One of the amazing things about preparing for the Baja 1000 is how many disparate and interesting requirements there are. Solving them in enlightened ways is definitely going to be half the pleasure of involvement for some of us. As touched on below in the SPOT Satellite post, there are a raft of communication issues surrounding a team’s entry in the race. One is purely the relaying of rider/bike coordinates and the potential for emergency notification. We’re hopeful that the SPOT unit will do a good job of at least the emergency beacon portion, and hopefully the GPS coordinates piece as well.

There is, however, a larger issue to be solved. Command and Control. How does a team, potentially comprised of one race bike, as many as four chase vehicles, and a fixed-location Command and Control center, stay in constant communication with one another?

Effective real time communication, the ability to relay accurate and timely information between all parties, lies at the heart of logistical success or failure for an effort like this. Cellular and Satellite phones are not a realistic solution; cell service is non-existent and there are is a finite amount of Sat. spectrum bandwidth available to support a drastically increased regional user population during race week.

The Dukes Baja 1000 team, in conjunction with our systems partner SpecialAI, are currently investigating a number of promising avenues for solving this problem. SpecialAI are experts at engineering flexible communications systems and have serious experience with mobile, survivable and platform integrated solutions engineered around the Asterisk Open Source IP PBX. Currently, the most promising area of focus involves deploying some manner of AVRS (Automatic Voice Relay System) interfaced with Asterisk.

This solution would likely mate a vehicle based APRS (Automatic Packet Reporting System) web with an IRLP (Internet radio Linking Project) gateway, thus allowing for the rapid & reliable exchange of rich information, via commonly available relayed radio transmission, with a centrally (local) deployed IP soft switch. The goal is to provide a head’s up view of all elements and translate that information, via VoIP codec, for transmission back to NYC based mission control.

Obviously this is a very rough sketch; experience dictates that the final system will, in all likelihood, bear only passing resemblance to what we’re thinking about now. There are countless variables yet to be nailed down, but It’s an exciting project and we’ve every confidence that we’ll be able to deploy a system which will give the Dukes of Flatbush a greater chance of safe success in a harsh operating environment.