November 8, 2007 - Combining ultra-low power control with remote communications, CenTrak Inc. (formally Remote Play) today introduced its InTouch Care Real Time Location System (RTLS), an advanced, easily installed system for tracking medical personnel, patients and equipment that is based on MSP430 microcontroller units (MCUs) from Texas Instruments Inc.
The new InTouch Care RTLS employs DualTrak technology, a combination of radio frequency (RF) and infrared (IR) generates more accurate locations of people and equipment to room and sub-room levels. The extremely low power consumption of TI’s MSP430 MCUs allows the DualTrak infrastructure to operate on batteries that last for several years, making the system easy to deploy and scale and inexpensive to maintain.
InTouch Care networks consist of small tags placed on personnel, patients or equipment, room monitors that are scaled like smoke detectors, and access points that are centrally located on a floor and communicate to a computer network. The tags, which offer several options for deployment, come with buttons and LEDs that can be customized for different functions, such as indicating that a patient is ready for a procedure. Non-line-of-sight Gen2IR infrared provides unambiguous room-level positioning, and two-way RF communication enables all units to share location data and system maintenance information as needed.
For more information: www.centrak.com, www.ti.com/MSP430