So what will I use this phone for? Before I retired I, my work place (a NSW Government Department) used expensive GSM phones like rePhone for monitoring the health of bridges including the Sydney Harbour Bridge. I had to climb all over the bridge to find suitable sites for testing and this was fun. To get financial support from the politicians we took a Lego train set into parliament house and demonstrated how technology like this could be used for structural health monitoring of bridges, roads and buildings. They gave us the money!
Our second application was putting a phone like rePhone onto all Sydney buses so we could track them in real time and give the buses priority at the traffic lights. We were quite advanced with traffic signal technology and supplied the original traffic signal control system to many Asian cities including Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong. The bus GSM phone now provides real time tracking for passenger information and there are Android and IOS apps available to see if your bus is on time or late. So I will continue exploring how the rePhone can be used for applications like this including traffic signal connections to your car and road price charging. I will also see if it can integrate into the Grove, WioLink and BeagleBone Green microcomputer eco system. I already have a Grove to Xadow connector and it will be interesting to see if this works.
Neat stuff mate!
Budapest in Hungary has a similar bus tracking system, called Futár. You can check the buses realtime. Pretty cool thing.
Check it out here: futar.bkk.hu/
One question about the bridge: is that somewhat a safety-critical application, or just commercial sensors are allowed to use?