Olympic Curling’s Got Its Eye On The Hog

One sport we’ve really enjoyed watching at the Vancouver Winter Olympics is curling. I think it’s the intense strategy that makes these games so interesting, especially when you’re relaxing in the wee hours of the night and enjoy something less frenzied than many of the events. Being a technical guy, I couldn’t help but notice the green lights that would illuminate on the stones when they were released. An electronic rock? What’s that all about?

Actually, the electronics is located in the handle, not the rock. It’s there to serve a special purpose, which is to detect an improper delivery. Specifically, a player must release the stone before it reaches a black foul line called the “hog line.” Otherwise players might just go sliding down the ice holding onto the stone to give themselves an advantage in shot accuracy.

This automated hog-line-violation-detection system is called Eye on the Hog. It is manufactured by Startco Engineering Ltd. of Saskatoon, SK, Canada. Interestingly, the device started out as a fourth-year design project for a group of electrical engineering students at the University of Saskatchewan. The students and their professor came up with a system that installed a permanent magnet in the bottom of the rock and embedded a magnetic field sensor in the ice that was connected to a display. Startco refined the design to bury the magnet in the ice and keep all the electronics on-board the rock handle. The university and students receive royalties for their work on the design concepts.

Here’s how the production system works. The largely plastic handle is attached to the granite curling stone through a hole that runs vertically through the center of the stone. Within the handle is the electronic components, magnetic sensor, batteries, LED indicators, tilt sensor, and touch sensitive grip. The electronics is activated when the rock is tilted to clean its running surface before each throw. The LEDs flash to indicate the system is working. When the player grips the touch sensitive handle to deliver the rock, the LEDs go out so they won’t be distracting. The crucial operation comes when the stone reaches the hog line. When the rock is released prior to it reaching the hog line, the green LEDs flash until the center line of the rock crosses the hog line. Then they illuminate for 5 seconds to indicate a valid delivery.

This is what you see if the TV camera is focused closely on the curling stone during release. I didn’t see any invalid deliveries in all the games I watched. If one did occur, the red LEDs on the handle would have flashed for 25 seconds to indicate a violation. How does it know to do that? If the grip detects it is being touched while the magnetic sensor detects a magnetic strip embedded in the ice exactly one stone radius before the hog line, then it knows that the stone has not been released before the front edge of it has reached the line. If the grip is touched after the stone crosses the hog line, it also activates the red violation LEDs. You can’t fool this system with fancy hand work.

How accurate is the Eye on the Hog? It’s specified at 3 mm or 0.12 inches at 10 ft/sec. That’s far more accurate than the best human eyes that it replaces for judging hog line violations.

Startco has a nice animation of the Eye on the Hog in action on their Web site. Check out the Technical Info page. If you find this wireless technology as fascinating as I did, you may also enjoy reading the manual and seeing how they set up the magnet locating jig to get that extreme accuracy on the ice. Who knows, you might even find yourself becoming captivated with the intriguing sport of curling.

Update: Meet Curly, the Curling Robot That Beats the Pros - Wired Magazine 8/23/20

Middle Mile Bandwidth Solutions

Most businesses are concerned with last mile network connections. That’s the access bandwidth that connects their local network to their service provider. But what does the service provider connect to?

If you are buying your voice and data services from a larger carrier, they may own an entire network that spans the nation or a large regional area. Smaller service providers have what is called a middle mile connection to a wholesale bandwidth supplier that connects them to the Internet or a major carrier’s telephone switching network.

If your business is running a small metropolitan or rural Internet service provider or an independent telephone company, you’ve probably got an interest in middle mile bandwidth solutions. In rural areas, especially, it’s often expensive and sometimes difficult to get the middle mile connectivity you need. Any competitive service offerings are a welcome sight, even if it is only to validate the cost and performance of your current leased services.

What types of middle mile technologies are there? Fiber optic service comes first to mind. Fiber optic cables crisscross the country and are present not far from most locations. The irony is that you may be standing right on top of a fiber conduit and not be able to get service.

Fiber bundles are much like the interstate highway system. They transport massive amounts of traffic, but access points are limited. To get on the network you need the equivalent of a highway on-ramp. That’s the service middle mile connections perform.

