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Rolling our own boards became uneconomical simply because we could
not develop a board with nearly the same performance level as the Jackrabbit for anywhere
near the same price. |
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| Vincent
Mitchell, president |
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KCRA of Sacramento, CA featured the "Chilly Dog" during their evening news broadcast.
Read the transcript from their website.
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The Sacramento, Calif. Police Department has switched from Hot Dogs to Chilly Dogs.
In the summer time (and even in spring and fall here in the Sacramento Valley) the temperature
inside a vehicle can increase rapidly in warm-weather conditions. When the temperatures rise above
a hundred degrees, the temperature inside a car can climb to dozens of degrees above that. Contrary
to common beliefs, leaving a window cracked open does little to reduce these sweltering temperatures.
Even running an electric fan or rolling down the windows entirely will not decrease the temperatures
enough to safely leave a canine inside a vehicle. And subjecting a canine to such conditions can
be dangerous or even deadly.
Now there is a solution—the Chilly Dog, designed, developed and offered by IC Cubed (www.iccubed.net).
This system, primarily designed for K9 police units, utilizes the functionality delivered by Z-World's
Jackrabbit SBC to automatically regulate the interior temperature of a vehicle in hot weather,
providing freedom to conduct business when traveling with a canine companion.
The system has a temperature threshold setting that, when reached, will start the vehicle's
engine, allowing the vehicle AC to engage and cool the interior. Once started, the vehicle and
AC will run for a pre-programmed time span, then shut off. When the threshold temperature is reached
again, the start-up process will repeat. If the engine stalls or shuts down prematurely, the system
will restart the vehicle.
An addition threshold setting is provided if there is a problem cooling the interior. This could
occur if the system is not turned on, the vehicle runs out of gas, or the vehicle has a mechanical
malfunction. The alert setting can trigger a pocket pager, honk the horn, and even roll down windows.
There are also two system shutdown inputs that can be used for security and safety considerations.
"We decided to use the Jackrabbit Board from Z-World for many reasons, price and functionality
topping the list," says Vincent Mitchell, president of IC Cubed. "We used to develop our own boards
in-house, but rolling our own boards became uneconomical simply because we could not develop a
board with nearly the same performance level as the Jackrabbit for anywhere near the same price."
The Jackrabbit is a C-programmable, high-performance single-board computer with a compact form-factor.
A Rabbit 2000 microprocessor allows fast number crunching while operating at 29.5 MHz making it
ideal for the solutions offered by IC Cubed.
Measuring just 2.50" x 3.50", the Jackrabbit provides 24 CMOS-compatible I/O, 3 analog channels,
and 4 high-power outputs. Three of the high-power outputs are capable of sinking up to 1 amp and
are protected for direct driving of inductive loads.
Two RS-232 ports support serial communication up to 115.2K baud, and along with an RS-485 port
are rated at 15 kV for noisy environments. An additional 5 V, CMOS-compatible serial port communicates
up to 7.37 Mbps, and acts as a programming port for added design flexibility.
Five 8-bit timers and one 10-bit timer with 2 match registers are on-board. Four of the 8-bit
timers and the 10-bit timer can be cascaded. A real-time clock (RTC) provides time/date data,
and a watchdog supervisor is standard. Two D/A channels and one A/D channel is available (the
A/D channel uses one of the D/A channels). A switching regulator provides a wide range of input
voltages from 8-40VDC, reducing power consumption while minimizing heat.
For more information on IC Cubed's Chilly Dog, please visit http://www.iccubed.net/
http://www.zworld.com/partners/partners.html.
For more information on Z-World's 1800 Series of SBCs, please visit http://www.zworld.com.
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