More T-Box

SmarTek Systems
Sensing and System Integration Solutions

SmarTek's TBox in a solar powered roadside cabinet

TBox enables smart roadside cabinets to have significant sensing and information processing in a small form. The result is highly effective highway surveillance while reducing system procurement and operating costs.

Surveillance hardware located in roadside cabinets should have a small "foot print"and require minimum power. Low power consumption supports operation on solar power. TBox can use a small NEMA strap-on weather tight enclosure instead of a large cabinet on a foundation. TBox is the first of a highly reliable and flexible family of products to meet the growing need for powerful, affordable distributed processing hardware for remote sensing applications.

The SmarTek Systems’ TBox is designed to operate in the adverse environments found in roadside cabinets. It provides an easy to use, programmable interface and processing capability needed for monitoring weather and pavement conditions; tailored, local incident management and operations support; PZT camera control and image selection from a site's multiple cameras; implementation and distribution of standard or specialized communications protocols; integration of multiple sensors from several vendors at a remote site; and control of VMS signs or other roadside devices via phone line or cellular connection. TBox is a powerful distributed processing solution at the end of a low bandwidth connection. TBox allows data to be processed remotely, turning it into usable information prior to sending it to a user's desk for display. TBox is the low cost, low bandwidth approach to send incident alerts, weather and road conditions, traffic flow information, and compressed video images to the control center.

T-BOX Specifications

Physical and Power:

The Operating Temperature is -35 degrees C to +75 degrees C.
The Operating Humidity is 5% to 90% Non-Condensing.
The enclosure is a small footprint metal enclosure ( 9.25"L x 5.75"W x 2.25"H) with enamel finish for durability and rubber feet. It is very well suited for shelf mounting in small NEMA enclosures.
Supply Voltages of 120 VAC, 12 VDC (unregulated), or 5 VDC (regulated) can be accommodated.
Power Requirements for the main processor is under 2.5 watts. Add on capability such as video image capture minimize power consumption through the use of power down modes which result in reduced duty cycles.

I/O Interfaces:

Industry standard serial interfaces include two (2) full implementation RS-232C communication ports with standard DB-9 connectors (male).
Industry standard 8-bit bi-directional parallel port with standard DB-25 connector (female).
Industry standard floppy disk drive interface (FDD).
Industry standard hard disk drive interface (IDE).
Programmable direction TTL parallel input/output (16 bits).
Front panel high visibility four (4) digit red LED display has automatic disable function to reduce power consumption (LEDs turn off after 20 seconds of switch inactivity).

Processor and Memory:

The minimum processor is a "486" equivalent running at minimum of 33 MHz (several faster processors are available) with a minimum of 512 K bytes of non-volatile EPROM for operating system software, a minimum of 512 K bytes of non-volatile Flash memory for operational software and parameter storage, and a minimum of 2 M bytes of DRAM (expandable to 16 M bytes).

Expansion Capability:

The industry standard 16 bit PC-104 interface makes a significant number of third party (off the shelf) expansions cards available (including image capture cards, PCMCIA slots, additional serial ports, and additional parallel I/O) for current and future capability.
The industry standard 8-bit bi-directional parallel port makes a large number of third party interfaces, special interface designs, and external storage media available for current and future capability.
The industry standard floppy disk and hard disk interfaces provide for large volume non-volatile storage if needed.

This page was last modified 02/14/05 .