There are three middle mile connection technologies to consider. Fiber optics certainly provides the highest bandwidths. Each strand of glass fiber can transport packets at a data rate of at least 10 Gbps. By using wavelength division multiplexing, basically using multiple non-interfering colors of light beams, you might have 128 or even 256 different 10 Gbps data streams in each strand. A fiber bundle might have dozens, even hundreds of glass fiber strands in one ruggedized trunk cable. That’s a LOT of bandwidth capacity.

The problem with fiber optic connections is that there aren’t a lot of places to plug-in for service. Carriers have POPs or Points of Presence in major metropolitan areas. But between these termination points there are miles and sometimes hundreds of miles of installed fiber cable running point to point. Some carriers are pursuing government financing under the rural broadband improvement project to build-out more middle mile fiber lines in rural areas. This will make it easier for ISPs and telcos in sparsely populated areas to get high bandwidth connections at lower prices.

Another connection technology is wireless. Point to point microwave transmission is cheaper and quicker to install than fiber optic cabling. The newest technology is WiMAX, which can be used as a middle mile backhaul service as well as a public access wireless broadband transmission service. WiMAX has a range of up to 30 miles, making it a good solution to feed remotely located transmission towers.

A technology you might not think of for middle mile services is bundled T1 lines. A T1 line has a bandwidth of only 1.5 Mbps, making it more suitable as a last mile connection for business locations. But multiple T1 lines can be connected essentially in parallel to create larger bandwidths up to 10 or 12 Mbps. That may be all a cellular tower or WISP (Wireless Internet Service Provider) needs for middle mile connectivity. The advantage of T1 is that it runs on twisted pair copper and can be easily boosted or regenerated over long distances. That means that bundled T1 service can reach out into rural areas where other services aren’t available.

Newer modulation techniques let multiple copper pair also transport Ethernet in a technology known as EoC or Ethernet over Copper. EoC bandwidths are often similar to bundled T1 lines, but may be as high as 45 Mbps in metropolitan areas.

Are you in need of connectivity for your independent telephone company or Internet service? If so, see what middle mile bandwidth solutions are available for your location.

Where Wireless Device Are Free

Today's mobile communications devices are on the same learning curve that PCs were five or ten years ago. Remember when you had to replace your desktop computer every couple of years? It seemed such a waste, because it worked perfectly. Perfectly slow that is. Software advancements were coming so fast that they quickly overwhelmed any amount of processor speed or ram memory. Huge files from more sophisticated applications meant adding external drives just to have somewhere to store the data.

I'll bet you're not doing that anymore. PC technology has hit the flat part of the learning curve for most of us. Now we're actually able to wear out a computer before we have to upgrade it. That's especially true for mobile computers such as laptops and notebooks. They've usually taken a beating before they run out of speed or memory capacity.

So how about cell phones and PDA style voice and data devices? They still look almost new when they get tossed in a drawer as the contract ends. Good thing that wireless contracts aren't for five or ten years. The pain of limited functionality would be almost unbearable.

Sounds silly, but that's the state of wireless technology. It's not a matter of being deliberately wasteful. It's a function of the learning curve that drives all technical development. Right now advances are coming fast and furious. If you want to stay competitive, you need to keep up with the advances that new generations of mobile devices incorporate.

Don't feel resigned to paying the big bucks every time you need to upgrade your BlackBerry, Razr, Palm or other wireless voice and data device. By shopping through an online warehouse you can get your new model at a deep discount or free when you order it with a service plan. Cellular stores will just look at you funny if you want a free phone. Or show you one of the low end models they give away just to say they have free phones. If you really want a free wireless device, choose from an AT&T Blackjack II, BlackBerry Pearl, RAZR V3, Palm Centro, or AT&T curve. Other popular models are also free or available at a deep discount. Some even offer cash back rebates.

Take a few minutes and browse the new WireFly warehouse. You can shop by carrier, by phone model or by service plan. All of the major carriers and their voice and data plans are available online with fast free shipping to your door.

Still feel guilty about tossing your perfectly good but no longer needed phone? You can send it in free for proper recycling. Newer models in working order can be easily sold for refurbishment as emergency phones or use in other countries. See how much your old cell phone is worth in cash.