A night motor race in Colombo was a dream of most motor sports fans in Sri Lanka, and it has finally come to fruition with Carlton Sports and Tharunyata Hetak, conducted jointly by the two governing bodies Sri Lanka Automobile Sports Association and the Federation of Motorcycle Sports in Sri Lanka along with all member racing clubs; and Red Cherry Entertainment joining to organize the event. The Colombo Night Races on the 17^th December, will feature Sri Lankan drivers as well as a number of international teams who have accepted the invitation to participate. The races, on newly laid road surfaces, are expected to showcase exotics including the Lamborghini Diablo, Mosler MT900, Aston Martin and Porsche 911 Carreras, including the Subaru Impreza STi, Mitsubishi Evolution, Ford Laser, Nissan March, Honda Civic SiR and the world famous Mini Minor and Formula Ford and many other famous race cars presently run locally.

The Starter Lights and Track Control lights are made to match Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) regulations as per the directions given by Sri Lanka Automobile Sports (SLAS), and were made using technology provided by IDawn Developments sand the assembly, testing and installation done by IDawn Technologies.

According to the FIA, the colours of the Track Contorl lights correspond as follows;

Green

• A green flag indicates that any previous danger has been attended to. The track is now clear, and drivers may proceed at racing speed and may again overtake. When the race director so directs, this may be displayed during the parade lap or at the beginning of a practice session; in this case all marshals positions will signal green flags. Green flashing lights are used in addition in modern races.

Blue

• At any time, a stationary light blue flag (or, as is now more common, a blue light) may be shown to a driver at the pit lane exit to warn them that cars are approaching on the track.
• During practice, a light blue flag waved on the track notifies a driver that a faster car is about to pass them and they must move aside.
• During a race, a light blue flag waved on the track warns the driver that they are about to be lapped by a faster car and must let it pass. A driver may incur penalties if they ignore three successive blue flags.

Yellow

• A single yellow indicates danger ahead.Drivers must slow down as they pass; no overtaking is permitted, unless it is unavoidable such as a driver retiring in the section, or a driver is lapped.

The starting lights, were specifically designed for the Colombo Night Races by IDawn Racing, with IDawn Group’s other subsidiaries IDawn Developments and IDawn Technologies offering their technology and expertise. Each light was made with high powered LEDs, for better projection, and more energy efficiency. Due to quality control issues with the Blue LED lights,we had to resort to using Blue LED strips to fulfil our delivery. These LED lights (Red, Green, Blue and Yellow) were fitted to custom designed and manufactured PCBs courtesy of IDawn Developments. The starter lights and track control lights supplied by IDawn Racing will be positioned according to the below mentioned map of track for the Colombo Night Races, and maintained/serviced during the race by IDawn Technologies Staff.

The Starting Lights and Track Control lights includes circuit boards, light fittings, light controllers, metal fitting housing frame, power supply and other components which were made  by IDawn Racing in a modular fashion to make repair, maintanence and replacement fast and easy.

Come check out the thrilling sounds speed this weekend!

Sri Lanka Cyber Games 2011 will feature a number of services provided by total solutions providers IDawn Technologies, in order to give cyber-athletes and spectators the best possible experience at this years championship. Lag-free networking, high quality projection of on-going games, live monitoring of teams via CCTV and full video recording facilities. Come experience the evolution of e-Sports with IDawn Technologies at SLCG ’11 Grand Finals on the 2nd to 4th December at the BMICH.

Find more information about the event on the Facebook SLCG ’11 Event Page

The official Facebook event page for Colombo Drag Race says:

The main event will begin from 10am onwards. Christmas Tree starting light’s and official Timing equipment to be used. The Drag’s will incorporate stalls with entertainment and food as well. Racing will take place on the Vihara Mahadevi side of green path with two cars against each other. The other side will be for spectators, food and the Paddock. It will be a Festival of Speed.

IDawn Racing, a subsidiary of IDawn Group and sister company of IDawn Technologies is supplying the Christmas Tree lights for the event. We’ll see you there!

Photography by: Pavithri Attanayake/IDawn Technologies

Full body harnesses are also used in various other professions and even for recreation. You might have seen them used by fighter pilots, construction workers, roofers and recreationally with rock climber, bungee jumpers and so on.  Though being safety equipment, there are chances that you may injure yourself with it if not worn properly.  The objective of a full body harness is to distributed the fall force evenly throughout the body in case of free fall and provide freedom of movement while being suspended. If it’s not worn properly, you could cause serious injury to yourself.

