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| GPS Insights — February 2008
The Nomad Finds a Home in the Military The "nomad" I am writing about is the Trimble Nomad personal handheld computer and GPS device. I have been testing the Nomad, which is actually built by Tripod Data Systems, a Trimble company, for some time. You might even call it a long-term test, just like the cars in the automobile magazines that they drive for a year to see if the wheels fall off. I have had two different Nomads to review, and they have both been absolutely outstanding. My total testing time has been on the order of six months. I hesitate to relate the rigors to which I subjected the Nomads, as Trimble may decide I am too tough on their units and not send me any more to review. I don't think that will really happen, as they test them very thoroughly at the factory, but here, in full-disclosure mode, I'll relate how the torture test of the Nomads progressed. But first, let me give you an idea of the physical size and weight of the fully loaded Nomad. It measures 17.6 cm (6-3/4 in) by 10 cm (3-3/4 in) by 5 cm (1-5/8 in) and weighs 596 grams, or 1.3 pounds, with the rechargeable lithium-ion battery in place. In other words, it is just about the size of (and not much heavier than) your standard paperback book, but the included black elastic hand strap makes the Nomad much more convenient to carry and handle. I was extremely careful with the first Nomad and handled it with kid gloves because it was a preproduction unit, sent to me by Julia Oliver from Sanda Communications, which provides integrated advertising and marketing services for Trimble. Julia assured me there were no more units available for me to test at the time, but when the second production unit arrived directly from Trimble, I decided to put it through the wringer. It was minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit on the day that UPS delivered the second Nomad. I immediately opened the box, checked the contents, and then plugged it in to charge. As has been my experience with all the Trimble products I have reviewed, the unit was fully charged when it arrived, or nearly so. It was only a matter of minutes before the amber charging light on the face of the unit, which was the typical Trimble yellow with black highlights, turned green, signifying a fully charged unit. More about the incredible battery technology incorporated in the Nomad later. At that point I disconnected the unit, made sure the unit was operating and active, and dropped it into a sink full of warm dishwater. After ten minutes, I immediately took it outside on our back deck and dropped it into a snow bank, where it sank out of sight. I left it there for about 30 minutes, then brought it in and dropped it from four feet onto a hardwood floor At this point I put the unit through its military paces, both as a handheld computer and as a GPS device, and it passed with flying colors. In fact, according to the literature, the Nomad surpassed military specifications and certifications, MIL-STD-810F, for drop height, vibration, humidity, altitude, and extreme temperatures. It also has an IP76 rating, which means the Nomad is impervious to dust and water immersion. Official Trimble testing has shown that you can submerge the Nomad for up to thirty minutes without any harm. Since the Nomad meets or surpasses all these specifications, it's highly suitable for military and government field-related applications. Short of using it to hammer tent pegs into the frozen tundra, I don't know how you could damage the Nomad. Just use common sense, and I am confident the Nomad will perform beyond your expectations in almost all field conditions. The Nomad connected to my Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) secured wireless (Wi-Fi) network in a matter of seconds. In fact, if you will allow me to digress for a moment, the Wi-Fi antenna on the Nomad unit is more sensitive than my new iMac or new HP computer because those two computers only sense a maximum of four Wi-Fi networks in our neighborhood, and the Trimble Nomad consistently locates seven available networks. Granted, some only rated one bar of signal strength, but at least I knew the networks were available. I connected to the three open or non-secured Wi-Fi systems in our neighborhood without any problems, and they ranged in strength from one to four bars. I was surprised it connected to Wi-Fis with only one bar indicated, but it did, and although the throughput was slow because of the low signal strength, the Nomad remained connected until I manually disconnected. This actually became an issue in Victorville, California, during the DARPA Urban Challenge. Most of the other journalists there had laptops like mine that could easily locate the Wi-Fi connection set-up by DARPA for our use, but no others. My Dell laptop tracked the DARPA Wi-Fi network as well. The Trimble Nomad not only successfully connected to the DARPA Wi-Fi Network, but it also found two other nearby Wi-Fi networks to use when the DARPA network went down. I was filing my Urban Challenge story, in real time and on the fly, for more than six hours of continuous feeds to the GPS World Website, while many of the other journalists were waiting for the DARPA Network to be restored. I also used the built-in 2-megapixel camera for pictures of the Urban Challenge event and by the end of the day, as I said, I was only using the Nomad -- not just because of the extra-sensitive Wi-Fi receiver, but because the very fine dust in the air in the high desert of California was making everyone's laptop keyboards act funny. You could press one key, and you might get that letter or one adjacent to it. Plus it was no fun typing on a gritty keyboard. The dust did not affect the Nomad in any way that I could determine. It is not a full-sized keyboard of course, and I found myself using cell phone typing techniques, but the bottom line is, it worked flawlessly while other computers around me were having serious Wi-Fi and dust issues. My numerous e-mails from our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan tell me of similar problems with laptop keyboards plagued by the fine dust in those areas. And that ends my rather long digression; now back to the wintertime testing of the second Nomad. After the physical testing ordeal, the Nomad connected to my mail server and downloaded my mail