Log in

Print Email

Home > Defense > Warfighter
Related topics: Defense, Newsletter Editor's Column, Opinions

Warfighter

Trimble Yuma: The Perfect Handheld GPS Transceiver?

October 14, 2009 By: Don Jewell

Defense PNT Newsletter, October 2009

What do you think of when you hear the name Yuma? Do you think of a small city in Arizona or do you think of all the tough guy Westerns named after that town, such as: “3:10 to Yuma” originally starring Glenn Ford and Van Heflin, or Russell Crowe, Christian Bale, and Peter Fonda in the remake. Then there is “Fort Yuma” with Peter Graves, and just plain “Yuma” with Clint Walker. The name Yuma is associated with tough and rugged hombres, so to my way of thinking this must be at least one of the reasons Trimble choose the name Yuma for their amazing new rugged, tablet size GPS computer/handheld.

I have had the pleasure of working with three different versions of the Trimble Yuma (download a PDF Datasheet here), a pre-production model, a full production model and one that a U.S. government agency, who must remain anonymous, is modifying for its own special purposes. I predict that a great many agencies and services, inside and outside of the government, will participate in making the Yuma a huge success. It is that versatile.

Attributes: Specifications

The Yuma has many of the special attributes that we have said over the past two and a half years must be resident in the Perfect Handheld GPS Transceiver (PHGPST). While Trimble will not admit that the Yuma was designed for the military market, it certainly fits well in that military, first-responder niche. The Yuma is designed to work, Trimble says, in a challenging environment, and that certainly describes Iraq and Afghanistan, at a minimum.

First of all, the Yuma is a rugged device with MIL-STD or Military Standard hardness qualifications. Trimble says the Yuma rugged tablet GPS computer is designed to be fully functional in any outdoor environment — no matter how extreme, war zones included. The first challenge with computing outdoors, in the snow and cold of Afghanistan or the heat, dust, and mud of Iraq, is keeping the elements out. The Yuma has an ingress protection rating of 67 or IP67 (6 = dust tight; 7 = protection — against effects of immersion from 15 cm to 1 m); this means the Yuma is protected against those sand storms in Iraq and for up to 30 minutes impervious to being immersed in water to a meter in depth. The Yuma meets or exceeds MIL-STD-810F and 461E specifications.

Why this level of protection? Because dust on electronic components can lead to overheating, moisture wicking, and reduced electrical conductivity as many of our warfighters have unfortunately discovered. Plus silicon (sand) in your device just causes all sorts of weird, unpredictable things to happen to electronics, especially keyboards, but Trimble makes a rugged keyboard for the Yuma that is immune to such disturbances. Water (either penetration or condensation of humidity) may short electrical components, causing permanent damage if the unit is powered on while wet. Again not so with the Yuma, but more on that later. And just so you know, the MIL-STD-810 test series are approved for use by all departments and agencies of the United States Department of Defense (DoD).

The second challenge that is extremely important to our warfighters is protection for handheld GPS units against shock, vibration, and altitudes from below sea level to 40,000 feet and extreme operating temperature fluctuations such as -22 degrees Fahrenheit to 140 degrees Fahrenheit. The Yuma meets or exceeds all these parameters, plus the Yuma can be stored without harm at temperatures as low as -40 degrees F and as high as 158 degrees F. In other words a MIL-STD rugged designed tablet computer, such as the Yuma, means your computer keeps working when you jump out of the vehicle, helicopter, or aircraft in the middle of a snowstorm or winter cold snap, or when you need to seek refuge from 130-plus degree desert heat in an air-conditioned vehicle.

Outdoor work, especially in a war zone, tends to be active and transitory with lots of knocks and shocks delivered to the device. Truck tailgates and Hummer hoods make great desktops. They also provide for an increased risk of dropping the device being used. The Yuma’s design incorporates a solid-state hard drive to eliminate moving parts, and special shielding and corner bumpers to provide some additional protection against the stress of impact and vibration. In other words, this device can take what the warfighter and/or harsh environments dish out and keep working. Trimble says the Yuma has tough-as-nails survivability and uncommon versatility that merge to create the ultimate one-computer solution designed for the rugged life our warfighters and first responders lead, and I totally agree.

