods with your trusty GPS device.

So what’s so special about Handheld USA? To put it plainly, they make a great product even better. In all fairness, I should say they make several great products even better. They are not limited to Trimble products, although that does make up a large share of their current product line.

The Trimble Nomads I have reviewed in the past are certainly amazing GPS devices in their own right, and judging from the hundreds of letters from our warfighters they feel the same way. Fortunately, Handheld USA has found a way, several ways actually, to make the Nomad even better. It is still the same rugged device, but the form factor has been elongated with the addition of the extra Kenaz hardware on the front end. Specifically, the additional hardware is 4.0 x 3.8 x 1.4 inches overall and it weighs in at 300 grams or 10.6 ounces. It has one LED indicator and plugs into the Nomad with a weatherproof SubMiniature-B (SMB) female antenna connector. Handheld USA calls the updated Nomad the Kenaz N100; they make a similar front-end for the Trimble Recon called the Kenaz R100. The addition does not affect the hardness of the units and they still retain their IP67 degree of military-certified ruggedness.

The Kenaz N100 is a differential GPS or DGPS receiver with high-accuracy that provides sub-meter positional performance for handheld mapping and other applications. The Kenaz DGPS receivers were originally specifically developed for the Trimble Nomad and Recon handheld computers, but the Kenaz line has now been expanded to work with other devices as well. The compact Handheld USA Kenaz N100 sports a Compact Flash adapter and smart antenna module to simplify field use even in the most demanding environments. The Kenaz N100 specifications are as follows:

Receiver Type: L1 (C/A), with carrier phase smoothing
Channels: 12-channel parallel tracking (10-channel when tracking SBAS, WAAS, EGNOS)
SBAS Tracking: 2-channel, parallel tracking
Update Rate: 1 Hz
Horizontal Accuracy: < 0,4 meters root mean squared (RMS) (0,8 meter - 95% CEP) confidence (DGPS), <1,8 meter RMS confidence (autonomous), < 0,3 meter RMS confidence (DGPS, with optional external antenna)
Cold Start: 60 seconds (no almanac or real-time clock)
Warm Start: 45 seconds (valid almanac, no real-time clock)
Warm Start: 35 seconds (valid almanac and real-time clock)
Hot Start Time: 20 seconds typical (valid almanac, real-time clock, and two hours since last fix)
Reacquisition: <1 second

The only caveat, of course, being that these performance figures depend on the multipath environment, the number of satellites in view, the mask angle, satellite geometry, and ionospheric activity, but then you can place these same caveats on any GPS receiver.

The Handheld USA review unit has been in my possession much too long, because I just hate to send it back; it has operated flawlessly and it allowed me to load and run the brilliantly conceived software I am going to tell you about shortly. The Kenaz N100 I am using is attached to a Trimble Nomad with 2GB of flash memory and the Windows Mobile operating system. The Kenaz integrates this mobile handheld computer with tightly integrated GPS and DGPS capabilities. It is blazingly fast. My experience with the unit consistently beats the cold and warm start times specified by about 5-10 seconds. Going two hours without a fix and then receiving one in just under 20 seconds is something few other units can accomplish. My cold start time to first fix (TTFF) was typically only 40-45 seconds.

The Handheld USA Kenaz N100, with DGPS, is simply a must-have addition to the Trimble Nomad handheld GPS for our warfighters and first responders. The Trimble Nomad’s position accuracy without DGPS will typically and consistently be within 2-5 meters. You may think that is more than adequate for most warfighter needs, but allow me to relate a possible battlefield scenario. You are a U.S. warfighter in the mountains of Afghanistan and are crossing a mountain pass at night when you discover the narrow entrance to the valley ahead has been copiously mined by the enemy. Your explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) team finds and marks all the landmines, and will hopefully, with time, be able to diffuse them all, but there are literally a hundred or more mines. You would rather not detonate them, as this will give away your position and put your team in jeopardy.

During the night a major snowstorm blows in. It snows heavily, and the landmine markers are all hidden by the snow or blown away in the wind. No problem, says your EOD team, we marked the geo-coordinates of the mines. Now, I don’t know about you, but I would certainly not cross that minefield with a PLGR or DAGR and I would even be hesitant to try with a Nomad, but the addition of the Kenaz N100 with sub-meter accuracy and/or RTK centimeter-level accuracy (more on this later) would give me considerably more confidence that I might survive the experience. Personally I would prefer to forget the mine field altogether, but leaving unexploded ordinance is not in the rules of engagement (ROE) for our troops and that is just as it should be. Suffice it to say that the Kenaz N100 gives you that additional confidence and capability that may well save our warfighters’ lives without giving up any of the desired ruggedness of the Trimble Nomad.

Now, as I mentioned, if you really need centimeter accuracy to take you through that snow-covered minefield, there are options that can be added to the Kenaz N100. There is what USA Handheld calls COAST technology or the capability to maintain the accuracy of your position for up to 40 minutes after signal loss — coast along as it were. Then there is RTK or real-time kinematic processing. RTK provides you with centimeter accuracy but raises the cost of the unit substantially and requires base stations and transmission corrections, but it is an available option. There is also an RTK-like capability called L-Dif or L-Differential that provides sub-foot (typically 8-10 inch) precision, but it also requires a base station and correction transmissions. There is even a capability called e-DIF or Extended Differential, which allows you to obtain near-differential accuracy even when no SBAS satellite is available. And finally, but also importantly, if you are operating several Kenaz N100s in high-precision modes, you can convert the Kenaz N100 into an RTCM or Real Time Correction Message Station.

