AUGUST 30-Primagraphics (Charlottesville, VA; www.primagraphics.net) has won a contract from EDO Corporation, a US-based defense and aerospace technology company, to supply four of its Sentinel systems. Sentinel is a commercial-off-the-shelf video recorder system that provides a new and economical approach to recording high-fidelity, high-resolution computer screen images directly onto a standard video cassette. The systems will be used to record the high-resolution screen images generated by the command and control system display consoles on-board the offshore patrol vessels of an international Coast Guard.
The principal task of the Coast Guard is the interception of smugglers or other illegal intruders into territorial waters. If, following an incident, there is a subsequent prosecution in a court of law, there is a clear requirement to provide visual evidence to the court of the movements of then intercepted vessels. Engineers at EDO Corporation's Combat Systems Unit in Chesapeake, VA, who have been installing new combat systems on-board Coast Guard ships, needed a cost-effective method of recording the high-resolution (1280 x 1024) screen images.
"It was imperative that the chosen system provided a precise record of exactly what the operator saw on the main console screen--scan-converted data from ship's radars, the output from an infrared sensor, as well as a'tote' page--which provides summary data on the vessel's position, course, and speed," said Ernest Ladeveze, principal engineer and production manager for the Coast Guard program at EDO Combat Systems. "The fact that Primagraphics' system recorded straight onto standard videotape was particularly convenient as many of the courts are already equipped with video replay systems."
Although Sentinel can be supplied as part of a stand-alone system based on a desktop or rack-mounting 2U enclosure, it is also available as VME cards that can be fitted into customer equipment. This was also advantageous for the coastguard system as the combat systems used VME based equipment racks that could conveniently house the single slot capture card and dual slot replay unit.