Real-World Testing

As usual I put the Yuma through its paces. We’ve had limited amounts of snow in Colorado so far this year, but certainly enough for the ski slopes to open in early October, so it was enough to test the Yuma. It was impervious to cold, snow, and a long immersion in icy water. In fact I was a bit surprised at how tough the Yuma can be. I fumbled it and dropped it by mistake off my back deck about 15 feet up, and it landed on snowy wet and soggy ground but did not miss a beat. The test engineers at Trimble have done an excellent job protecting the inner workings and the 7-inch color touchscreen on the Yuma. I really put this unit through every test I could think of and it was truly totally impervious. Although I would not advise it, you could hammer tent pegs with this device and it will keep on working.

Ok, hopefully you get the point that the Yuma is rugged. Now, what are the Yuma’s capabilities and just how effective a handheld tablet computer is it?

Here are some Key Features:

Intel Atom 1.6 GHz processor
32 gigabyte (GB) solid state hard drive
Integrated Wi-Fi b/g
Integrated Bluetooth 2.0
Integrated GPS
Two integrated cameras
Express Card slot
SDIO slot
7-inch sunlight readable touchscreen display
Light weight (2.6 pounds including batteries)

Personally I found the Intel Atom 1.6 GHz processor to be more than adequate. It is capable of running several applications simultaneously and I suspect the 32 GB solid-state drive has a lot to do with this. It is lightning quick. I ran several mobile ESRI GIS (Geographical Information Systems) applications — they can historically really slow a machine down. But in this case, the ESRI applications (ArcPAD and ArcGIS) ran simultaneously, smoothly, and quickly. No complaints.

Wireless

The Yuma also quickly found all the Wi-Fi sites in my neighborhood, some I have not seen before, including five with only one strength bar. The Yuma connected with my home Wi-Fi systems, both open and secure, seamlessly the first time and automatically each subsequent time. It was impressive.

The integrated Bluetooth Class 2.0 function also works well. It connected to every Bluetooth device I turned on, even some that I didn't know were broadcasting. I don’t think my neighbors noticed. The sensitivity of the Bluetooth receiver certainly exceeds 50 feet, or it did on the units I tested. This gives you some real options. Fortunately, it asks you if you want to connect, as long as you set it up that way, and most devices require a simple code but a code none-the-less to connect. Again, there are several menu options that make this a very flexible device where communications are concerned.

Of course it has a superb GPS, or we would not be reviewing the Yuma in the first place, and I will get to the specifics of the GPS soon.

Cameras and IO

If you are a bit narcissistic you will love the Yuma as well as yourself of course, for it has two, count ‘em, two integrated digital cameras, one forward facing 2 MP camera and one inward facing 1.3 MP camera, and each camera is capable of recording video. What’s not to like about that?

The Yuma has sufficient IO with an Express Card 34mm slot and an SDIO slot, as well as USB of course. The Yuma read every card that I could fit into the slots regardless of whether they held documents or photos.

In the Field

You get all this and much more tightly integrated into a tablet computer weighing just 2.6 lbs. There is also an office docking station or an office docking station with extended batteries, plus standard accessories such as an AC charger, stylus pen with a tether (very helpful), a hand strap, screen protectors, an extended protection cap, and a display cleaning cloth. Basically everything you need to get started working in the field, plus there are various batteries and power adaptors to include an international power adaptor, and connector cables if you need them, but they, unlike the batteries, are not included in the total weight. You can hook up an external keyboard for labor-intensive manual input, but for normal fieldwork, I found the pop-up on-screen keyboard to be more than sufficient, and of course imminently convenient and immediately available anywhere.

As I mentioned, there is a stylus, but I found myself using my natural index styli — my fingers — and they worked fine. But for some fine and precise requirements, such as for intensive GIS applications, you will definitely prefer the accuracy of a stylus. For everyday work the natural digits work well.

Vehicles

For our warfighters and first responders who may wish to use the Yuma in a vehicle, regular and heavy-duty vehicle charging kits provide power as you work and recharge onboard batteries at the same time so you are always ready for handheld mobility mode. There are several vehicle mounts both from Trimble and after-market providers, plus a rugged version of the aforementioned keyboard and an extended cap to protect those accessories that extend beyond the normal footprint of the Yuma when you go off into the boonies in handheld mode. You can, of course, and are gently reminded to, use screen protectors, both regular and antiglare models to help protect the Yuma’s 7-inchcolor screen, which is plenty tough without them but is almost impervious to any scratches with them in place.