within a couple of minutes. Nominally the default is to download just mail headers, but it was an easy change via the mail menu to change that to full downloads. I tested the unit with three separate e-mail accounts, including one just for the Apple iMac -- both directly and via the Apple website -- and it worked flawlessly. When I turned on the integrated GPS with the Trimble GPS software, it found seven satellites within 60 seconds and was displaying an accurate position within 90 seconds. I then put the unit on the shelf and waited for the battery to die. Although the Nomad is supplied with a hot-swappable rechargeable lithium-ion battery pack, meaning you can swap out the battery and not lose all your work, frankly, with all the abuse I gave the Nomad and with the sub-zero temperatures I subjected it to, I expected to see a battery life of about six to eight hours at best. To my surprise, I did not receive my first "battery is low" warning until the Nomad had been running for more than 12 hours and then at the 13-hour, 28-minute point, I received a "battery power is very low" warning. At the 13-hour, 41-minute mark, the Nomad shut down and preserved all my work. Unlike many handhelds that can lose data if they lose power, all your data in the Nomad is always stored in non-volatile, persistent storage memory; it uses a NAND flash ROM system to insure you never lose saved data. Therefore, losing power does not impact saved data or configurations other than the real-time clock, and that is easily restored via a Wi-Fi connection or when the GPS is powered on by an application. The Nomad had to be plugged in or charged before I could use it, and that took just a little more than four hours for a full charge; my Microsoft Word document had been saved and I did not lose a single keystroke. I could have resumed work immediately just by plugging the unit into a household outlet. Remember, this is a fully functional Windows handheld computer made by a GPS company that tightly integrates GPS into the unit; it is difficult, if not impossible, to not consider both functions as one unit. I think Trimble planned it that way, don't you, Homer? D'oh! But users beware, there is one serious caution regarding the Nomad, and should you fail to obey it, you will be saying more than "D'oh"! Now my two Nomad units never needed a hard reset, and they certainly never displayed a "blue screen of death" or had to be rebooted as so many Microsoft Vista users are doing these days. But should you ever have to execute a hard reboot -- or "clean boot" as Trimble calls it -- "all application software, whether installed by the factory or the customer, including licenses, settings and user data will be cleared if you utilize this Clean Boot function." I never had to perform this function, and I hope most users never will, but just to see what would happen, I started the Clean Boot process on one of the Nomads. I received several dire warnings, plus the process counts down to zero to give you plenty of time to change your mind; this procedure cannot be performed by accident. There are several less-dire reboot actions that you can take if you ever need to restore the unit for some reason, and they are provided via a special power menu that allows you to place the Nomad into a special mode when you need to clean the touch-sensitive screen. Most touch-sensitive computer screens cause the computer to go haywire if you clean them while they are running, and your only option is to shut them down and perform a restart or place them in standby. This special feature was a real plus for me in the dusty high desert of California and greatly benefits our war fighters using the Nomad in theater, or so I've been informed in several e-mails from Iraq. So the Nomad is very rugged and nearly indestructible, but what about the tightly integrated SiRF III GPS receiver? Like most SiRF receivers I found it to be a very sensitive receiver, even picking up some GPS satellite signals indoors. While not very accurate indoors, the sensitivity still helps because it means that once you step outside with the unit, your time to a useable first fix is greatly diminished. In order to use the GPS on the Nomad, you need to have a GPS application loaded. The GPS accuracy is rated at 5 to 10 meters, but I found my units to be consistently accurate within the 2- to 7-meter range. Please note that the Nomad does not have a Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) receiver, but for most applications WAAS is not a necessity. However, it is WAAS-capable, so that is an option if you need greater accuracy. For those who need single-digit centimeter accuracy, there are other options that conveniently hook into the Nomad's communications ports inside the watertight rubber end cap. Both of my Nomads came with Trimble GPS software installed, but you can elect to use software from several different manufacturers; you are definitely not limited to Trimble GPS software, although their various software programs worked extremely well for my needs. For those die-hard or professional GNSS and GIS aficionados, the unit works especially well with a number of mobile GIS programs from ESRI. For those that don't know this, ESRI -- headquartered in Redlands, California, at 34 degrees 3' 25.35" N, 117 degrees 11' 44.44" W, or so their software says -- is considered by many to be the 800-pound gorilla in the GIS arena. Their products are considered among the best in the world for GIS users, but they are vast and extensive programs that require a very capable and fast computer to run properly, and the Nomad ran all the ESRI software without a glitch. Initially I was concerned that the Nomad might not have the power to run these GIS programs, or it would be so slow that the program was of no use, or barring that, the display might not be up to the standards required to read tiny text on a map background. I need not have worried, as the Nomad passed all the GIS tests I put it through with flying colors. The software loaded quickly and ran flawlessly. I ran ESRI's ArcPad 7.1 software, which is specifically designed by ESRI for simple and efficient data capture in the field. The Nomad and ArcPAD allow you to load your own aerial photos, cadastre, or other GIS data and use it as a background reference, or the foundation for further data capture. ArcPad integrates with ESRI's ArcMap/ArcGIS and can also export