Chest Strap (Front) | Dorsal Plate / D-Ring (Rear) | Leg Straps, Buckles, Sliders

The most important things, apart from wearing your full body harness correctly, is to lock the harness securely. When wearing a commercial full body safety harness, you have to put it on like you would a jacket after putting your legs through the leg straps. It is advised that you have somebody to help you get into the harness, in order to ensure that everything is safely in place. If you fall while wearing a slack harness, and you have not safely and securely adjusted the safety harness, you may suffer from rectal damage or testicular trauma, which would be extremely painful.  Once you wear the fall arrest harness, you should strap on the chest strap in place, which is there in order to keep the shoulder straps from parting and from having the user fall through the front. Then you ensure that the leg straps are worn correctly. One of the easiest ways you can correctly gauge how much tension a leg strap should have, would be to have enough leeway for 2 fingers between the straps and your leg. The 2 finger tension gauge is basically, placing your middle and index fingers perpendicularly to the strap around the front of your leg.

The full body harness has many harnesses with come with buckles and sliders to lock it in place. If the harnesses are not locked in place in the event of a fall, there will be a possibility of the buckles giving away and the stitching of the full body harness coming apart from the weight and energy of the fall, and would result in the user falling through the bottom. Therefore, make sure that the slider and buckles are in place and have been secured.

All full body harnesses have capacity or weight limit that it can handle, with the typical range being 58 – 140kg. Make sure that when you purchase or utilise full body harnesses that you are mindful of the application requirements, the size and weight limitations, attachment points and of course the comfort and freedom of the users.

Many people become vegans, or even vegetarians for numerous reasons. They may have their reasons, whether it’s a religious cause, a human cause or even digestive reasons, there are vegetarians out there, and also those who aren’t, who may not be informed about the vegan classifications, the diet factors and even health implications if you don’t receive enough nutrients and maintain a balance.

Here are the classifications;

• Fruitarians: Those who avoid all animal products and processed foods
• Vegans: Those who avoid all animal products.
• Lacto-vegetarians: Those who eat dairy products but not eggs
• Lacto-ovo-vegetarians: Those who eat both dairy products and eggs
• Semi-vegetarians: Those who eat fish and/or chicken but no red meat. They cannot officially be – classed as vegetarians

With the rise in junk food outlets, focusing on carbohydrates and fats, here comes something different, and we at IDawn Technologies are proud to be part of an initiative like this.

Amro, a new vegetarian cafe, being launched this October, with a hope to bring healthy living to society, is doing something different. With a range of sandwiches, burger and salads, and delightful array of fruit juice and smoothies, Amro is bringing you something different.

As the first wing of its brand identity measures, IDawn Technologies took on the responsibility of designing the logo for Amro: The Vegetarian Cafe. Take a look at the design we came up and don’t forget to watch out for Amro!

You might have wondered once or twice how dangerous this is, and then shrugged that concern off because it is just so darned convenient… WELL DON’T JUST SHRUG IT OFF!

Overloading your electrical system is a serious fire hazard! Every time you plug in a new device to an already loaded circuit, you are putting more and more strain on the wires that are embbeded in your walls, and some of these wires might be older than you AND your parents, adding to the risk of them catching on fire. The more you load a circuit, the more electrical current that has to flow through the copper conductor, this increased flow of current causes a build up of heat in the conductor if it is not sufficient to carry the load you are demanding of it, this heat then melts the PVC insulation of the wire, causing wires to short circuit and spark causing a fire, or worse, sometimes the PVC insulation itself overheats and catches on fire!

Okay, so you got a new gadget and it has a 13 Ampere (AKA Square Pin, AKA British Standard) plug, and all you got on your wall are 5 Ampere (AKA Round Pin) plugs. So again your handy Multi-socket comes to the rescue, and does a quick conversion. Surely, since the there is only one device plugged into it, you can’t be overloading the circuit, and therefore its same right? Well yes and no. Your new device may have come with a square pin plug because of the country it was made for, anything going to the UK for an example comes with a square pin plug. BUT your device may have come with a square pin plug because it needs more current than what a 5 Amp, round pin outlet can provide, in this case, even though you are only using one device you are STILL overloading your circuit, and possibly causing your internal wiring to heat up.

Another thing to keep in mind is that most Multi-sockets that are available on the mass market for Rs. 75/- (Less than 1 USD) are built to very poor standards. The terminals of your plug may not fully connect with the terminals inside the Multi-socket, and the terminals of the Multi-socket may not connect properly with the terminals in your power outlet. This causes sparking, and sparking causes heat which can cause fire, cause your Multi-socket or power outlet to melt, and offer you a serious risk of electrocution. Quick Hint: If you hear a ticking, or cricking sound coming from the vinicity of your multi-socket, then something in there is sparking and you need to adjust your plugs/power packs (AKA adapters, AKA power bricks) IMMEDIATELY!

