Category Archives: Consulting

Content about iP Solutions consulting projects.

Demand Response for California Agricultural Irrigation

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A paper by Gary Marks of iP Solu­tions, “Oppor­tu­ni­ties for Demand Response in Cal­i­for­nia Agri­cul­tural Irri­ga­tion: A Scop­ing Study” has just been pub­lished by the Demand Response Research Cen­ter (DRRC).

Link to the DRRC version

Con­tinue read­ing →

Embedded Linux DSP System for Chemical and Radiation Threat Detection

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C-Scout

iP Solu­tions brought exten­sive knowl­edge of Embed­ded Linux DSP sys­tems hard­ware and soft­ware to the Nevada Nan­otech Sys­tems (NNTS) project for explo­sive chem­i­cal and radi­a­tion threat detec­tion and  analy­sis. The project, CScout, was tar­geted for ship­ping con­tainer security.

Pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ence with com­plex embed­ded con­trol and data acqui­si­tion sys­tems enabled iP Solu­tions to imme­di­ately begin con­tribut­ing to this project.  The pri­mary goal was to design both hard­ware and soft­ware for using an NNTS Mol­e­c­u­lar Prop­er­ties Sen­sor (MPS) to col­lect, ana­lyze and present explo­sive chem­i­cal vapor threat data.  Addi­tion­ally, radi­a­tion spec­trum data was to be col­lected and ana­lyzed for any radi­a­tion threat com­po­nents.  This sys­tem was to be con­trolled and results com­mu­ni­cated remotely through a wire­less inter­face, the Mar­itime Asset Tag Track­ing Sys­tem (MATTS).  Also, a hard­wired net­work con­nec­tion was to enable more exten­sive main­te­nance and engi­neer­ing modes with web-based and ter­mi­nal based interfaces.

The CScout sys­tem was suc­cess­fully com­pleted with impres­sive mea­sure­ment results. This sys­tem will be used for demon­stra­tion of NNTS sen­sor capa­bil­i­ties to poten­tial cus­tomers. Con­tinue read­ing →

Emerging Technologies Summit Presentation

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Gary Marks of iP Solu­tions was invited to speak at the Emerg­ing Tech­nolo­gies Sum­mit in Pasadena, CA on Octo­ber 15th, 2012.  He pre­sented “Oppor­tu­ni­ties for Demand Response in Cal­i­for­nia Agri­cul­tural Irri­ga­tion” to the ses­sion titled “The Untapped Resource, Demand Response for the Indus­trial and Agri­cul­tural Mar­kets”.

The Power-point Presentation

Down­load (PPTX, 1.24MB)

 

Invitation to Join DRRC Industrial Controls Experts Group

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Gary Marks of iP Solu­tions cor­po­ra­tion has been invited to join the Demand Response Research Cen­ter (DRRC) Indus­trial Con­trols Experts Group.  On Feb­ru­ary 10th, 2011 the group met to con­sult on a study, “Assess­ing the Con­trol Sys­tems Capac­ity for Demand Response in Cal­i­for­nia Indus­tries”.

Link to Final Report at the DRRC

Precision Irrigation

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iP Solu­tions announces the pub­li­ca­tion of  “Pre­ci­sion Irri­ga­tion: A Method to Save Water and Energy While Increas­ing Crop Yield, a Tar­geted Approach for Cal­i­for­nia Agri­cul­ture” by Gary Marks.

Crop irri­ga­tion require­ments vary in time with weather and soil con­di­tions. Pre­ci­sion
irri­ga­tion pro­vides a means for eval­u­at­ing a crop’s water require­ments and a means for
apply­ing the right amount at the right time. Often in the lit­er­a­ture, pre­ci­sion irri­ga­tion is referred to as irri­ga­tion sched­ul­ing: That is sched­ul­ing based on envi­ron­men­tal data, whether that data comes from local field sen­sors or from more global sources such as regional mete­o­ro­log­i­cal information.

Apply­ing pre­ci­sion irri­ga­tion prac­tices offers sig­nif­i­cant poten­tial for sav­ing water,
energy, and money. Fur­ther, it has the poten­tial to increases crop yield. There is an
addi­tional pos­i­tive envi­ron­men­tal impact from pre­ci­sion irri­ga­tion in that farm runoff, a major source of water pol­lu­tion, can be reduced.

While pre­ci­sion irri­ga­tion has value for all types of irri­ga­tion in any region of the world, this paper focuses on the irri­ga­tion of Cal­i­for­nia agri­cul­ture, which uses nearly 80% of the state’s water and more than ten bil­lion Kilo­watt hours of elec­tric­ity annu­ally. That is enough elec­tric­ity to power one mil­lion typ­i­cal Amer­i­can house­holds each year. The approx­i­mate power plant capac­ity required to power Cal­i­for­nia irri­ga­tion through the months of May through Octo­ber is 2500 MW, which is equiv­a­lent to 250 Min-Nuke power plants run­ning at an aver­age of 10MW each. The car­bon foot­print asso­ci­ated
with the power is approx­i­mately six mil­lion met­ric tons of CO2 per year.

See full paper…