Tech News October 2013
This month we introduce the new pendant design, discuss training dos and don'ts, highlight some product facts, discuss the fibre future, and offer some online product training.
This newsletter is designed to provide you with information on Chiptech technology and updates that have recently occurred. If there is a topic of particular interest you would like to see communicated please email abby@chiptech.co.nz
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Pearl Advanced With Inactivity Monitoring
Chiptech is constantly striving to help people to remain independent, safe and healthy in their homes. The new Pearl Advanced fall detector has been designed to offer an extra level of monitoring and reassurance. Currently, the Pearl pendant communicates with ERICA every nine hours, to indicate that it is working and in range. As well as communicating with the ERICA to indicate basic functionality, the Pearl Advanced actively monitors its movement to ensure that it is being worn. If Pearl Advanced does not detect movement for between 4 and 5 hours, it sends a signal to the ERICA. This will then send an RF inactivity alert signal to the monitoring centre; they can then check the customer is safe and well.
To future proof the Pearl Advanced, inactivity monitoring has been set as default, so will always send the inactivity signal if it is not moving. To ensure optimum functionality for Pearl Advanced the latest Firmware must be installed in the ERICA. Please contact us for details.
If inactivity monitoring is not required, the ERICA can be set to ignore the RF inactivity signal from Pearl Advanced using the Chiptech Wizard.
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New Pearl Pendant Design
Chiptech has been working on a new Pearl pendant design that will be more tolerant to manufacturing and environmental stresses. We expect to have first samples arriving in November, and hope to have samples for our customers by early 2014. The P2 design will work with existing PRU Advanced, ERICA and ERICA GSM units. The appearance will be similar to the current Pearl, with slightly thicker edges and the same button size.
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Online Product Training with Chiptech
We would like to offer regular video training for installers on our products. We have booked a Webex session on the Thursday 17 October that everyone is welcome to attend. Please see the link below:
Meeting Information
Topic: ERICA Installer Training
Date: Thursday, October 17, 2013
Time: 9:30 am, New Zealand Daylight Time (Wellington, GMT+13:00)
Meeting Number: 860 755 841
Meeting Password: Standring1
To join the online meeting click here
If you would like to organise training specific to your organisation or you have product questions that you would like to discuss please contact
Leonie@chiptech.co.nz
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Compass Communications Network Outage
On the 30th of September Compass Communications had an outage on their network that lasted for almost 20 hours. It was a medical alarm provider that informed Compass of their outage after they had failed to receive their overnight test reports. Compass found the failure occurred in a faulty server that prevented alarms from sending information. Network outages such as this event can occur at any time and it has been our experience that these outages are communicated to the public in a haphazard manner. It's also good to remember that VOIP will not operate when there is no power available, so during a power outage a medical alarm will not work over this service. While VOIP is an extremely cheap method of communication, it is not as reliable as traditional copper phone lines.
A medical alarm such as ERICA GSM offers alternative communication pathways so that there is always more than one way to get an alert through to monitoring. ERICA GSM uses the standard copper network, 2G cellular network and VOIP, ensuring that help will always be available when it is needed.
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NBN and UFB
As we get more connected in our daily lives it is good to take a minute to look at how these new services will benefit us, and also the impact they will have on the current products and services we use. We are experiencing an escalation in the roll out of services including the National Broadband Network (NBN) in Australia, the Ultra Fast Broadband (UFB) in New Zealand and the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) over ADSL/VDSL.
The key benefit to the user is internet speed, and one of the main drivers for this infrastructure upgrade is capacity - our copper lines weren't designed to handle so much traffic. For example, a single copper pair conductor can carry six phone calls, whereas a single fibre pair can carry more than 2.5 million calls simultaneously [source: Federal Communications Commission]. The downside is that there may be limited or no backup during a power outage (analogue copper continues to work as the exchange is battery backed). People are unaware of the side effects of VoIP services.
There has been a lot of chatter about the ability of medical alarms ability to over the UFB or NBN, hence we undertook testing at the Australian NBN plug bench to see how Chiptech products perform. Our discussions with providers show that unless the user chooses a data only service (no standard phone service) they will have an analogue port that works similarly to the existing copper connections. Copper is battery backed at the exchange, NBN Uni-V has short-term battery backup, but NBN Uni-D and all data networks in New Zealand do not, and this is the major concern. Chiptech equipment can work over VoIP telephone lines, but even though the alarm will continue to run for over 50 hours, some phone lines cannot. There were 15 Retail Service Providers (RSP) offering their equipment to test on at the NBN plug bench. Chiptech tested ERICA at the plug bench to each of our customers monitoring centres. We found that 13 of the 15 providers tested had no issues with communication as they provided PSTN quality connections with in-band DTMF. The other two RSP’s used compressed voice channel with out-of-band DTMF signalling, which ERICA can work with, but some of our customers may have configurations and receivers that would not support this. We have provided our results to our customers and the NBN.
Chiptech Research and Development Manager, Paul Wright stated,
"The plug-bench was useful to confirm operation of NBN derived phone ports with Chiptech ERICA to the end receivers. We were pleased that ERICA was able to work successfully through all providers to all our Australian customers.”
We plan to undertake the same type of testing in New Zealand.
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Installers Corner - Demonstrating Product
As technologies become increasingly complex and difficult to understand, people are more likely to harbour anxieties relating to their use of modern technologies. There are a few Dos and Don'ts when demonstrating new product to technophobes.
Do:
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Know what you are talking about, Einstein said "If you can't explain it, you don't understand it well enough."
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Give a clear explanation of the purpose of the device i.e. if it's a Pearl pendant, show them how to press the button, that it flashes around the outer edge and sets off the base unit pre-alarm.
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Keep the demonstration and information to a minimum, people dealing with a lot of new information will only remember a few points, so make them the important ones. i.e. how to summon help in an emergency.
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Get people to interact with the products, having a go and seeing how things work can help to reduce the fear.
Don't
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Get too technical or use words or terms not commonly understood i.e. when dealing with a communication issue talking about impedance, voltage and exchange cards will just confuse the issue.
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Rush through a demonstration - the information you are providing can save their life.
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Forget the basics, show them how it works from start to finish so they know what will happen should they ever need to summon help.
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