There is a fancy pole mount for the unit is case you are going to use it for surveying, I guess, but I can’t figure out how that works or I guess you could just poke the unit up out of the foliage to get a better fix. Actually, I’m just kidding: the pole mount is very useful and it is primarily used for a separate high-precision GPS unit that would be feeding the Yuma for extra-fine positioning requirements or RTK (real-time kinematic processing…think centimeters of accuracy) work. Useful, I’m sure, if that is your thing. The Yuma is also WAAS (Wide Area Augmentation System) and soon EGNOS (European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service) enabled, but more about that in the GPS section.

Cases and Docking Stations

A nice hardened deluxe carrying case, available only in Henry Ford’s favorite color, helps when you drop the Yuma (in the case, of course) on the marble floor in the airport or men’s room. I know that never happens, but I thought it worth mentioning. Just in case.

The nifty black case is also handy, with special battery slots, for carrying those extra 2600 mAh (a milliampere-hour is one-thousandth of an ampere-hour or 3.6 coulombs, and is a technical term for how much electrical charge a particular battery will hold) Lithium Ion batteries, which you may very well not need in normal use. These standard Li-ion batteries with a full charge provide 7.4 V and 20-watt Hours, or about 8 hours of normal computing time, and are manufactured with RoHS compliant materials. For all you who are not die-hard environmentalists, RoHS refers to the Directive on the Restriction Of the use of certain Hazardous Substances in electrical and electronic equipment or, read as green manufacturing. But I digress; the point being the standard Li-ion batteries last all day in the field and the extended Li-ion batteries are of the 5200-mAh battery with 7.4 V and 39-watt hours. So the extended batteries provide almost double the operating time. And for an operating plus, the batteries are hot swappable, which means you can swap them out while operating and not miss a beat or drop a bit.

Then there is one of my favorite adaptation accessories that come standard on the Yuma. That is the elastic hand strap that allows you to truly use the Yuma in the field as a tablet computer. I would consider it a necessity versus an accessory, because I can’t imagine using the Yuma without it. It is so ubiquitous to the Yuma that you don’t think about it, and in my humble opinion, it should be standard issue on any handheld and most certainly on tablet computers.

Now back to the Yuma docking station. Officially it is called the Trimble Yuma Rugged Tablet office-docking station, and as I said there are normal and extended battery versions. The features I really like are several: once you come back in from the field you can dock the Yuma and it works just like your laptop or office computer — and it does so seamlessly. Simply slide the Yuma into the docking station and immediately experience all-in-one connectivity to your monitor, mouse, keyboard, printer, and network. No hassles because the docking station features four USB 2.0 connectors, an RS-232 / serial port, an RJ45 / Ethernet port, a headphone out port, and a VGA pass-through port, capable of a resolution of 1024 x 600 WSVGA 650 nit (nit is a measure of luminance), which you can then use to connect to an external monitor or projector. You can connect through the Ethernet port to a secure network, Skype, and multiple DVD drives, and/or external hard drives. There are plenty of options. I tried all kinds of configurations and did not find myself port-limited, as has been the case with many of the smaller handheld units I’ve reviewed. There is sometimes just not enough real estate on a handheld device to incorporate all the connectivity you would desire; this is definitely not a problem with the Yuma, with or without the docking station, and the future holds the promise of even better options to come.

Additional Features

A couple of other docking station features sold me on the device. First, the dual-battery charging bay on the docking station. It charges two normal and/or two extended life batteries at twice the rate or in half the time as the Yuma itself: ~3.5 hours for the extended life batteries and 5.5 hours for the standard batteries. It’s a bit counter intuitive, but evidently it works that way. Yes, you read that right, and you can charge up to four batteries at the same time. With four batteries charging, if you are ever confused there are a plethora of LED lights — blue, green and amber — that will keep you informed of the charging progress for each battery.

The other unique feature is that the docking stations allow you to dock the Yuma while the Yuma is wet. That’s right, you just bring the Yuma straight in from the field and dock it. No drying it off or blowing out ports with canned air and worrying about a short. Just plug it in and go to work.

While out in the field with the Yuma, before docking you can do such things as:

Collect and exchange data: lots of data with several communications options, including phone and data calls via the Skype communications program
Transfer data in real time
Run reports, send reports, receive reports on the go
Receive dispatch or mission updates on the go
Take, process, and send geo-tagged photographs or movies from either of the two onboard cameras
Add secure memory for sensitive (FOUO) files
Send and receive e-mail or SMS messages
Write and send a report with GIS metadata embedded
And, of course, always find your way back to your vehicle, your base, or your home using the rugged Trimble integrated GPS.