I’m not saying that Multi-sockets are the devils spawn put on this earth to burn down all our homes and offices, but I do seriously advise you to think twice before plugging something into one, and to always keep a close eye (and ear) on it. Also, go be a big spender and buy Multi-sockets that are manufactured to better standards whenever possible, they only cost about Rs. 250/- (About 2.50 USD) more than the cheap ones that could leave you, your home, and all your wonderful electrical toys extra crispy!

What many of you may not know however is that while the faithful CAT5 cable has been sitting under our desks, ferrying little 1s and 0s across our networks, it has also been living a second (third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh… You get the point…) life doing all sorts of other odd jobs for a fraction of the cost of traditional cables. CAT5, and now CAT5e is being used for everything from Telephone Systems, to Intrusion Detection Systems, Composite Video Transmission, and Power Transmission!

Now you may be asking yourself why/how does CAT5 do this? The answer is simple: To ensure that data travels correctly over a network, and does not get corrupted (in the form of dropped packets) the CAT5 Structured Cabling Standards have been developed to a very high level, to reduce the amount of noise induced by a cable, and cut down on the Near End Cross-Talk (known commonly as NExT in the industry). This makes CAT5 ideal for transmitting everything from Audio, to Video, to Power. In addition to this resilience, CAT5 cable has 4 individual pairs, for a total of 8 cores, this means that many signals, (I.E. Video, Left Audio, Right Audio, Power, Control Signals, etc) can be transmitted simultaneously over the same wire. This makes cable laying, and cable management a breeze!

Up until recently, IDawn Technologies has used 5C2V Coaxial Cable (good old normal Antenna Wire) for transmitting video from our CCTV Cameras to our Digital Video Recorders (DVRs). In addition to this Coaxial Cable, another two additional 1mm pure copper wires were needed for DC power transmission. On average this cost us about Rs. 125/- (a little over 1 USD) per meter of cabling, not including the cable trunking or conduit that needs to be used. On the subject of conduits and cable trunking, this merry little trio of wires that needs to be run individually to every camera from a central point needs at least a 3/4″ conduit or a 1″ cable trunking to fit in! Certain larger sites that we have done needed 4″ water down pipes to carry all the wires! Using CAT5e on the other hand, each camera only needs a single wire, and about 5 wires can fit inside a 3/4″ conduit and the best part: CAT5e costs less than Rs. 30/- (about 0.25 USD) per meter!

Another advantage of CAT5e is the ability to run it for long distances. Standard wire coils in Sri Lanka are only 100M long at the most, CAT5e however comes in 305M boxes, and the signal loss even when you run cable for over 200 meters is negligible.

There is however a catch when using CAT5e to do things that it was not meant for: You need converters or “Baluns” as they are known in the industry to properly adapt your regular RJ45 connector into whatever type of connector you need for your application. For CCTV we use special Video Baluns (like the one shown below) that have inbuilt power transformers, noise filters, and signal brushes to ensure that our video is of the highest quality.

So the next time you have a little DIY project that needs a lot of cabling, and you’re wondering how to get the costs under control, put “Using CAT5e” on the top of your list, and contact IDawn Technologies for an FOC over the phone consultation.

The website’s domain was also registered and is currently hosted on IDawn Technologies servers.

You can view his website at www.RommelPhotography.com

At the stalls, A25 and A26, inside the Sirimavo Bandarainake Memorial Hall, IDawn Technologies and Timee Electric Company showcased many of their products and services, and offered visitors, current customers and potential clients a marriage of expertise from both companies. Whilst Timee Electric Company offers you all that you will need to develop a residential, commercial or industrial property, IDawn Technologies has the capability of having theses items installed for you. Timee Electric Company retails any electrical accessory for construction as well as anything that you might need to add to the aesthetic with the likes of switches, plug-points, and also lighting solutions. IDawn Technologies has the capability of having those fitted for you and combined they offer a complete value added service.

Showcased at the stall by Timee Electric Company where various light fittings, the switch range (from suppliers such as Clipsal/Schneider, Orange and Hager), Main Current Circuit Breakers, Miniature Circuit Breakers (MCBs) (from names such as Orange – Alpha & Sigma, Hager and Moeller), Video Door Phones, Water and Dust Tight Industrial Sockets, to various miscellaneous items that can be purchased from Timee Electric Company, sitauted on the top floor of the Supermarket in Nugegoda.