In short the versatility, expandability, and dependable ruggedness of the Handheld USA Kenaz N100 makes it a desirable addition to the Trimble Nomad handheld for our warfighters and our combat engineers, plus, of course, it is the perfect GPS for first responders and field engineers at home, as well. The Kenaz N100 gets five stars in my book, and it is going to be difficult to send this one back to Handheld USA.

Incredible Software: Touch Inspect by Mobile Epiphany

So far we have been discussing hardware and the Handheld USA conversion of the Trimble Nomad and all its capabilities. It is important to note again that the Nomad is a Windows Mobile device and can run a wide variety of proprietary or general purpose software without a hitch: GPS, GIS, mapping, and surveying (including the full ESRI GIS mobile suite). It can also run an amazing software program that I have been following and wanting to write about for some time, and I am happy to say it has just been released by Mobile Epiphany. The software currently runs on most Windows Mobile devices, but does especially well on Trimble handheld products, especially the Nomad, because it has the option for 2 GBs of flash memory.

The software is called Touch Inspect, and it is essentially a computerized, geospatially aware, data-collection application with an amazing user interface. But having said that, just so you understand the basic intent of the program, I have to also say that it is so much more than a computerized data-collection application. Calling Touch Inspect a typical computerized data-collection application is like comparing a skateboard to a Ferrari.

And this matters to our warfighters because…well because one of the biggest complaints from our warfighters concerning military user equipment (MUE) such as the Precision Lightweight GPS Receiver (PLGR) and the Defense Advanced GPS Receiver (DAGR) is the user interface. To put it plainly, the warfighters say the PLGR and DAGR user interface is horrible. It is so user unfriendly that it could indeed define the term. In contrast the user interface on the Mobile Epiphany Touch Inspect program is about the best if not “the best” I have ever had the pleasure of using.

I have met twice with the CEO of Mobile Epiphany, Glenn Kletzky, and his enthusiasm for this software and his company’s products in general is infectious. And so it should be, but why is the interface and the Touch Inspect software so inspiring? Oh, did I fail to mention that Mobile Epiphany is a gaming company? They typically help design and test gaming software applications, although they are known for other software testing as well. But the key here is that they understand users and the all-important man-machine-interface issues about as well as any company I have encountered.

Just to prove to you how easy and natural Touch Inspect is to use, allow me to relate an incident that happened when I first downloaded the software onto the Trimble Nomad handheld device. For ease of use, and loading the Touch Inspect application typically comes loaded on a memory device such as a Secure Data (SD) memory card, but I was downloading it from the Mobile Epiphany website because I wanted to see how well that process worked. It was essentially painless and quick. In fact the software is designed so you can start using limited aspects of the program while it is still downloading — how’s that for being user friendly, no waiting? Glenn Kletzky was on the phone to answer any questions I might have and I continually found myself ahead of his explanations about Touch Inspect. The program is so effortless to use and the user interface is so natural that while Glenn was trying to explain the next step I had already been there and moved ahead. Touch Inspect is easily equal to the most intuitive program I have ever used and that includes the many Apple applications that I use on a regular basis.

Touch Inspect allows you to build databases on the fly for inspecting things, and I do mean just about anything. But more than that, it is a flexible, user configurable database system that can be adapted for so many uses that are critical to our warfighters and first responders.

When I first saw the Touch Inspect program, while it was still in beta, the first thought that came to mind was, “Here is a way for warfighters to input data concerning IEDs or improvised explosive devices.” Because warfighters can access the fully encrypted database without Internet access, they can create a new IED or compare IEDs from previous encounters in any location. Plus, since they can produce a new IED category almost instantly, they are not restricted as they normally would be by a flat file type database. By the same token, the program can force the new warfighter to look at aspects of an IED that they might not think of at the time by leading them to questions that have been asked about other IEDs, or by what items on a checklist have been preloaded by EOD personnel with what they need to know to help destroy of diffuse an IED. And in a wireless environment, these forms can be updated to the warfighter in only seconds. Just think: miss a step when working with an IED and it could be the last step you ever miss. This is where the user interface in Touch Inspect shines; when you are dealing with a life-and-death situation, it is not the time to be confused by or unsure of the next step in the operating system, application, or interface of the computer you are using.

I see applications for this software in almost every aspect of a warfighter’s day, starting with running the various checklists they need to run for weapons, radios, vehicles, and GPS devices. With GPS devices and GIS mapping information right on the device (in other words, you don’t need an Internet connection to see your geospatial maps like you would using something like Google Maps), this new software really shines because it incorporates the warfighter’s current GPS position and time — or the asset’s GPS position — into every database entry, with photos if necessary. And this system uses the topographical maps or aerial images you want it to use, not just simple street maps. Plus, when the computer is once again in Internet, LAN, or WLAN range, it automatically updates the server at HQ and downloads new information automatically without any user interaction.

I know you will be hearing a lot more about Mobile Epiphany and Touch Inspect, but unfortunately I am running out of airspeed and column space. However I plan to do a full review of Touch Inspect soon. In the meantime, you can review the company’s website at www.mobileepiphany.com or contact it directly via info@mobileepiphany.com. Try the program on your Nomad, Recon, or Juno — you will be glad you did.

Until next time,

happy navigating.