data captured in shape-file format for other systems, such as AutoCAD. I found the Nomad screen to be very readable under almost all light conditions, even in bright sunlight, although in extremely bright desert sunlight you will be looking for shade (for more than one reason). But then, every handheld I have tested to date has the same problem in bright sunlight, and the Nomad fared far better than most. The first Nomad handheld I tested was a preproduction version of the top-of-the-line model with all the bells and whistles, including an integrated 1D laser barcode scanner and the aforementioned 2-megapixel digital color camera. We (Trimble and I) added capabilities and updates as time went along, as well. The unit comes with Microsoft Active Sync and all the necessary cables for updating. The Trimble folks gave me a secure Website and a special code and password and had me sign in blood not to reveal them. I'm kidding, of course, but with those crucial bits of data I was able to download new firmware and new software and all the new features for the Nomad as they were developed. There are several different models of the Nomad -- four, at last count. They are all rugged to the same standards as the model I tested, and have the same basic or standard features. STANDARD FEATURES System
Software
Now that you know about the basic unit, here are some additional configurations: Configuration Options
There is also a long list of options, which make the Nomad an extremely versatile handheld computer with tightly integrated GPS. OPTIONAL FEATURES Optional Software
Optional Accessories
There are a large number of aftermarket add-ons for the Nomad, and as usual there is something for everyone, but frankly, I found everything a general GPS user would need in the original factory package. One unique feature of this handheld is the Nomad stylus. Now many of you are probably saying a stylus is a stylus, but this is not your normal stylus by a long shot. This multi-functional stylus is matte black and very comfortable in your hand. It is also serrated for a better grip in the field, because at one end is a spring-loaded nylon tip for using on the computer screen while at the other end, covered by a tight fitting plastic cap, is a Phillips head screwdriver for use on both the weather-tight battery compartment on the back of the Nomad, and for the end caps of the unit. These end caps protect and contain all the communication and connectivity ports on one end cap, and the camera and barcode reader (if you opt for the top-of-the-line Nomad 800LE) on the other. Another useful feature, depending on your application, is the versatility of the Bluetooth connection on the Nomad that allows it to manage Bluetooth devices even when the device is in standby mode. The literature says the Nomad can be configured to automatically power on from standby when it receives a wake-up command from another Bluetooth device. It can even remain connected to other Bluetooth devices that do not have the capability to wake up the Nomad before sending data. One scenario that Trimble mentions is an automated field sensor that needs to log data to the Nomad every thirty minutes. This Bluetooth connectivity capability allows the Nomad to conserve battery life between times when the sensor is not active or logging data. I can think of several military applications where this capability would be useful. I promised to say more about the battery capabilities of the Nomad. Not only does it boast a long-lived 15-hour lithium-ion battery and give you ample warning before it shuts down, but it allows you to profile your battery usage and correct any errors that can creep into the battery log over time. The battery log displays battery/power usage information and even has a "today" screen to indicate whether the GPS hardware is active. The GPS does consume more battery power than just the handheld computer alone; the today screen can definitely help you conserve battery life. Probably the most unusual battery feature is the battery calibration system, however, which actually improves the accuracy of the battery gauge. Because the battery power display can become inaccurate over time, it is possible to see premature or incorrect "low battery" warnings. This never occurred with either of my Nomads, but the literature says that running the battery-calibration program begins a testing scenario that runs approximately 19 hours to recalibrate and improve the accuracy of the battery gauge and battery warnings. This is a procedure probably best accomplished over a long weekend, because if you interrupt the procedure you will have to start all over again. You may never need it, but it is encouraging that Trimble thought of it. I wish I had this capability on all my battery-powered equipment. Different models or configurations of the Nomad have either a numeric keypad or an eleven-key, standard directional-type interface. I preferred the numeric keypad myself, but for different applications I can see where the directional control interface would be useful. Pricing for the four different Nomad handheld computer models with integrated GPS starts at $1,700 for the 800B model, which is the base unit with 512 Mbytes of flash memory and Bluetooth wireless capabilities. The 800L, which has 1 Gbyte of flash memory and adds 802.11 b/g wireless networking, is $1,900. The Nomad 800LC adds an embedded 2-megapixel camera for $2,100 and the top-of-the-line 800LE, which was the model I used for this evaluation, adds a barcode scanner to the package and costs $2,500. In my opinion, the Nomad is as close to perfect as the military can get for a commercial rugged handheld computer and integrated GPS for many field purposes. The standard color scheme is certainly not ideal for covert operations, but I have seen similar Trimble handheld computers, the Recon for instance, and GPS units with camouflage color schemes, so I'm sure Trimble can accommodate our war fighters. I know Nomads are already being used in theater, with or without camouflage, and with or without government waivers, because of the letters and e-mails I receive informing me about how well the Nomad performs in theater. Our war fighters deserve the best computer and GPS units available, and the Trimble Nomad combination computer/GPS handheld currently ranks at the top of the list with me. |
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