Impact Detection System - Pi-Lit

Impact Detection System

Ubiquity Through Economy™

Giving your Critical Road Safety Devices a voice. Monitor, Detect, Report, and Manage on a single platform.

Monitor Your Assets

Multiple assets at no additional cost! pi-lit®’s radio mesh network allows many sensors to report through a single cellular or fiber-cable gateway. Many-to-one: that’s our secret sauce!

Critical Safety Devices to Monitor:

Crash Cushions & end treatments
Guardrails and cable barriers
Signs (Gore, Stop, Yield, Chevron, Etc.)
Railroad Crossing Gates
Work zone delineators (barrels, cones, message boards)

Impact Detection Examples

7:15 am. No braking or swerve. Talk about a rude awakening. pi-Lit IDS alerted the maintenance crew. Otherwise, who knows when this attenuator might have been inspected and repaired? Take home lesson? Even major hits can result in a drive away. Kudos to Valtir. Saved a life.

It’s 4:00 am. Do you know the status of your crash cushion? Another example of an impact where the sleepy driver leaves the scene. Drove a mile and waited for the tow truck. Think the driver or tow operator reported the impact? Can pigs fly? All bets are off regarding the time to inspection and repair.

In this example we see an impact and the driver drop down the embankment. On scene traffic safety personnel assumed that the end-treatment in front of the disabled vehicle was involved in the event. They failed to inspect the crash cushion upstream at the gore point; the one that took the glancing blow. The alert from the impact sensor was the source of “ground truth” that led maintenance crews to the correct location. This attenuator might have gone unreported till the cows came home!

Detect Your Assets

Real-time alerts via text message or email when a road safety device is impacted. Nuisance impacts that otherwise would go unnoticed are now reported in real-time to ensure immediate inspection and repair.

Want to know the severity of the impact before driving to the site? With the IDS you can!

Manage Your Assets

Manage inspection, maintenance, and repairs from the dashboard. Capture critical asset tracking and manufacturer information for quick recall identification, spare parts required following impact, etc. Automatically pushes the attenuator’s location and information to the dashboard where maintenance and management can view and monitor key assets.

Generate Your Reports

Generate reports of impact history by location and device. Data collection leads to useful information regarding comparative device performance, cost benefit by manufacturer, and safety analysis.

Features and Specifications

Impact Detection System

Pi-Lit uses one of two smart devices to monitor your crash cushions and barriers: The IDS Gateway and IDS Node. These are identical with one exception. The Gateway includes a cellular modem. When within range, many nodes can talk to a single Gateway leading to much lower cost deployment.

Gateway

Specifications

2.4GHz radio mesh network (not Bluetooth, not Wi-Fi, not Zigbee).
Cellular network on ATT. International coverage with ATT roaming partners.
Range between Gateway and Node: unobstructed line-of-sight 150 meters (492 feet).
Default Check-in frequency every 24-hours: Can be adjusted upon request.
4-year battery life.
Low battery alert at 25%. This is configurable by the customer on the Dashboard.
3 axis (X,Y,Z) accelerometer sensor onboard.
Impact sensitivity set at 2500 milli-G’s. This can be adjusted by the customer on the Dashboard.
IP67 (dust and water protection).

Features

Receive impact notifications within 60 seconds (email and/or text)
Following impact, alert includes time stamp, Google Map location of device, photograph of device at time of initial deployment.
Deployment takes 2 minutes. No tools, brackets, putty, or modification of the safety device.
Remote configuration of sensitivity (from your desktop).

Nuisance or Unreported Impacts the IDS™ have detected and reported

Nuisance Impact Detected](/content/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Hit-and-Run-Car-Still-There-CA.jpg)

Guardrail Impact](/content/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/GuardRail-Tx.jpg)

Nuisance Impact on Attenuator](/content/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/texas.jpg)

End Terminal Impact](/content/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/End-Terminal-Florida-1.jpg)

Cable Barrier Impact Detected](/content/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Cable-Barrier-TX-2.jpg)

Our Technology

Our novel sequencing technology and IoT devices are based upon a network topology referred to as a “mesh”. In this network architecture all of the nodes (lamps, sensors, etc.) are equal – no coordinator or followers. It is a decentralized network, each node or device acts independently of others. Our breakthrough innovation in applying mesh networking to road safety technology has resulted in 20 granted patents and this number is growing.

Toll Plaza Network

Save Money

Whether crews are deployed to drive miles to inspect cable barriers, or your department relies upon “passive maybe” reporting, safety cannot rely on “maybe”. Crew time is expensive, vehicle miles are expensive, and liability resulting from failure to inspect is expensive. Or you can choose the smart, pennies-per-day alternative: pi-lit® Asset Impact Management System AIMS™.

Learn More

Give us a call at +1 (949)415-9411 or fill out the form below.

Located in Orange County, California, pi-lit® (Pi Variables, Inc.) is a technology company applying radio connected, IoT devices to improve roadway safety. Since 2013 our team has been developing products.