Taxi Driver Online

Hi. I have a Auriga 360 eclipse system in my cab. We have over 150 cabs on the system, but a few of us experience a problem went it rains. As your driving around it puts passenger on board message as if you have picked up. If you plot and don't move its ok. Even when you get given a job and your driving to pick up it puts passenger on board. It seems to loose the PMR signal. All equipment has been changed. Advise please

Is it really just in the rain?

Losing the signal shouldn't book you off.

I think you need to look at your settings.

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IDFIMH

It only does it when it rains. Its strange but we are all scratching our heads

Do you not think it might be a problem with the base station and/or the cabling?

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IDFIMH

Radio Propagation can be badly affected due to rain (thinking back here to my radio operator courses from years ago). I remember it particularly affects certain wavelengths and maybe you are using a frequency particularly susceptible. I also seem to remember that you can up the output to overcome it to a certain extent, though if your equipment can do this is an unknown.

Believe it or not, all radios are affected by rain to some extent. Radar (which uses Radio waves) does not work quite so well in rain, mist or fog but the large output negates the problem to a useable level.

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Chris The Fish

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gdlyi5mc ... re=related

It certainly wouldn't be anything to do with radio signal being affected by the weather as the false meter on indication is coming from the meter line connection rather than anything sent from the base.

My best guess is that the problem would be down to the circuitry that isolates the 12 volt meter line from the 5 volt supply of the data terminal. This usually uses a device called an opto-isolator and they can be a tad over sensitive which makes them prone to electrical noise spikes such as those generated each time the windscreen motor kicks in on a delayed wipe!

Try fitting a small capacitor between the meter line and earth to suppress any electrical noise and that should sort it.

Bill

Bill, what radio frequency would Auriga work on?

Though I think you have more chance of being right than me, I only trained to get Radio Operator certificates and I am not an engineer. With my history of Catering Logistics I can only fix it if is made of pastry.

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Chris The Fish

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gdlyi5mc ... re=related

Chris

They'll probably be using high band for the radio side of things which being in the region of 170Mhz, shouldn't be affected by rain. We used to see occasional odd effects like this at times on the terminals we manufactured, even though we had built in protection against spikes. The wire connecting the terminal to the for hire sign is inevitably long and makes a pretty good antenna for picking up all sorts of electrical noise from within the car.

What I don't quite understand is why the software in the device isn't protecting against this. Some older meters were notorious for blipping the line due to things like flaky relay contacts so we built delays in that only did a meter on if the line went low and stayed that way for more than so many seconds. Then again would a young software engineer fresh out of uni have this sort of knowledge? In fact, with your knowledge of pastry, you'd probably know more about flaky things.

Bill