Barge Tracking with eTrac Engineering

in: robots, instruments

eTrac Engineering was our first major client as a consulting company, and we operated as their principal design contractors even before founding Robots Everywhere. In 2011, we built a solar powered tracker for their barges.

The BargeTrac system is a solar powered low current circuit. It is an evolution of the proprietary eTrac circuit board. BargeTrac uses two GPS units to improve positional accuracy and generate accurate heading data on metal barges on which a compass would not be effective.

If you’re interested in iterating on this design, the exclusive license to eTrac has ended. We would be happy to develop and deploy this for your fleet! Contact Us if you’re interested.

PyTrac

The pyTrac software package integrates BargeTrac data and NMEA GPS data for display on Google Maps or Google Earth, generating realtime HTML reports and updating the map with representations of barges and tugs. This allows tug operators to keep an eye on other tugs and barges even outside of radar range, monitor barge displacement to detect leaks, and retrieve barges that have come unmoored.