Back in February, I sat in my car and listened to a NPR (All Things Considered) piece on Boeing's Project 22.Ironically, I was sitting across the street from the location I was in the process of designing a virtual fence for myself.
Granted, what I had in mind was nothing nearly as sophisticated as Boeing's 21 million dollar design.
It was announced today that the plan is scrapped - and Boeing has been instructed to replace the towers with new equipment. As of now, there is no word about the details.
In the NPR story, I was struck by a statement made by one of the project's engineers. He talked about how they were using off the shelf products that in theory - would work together to meet a desired result. However, they were finding that wasn't the case. That made me think of all the times I've watched vendors trip over themselves to get a project based on loosely developed information that "should" work. There's a fine line between being confident in your technical staff and engineers to find a solution (within the budget your using) and just blindly making commitments based on surface information.
I've been tempted to say "with that kind of money - I'm sure we can figure it out" on more than one occasion. But I'm always reminded of colossal screw ups like this one and tend to error on the side of caution.
With something like three miles of land to cover for each tower there is a lot that can go wrong. They are saying that a key problem is the time lag with transmission of camera images to officers in the field (from the time of movement).
And what about my own project? Well since it is dependent on video analytics and live monitoring - it's on hold for the time being.
Is it just me - or does that camera tower unit look like "johnny 5" from Short Circuit?Story in Engadget
Story in Wired
