Re: APUs

Neon John wrote:

Today I attended a driver hiring fair as part of my push into my new
career. A couple dozen trucking companies were there bidding against
each other for our signatures on the dotted lines. Gee, this is fun
:-)

All the companies had examples of their hardware on display. I'm
quite surprised at the rapid adaptation of high technology. At the
conference at the National Transportation Research Center that I
attended in Oak Ridge three years ago, several brandy-new technologies
were on display. Now they've become ubiquitous. Several items could
be of interest to RVers.

Three years ago US Xpress was leading the way with infrared night
vision in the truck cab. This system involves an IR night vision
camera mounted above the cab body and a small B&W screen in the cab.
There is some magnification built into the camera. The main benefit
is the ability to spot heat-emitting objects such as deer from a half
mile or more away AND the ability to see through fog. Fog is
essentially transparent to IR light in this band.

That was three years ago. Today, those cyclops eyes were on most of
the different company's trucks.

Another development is the Eaton/Vorad radar based collision system.
This system mounts a small patch antenna on the front of the vehicle
and a small display/warning unit in the cab. It interfaces with the
vehicle's CAN bus. It gets the vehicle's speed from the CAN bus.
Based on the speed and the vehicle's weight (derived from coast-down
rate), the system computes how much collision margin exists and warns
the driver accordingly.

An optional extension of the Vorad system is called Adaptive Cruise.
This system takes the VORAD data and manipulates the vehicle's
throttle and Jake brake to maintain a constant distance between the
truck and the vehicle in front. If a car cuts in close, the computer
lays on the Jake Brake to quickly slow the truck and re-establish the
designated distance. Too bad it doesn't also lay on the horn! This
is about as close to auto-pilot as a road-going vehicle is going to
get.

An additional option mounts a second patch antenna just behind the
passenger's door looking back into the traditional blind spot. A
second indicator warns of another driver cruising in the blind spot.
US Xpress has gone one step farther and mounted a little color camera
on the front fender looking back feeding a small flat panel screen on
the dashboard.

Three years ago US Xpress and Eaton displayed the prototype system at
the NTRC. Now just about all the major fleets are using the system.
Amazing progress in just three years.

The adaptive cruise in particular would be wonderful on an RV. The
drivers I talked to all loved it and said that it made stop-and-go
driving practically painless.

Another very interesting development is the APU or Aux Power Unit. The
semi-oriented APU is designed to eliminate idling for comfort heat or
AC. Here are a couple of photos of a unit installed on a Kenworth
tractor:

http://www.johngsbbq.com/Neon_John_site/Generator/Generator_home.htm

This would be a slick alternative to the conventional generator and
roof-mounted ACs on an RV. Particularly one that spends much time on
the road.

I first saw an APU at the MidSouth Trucking Show in Louisville, KY
about 3 years ago. They are available as described on the above page
and with an optional line-operated hermetic compressor for shore power
operation. Very slick.

John
---
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.johngsbbq.com
Cleveland, Occupied TN
Don't let your schooling interfere with your education-Mark Twain


A little help here John,
What is VORAD?
What is CAN bus?
I'm not dumb by any means, but if I start "trade talk" of my 30 years experience in NSA and DOE, the acronyms start to get thick.
Thanks, Ed

--

"Agnew was right. The press is a gang of cruel faggots. Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for *** offs and misfits - a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo cage." - Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
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