Devices Leverage Smartphones And Text Messaging to Create New Tools With Potential for Construction
Press the blank face of the V.ALET dial for two seconds and a prewritten text message and/or call immediately goes out to as many as three contacts to report the wearer is in trouble. Also, a siren wail emits from the device. ENR tested it, with our �victim� in Seattle notifying contacts in New York and Hong Kong. �I�ve fallen and I can�t get up� read the text, which included a Google Map link to her location. The automatic fall-detection feature must be activated from the companion app�s settings menu, a detail confirmed after our victim crashed around a hotel room but failed to set the feature off. The button dial can be popped into a watch band or pendant ring, but the best part is the monthly service fee: Zero.
Photo by Tom Sawyer / ENR
The capabilities of the Kodak Pixpro SP360 makes you want to set it at the center of the action, on the tip of a piece of equipment or suspend it in air above a vortex of work. The remote control from smartphone or iPad toggles from still images to video. This view is dawn in Hong Kong.
Photo by Tom Sawyer
Using a free control app, this tiny add-on to Android and iOS smartphones turns a phone into a thermal-sensing still-frame and video camera. It has a 36-degree field of view, capturing a 32,136-thermal-pixel image. Developed by a firm with decades of experience in military and professional-grade thermal technology, the device is emerging now after two years in stealth mode. The product is the firm�s first entry into the consumer market, and the developers claim such a sophisticated thermal-imaging capability has never been so inexpensive. The camera measures heat and transforms even slight temperature differences, ranging from -40 degrees C to +330 degrees C, into a visual image entirely from the infrared spectrum. Developers say it can reveal studs in walls, electrical shorts, clogs in pipes, heat escaping from insulation, leak paths or objects floating in water at night, including people in total darkness. ENR can attest that it is sensitive, very easy to use and does, indeed, reveal the secret stories of heat.
Photo by Tom Sawyer / ENR
Seek Thermal camera's insight on the heat generated within a running pump motor
Photo by Rosana Wong
The Kodak Pixpro series comprises high-resolution still-frame and video cameras that are wirelessly controlled by smartphones. The SL comes in two models, with either a 10x or 25x zoom. The SP360, which has a 360� view, is a rugged little action camera with an available kit of mounting accessories: among others, a waterproof housing and clamps for fastening the camera to just about anything, including hardhats and equipment. ENR tested SL10 and SP360, and they work well.
Photo by Tom Sawyer / ENR
Using the Seek Thermal camera to check internal temperatures of a running pump motor
Photo by Tom Sawyer
Every fall, electronics manufacturers introduce a flock of new devices to entice consumers. ENR likes to root through the offerings to look for items that might serve the needs of construction. Click the image to begin the slide show.