All this capability fits in a tablet computer that is (L x W x H) 5.5 x 9 x 2 inches and weighs 2.6 pounds or 1.2 kg, which as I said includes the ubiquitous hand strap and standard batteries. The Yuma housing is made of Mg-Al (magnesium and aluminum) and is arrayed in the standard Trimble yellow-and-black color scheme or in a very professional looking gray with black accents. I preferred the gray and black and so will our warfighters, plus I have heard that if our warfighters request a camouflage color scheme that can be provided as well. More precisely, I specifically asked that question when I was visiting Trimble Navigation Limited in Corvallis, Oregon, a few weeks ago, and it was not ruled out as a possibility. Plus I have it from an authoritative source that Trimble is devising a lanyard system for the Yuma so our warfighters and first responders can instantly drop the tablet and have both hands free for self defense or whatever and the Yuma will remain attached to their person. Remember, you read it here first.

Processing Power

The Yuma runs on an Intel Atom chip and uses the Microsoft Windows Vista Business operating system. Don’t let this turn you off, as I experienced no operating system problems during any of my extensive tests, no hang-ups, restarts, or the dreaded blue screen of death. There is 1 GB of DRAM or random access memory with DDR2 or Double Data Rate 2 speed capability and a 32 GB solid-state hard drive with a 7-inch color, sunlight, and snow-reflection readable touch screen. The Yuma has a headphone / speaker mini-jack stereo port and a microphone line-in mini-jack, which allowed me to use Skype over VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) and it worked flawlessly.

GPS Capabilities

The GPS receiver in the Yuma as integrated is an extremely sensitive version of the now venerable SiRFStar III chipset and is WAAS capable (EGNOS to reportedly follow soon). The Trimble WAAS software in the Yuma uses both the ionospheric corrections and the WAAS ranging signals to aid positioning. Plus, the Trimble navigation and GPS control / monitoring software uses as many satellites as there are in view for a fix or position. The Yuma may see 12 satellites and it will use 10 of them or all of them for a position if the geometry is right. The unit visually shows you in color which satellites are in view, the geometry of said satellites relative to your position, and which satellites are being used for a fix both mathematically and geometrically. Remember the old saying, “With GPS both numbers and geometry matter.” The color Trimble navigation application display makes this axiom abundantly clear.

Sensitivity and TTFF

One of the most frequent complaints from our warfighters and first responders concerning military- and government-issued GPS user equipment is that it will not receive signals indoors, or at best just one or two satellites, and only if you are sitting or standing by a window. The second most problematic issue is the delayed TTFF or time to first fix.

This is just not an issue with the Yuma. Right out of the box, a cold start, more than a thousand miles from where the unit originated, the Yuma found seven satellites while it was sitting on my kitchen counter and the TTFF was so fast that I had to time it precisely, several times.

The incredible results were:

Cold start TTFF: 40 seconds average, accuracy 3-8 meters
Warm start TTFF: 21 seconds average, accuracy 3-5 meters

Plus, you can shave some seconds off those times by moving the Trimble Navigation program into the Microsoft Windows start menu.

In practice, those TTFF times are so short when you are working with a Microsoft Windows software-based machine that they are lost in the noise.

Then, if you add a program and capability called SkyHook Wireless (you must purchase it separately), your TTFF times, indoors or out, drop to 1 to 4 seconds with 5 to 7 meters accuracy. That gives you the same TTFF and initial accuracy as an Apple iPhone.

Bottom Line

The bottom line is that I am extremely impressed with the $3,700 Trimble Yuma. The cards, letters, and e-mails I am receiving from the field indicate that our warfighters are just as impressed. I am hearing stories that the Yuma is being pressed into service accomplishing feats and processing data that usually require a dedicated and much more expensive terminal. I will bring you those updates when I can confirm them.

Now as I think about it, this is just about as close as we have come to the perfect computer platform, tablet, handheld, or otherwise, especially for a busy journalist on the go, yours truly for instance. Plus, there is so much real estate available that the Yuma will surely evolve to be even better than it is currently.

Now if I could just talk our editor-in-chief into purchasing me one… Oh, well, I suspect it will be a cold day before that happens. You get the picture. But what you should get yourself is a Trimble Yuma. If you do, drop me a line and let me know what you think.

Until next time, happy navigating.

Don