IDawn Technologies showcase a myriad of products that we use for installation from the likes of CCTV camera options, Digital Video Recorder (DVRs),  and we also demo-ed one of our exciting new projects (The Intelligent Lighting System being developed by the IDawn Developments wing) on our stall.  In partnership with Gintota Plywood Manufacturing Company, we also launched our Access Control solution with the implementation on a plywood door.

Having done all the wiring for the stall, we showcased how we maintain standards in what ever project we embark on, whether it’s an in-house project (like the stall wiring of the stall, to the eye-popping LED light-mounted shelving system) or the self-service ability offered to the visitors of our stall, to feel and experience the products displayed. The stall area was also a free Wi-Fi zone due to the demoing of another product sold under the IDawn Technologies product portfolio, the Sapido 3.5G Mobile Hotspot that allows you to use it as a wireless access point or even a USB server (either file, print and even a  video web server).

IDawn Technologies showcased the following list of sample products at the Construct 2011 Exhibition that are normally used on projects;

• CCTV Systems (Residential, Commercial and Industrial Grade)

1. CCTV Cameras

Sony 444 CCD CCTV Camera (540 TVL, 6mm)

Sony 303 CCD CCTV Camera (420 TVL, 3.6mm)

Sony 605 CCD CCTV Camera (420 TVL, 16mm)

Sony 605 CCD CCTV Camera (420 TVL, 12mm)

Sony 112 CCD CCTV Camera (420 TVL, 8mm)

Sony Effio E-4127 CCTV Camera (600 TVL, 6mm)

Sony 112 CCD CCTV Camera (420 TVL, 6mm)

Sony 112 CCD CCTV Camera (420TVL, 3.6mm)

Sony 990 CCD CCTV Camera (With Remote Control, 420TVL, 6mm)

Pan/Tilt/Zoom Controller

Pan/Tilt Motor

Zoom Lens CCD CCTV Camera (420TVL)

2. DVRs

4 Channel DVR with 500GB Hard Disk Drive

Network Connectivity
Mobile Phone View
Remote View/Playback/Backup

8 Channel DVR with 1TB Hard Disk Drive

Network Connectivity
Mobile Phone View
Remote View/Playback/Backup

• Access Control and Time Attendance Unit

Finger Print
RFID
Password
Network Connectivity
Door Lock Control

• Video Door Phone and installation
• Stall Design and Wiring
• Unique Shelving Solutions
• Projector Installation
• Miscellaneous A/V Solutions

If you didn’t get a chance to visit us this time around, fear not! We will be once again be back exhibiting even newer products in February of 2012 at Architect 2012.

]]> http://www.idawnt.com/portfolio/amber-borucki/feed/ 563 http://www.idawnt.com/portfolio/cataloupe-aqua-cctv-upgrades/ http://www.idawnt.com/portfolio/cataloupe-aqua-cctv-upgrades/#comments Thu, 01 Sep 2011 01:53:30 +0000 IDawn Technologies http://www.idawnt.com/?p=1229 IDawn Technologies, Cantaloupe & Co’s exclusive Technology Partner was called upon once again to do some maintenance and upgrades to the CCTV System at their premier villa Cantaloupe Aqua, located in the coastal town of Habaraduwa. While all the cameras that were installed when the hotel opened were working perfectly, the management needed 3 new cameras put into place, and one camera relocated.

The original Digital Video Recorder (DVR) that we installed was capable of handling up to 8 cameras, even though only 5 were installed in the first stage of the project (Cantaloupe Aqua – The Beginning). To these 5 another 3 cameras to cover the front parking lot/guard room/entrance, the supply corridor/dish washing area, and the “Aqua Aqua” Rooms/Laundry Room was installed. These three new cameras were all installed using CAT 5e Cabling and Video Baluns which made the installation process much faster and cheaper.

In addition to the installation of the 3 new cameras, and the relocation of one camera, a DynDNS updater was installed to one of the computers in the office so that the directors could access the DVR from Colombo and monitor operations at the hotel remotely. An upgrade to a Static IP address for their internet connection is expected shortly, which is the most reliable way to ensure availability of the DVR for remote monitoring.

Apart from the CCTV upgrade, we also upgraded the Wireless Network at Aqua by installing an N-Series Edimax Wireless Access Point. This was done to provide better/stronger wireless coverage in the “Aqua Aqua” rooms, and the Deluxe Rooms.