Client Stories

Review on Remote Detect’s performance from 25 year veteran

“I was pleasantly surprised at how easy Remote Detect was to set up and with its performance. It was simple and intuitive to configure and found it reliable. At first I had doubts about the ease of commands over email, it works well and I notice image quality is noticeably superior. I’d have no hesitation to deploy the Remote Detect in a long-term location—a solution like this is long overdue in the industry. It’s an affordable solution that I will offer to my clients.”

—Ex-law enforcement, and covert surveillance expert (over twenty-five years of experience) and member of National Technical Investigators Association

Convenient and a huge cost saver for wildfire monitoring

“Smoldering wildfires must be monitored regularly to reduce the risk of further flare-ups and spreading, but fire patrol staff and travel costs, plus the hazards of accessing fires either via road or air, are significant. It is much more convenient for us to deploy the Remote Viewer—satellite camera and get a photo emailed to us hourly to monitor fires, not to mention the huge cost savings. We’ve been using the Remote Viewer for over 18 months and it has been extremely well received by our entire team.”

—Wildfire Ranger, Canadian Forestry and Emergency Response

Portable, lightweight, and takes up almost no room in a plane or helicopter

“We had been looking for satellite camera solution for more than a year when we found the Remote Viewer system. Because it fit our needs exactly, we were able to make a quick purchasing decision. We really like that it is portable, lightweight, and take up almost no room in a plane or helicopter. Installation was easy, and my boss loves that the communications portal is through email. We expect the Remote Viewer will reduce our traveling to remote sites, and that’s a significant saving since each trip costs an average of $7,000.”

—Environmental Manager, US Government Science Center

Yesterday’s pictures don’t mean anything to us

TEMSCO Helicopters, one of the largest helicopter tour and commercial aviation companies in Alaska, uses multiple Remote Viewers placed at strategic remote locations. “Our Remote Viewers are important decision-making tools our base managers and lead pilots use in deciding if we’re going to launch an aircraft or not,” said Joel Kain, TEMSCO’s Director of Safety.

About BC Hydro remote monitoring needs

Obtaining reliable, high quality, real-time environmental data in BC’s harsh climate is a challenge for BC Hydro’s reservoir operations planners, hydrologic modelers and forecasters, weather forecasters, data managers, and hydrometeorologic field technicians who all rely on this data to safely and effectively perform their jobs. We fund and operate a network of over 230 remote climate, snow, and hydrometric stations to support these critical roles, with the majority of those stations contributing data to both federal and provincial monitoring networks.

The Problem

While collecting hydroclimatic data in BC’s harsh climate we often encounter a number of problems that can hamper the quality and reliability of the data collected. For example, snow caps can form on the orifice of precipitation gauges, river ice can affect water levels, and transmission antennae can break off due to heavy snow load causing data transmission to stop. Experienced data managers can diagnose many of the data issues using the transmitted data and metadata, but some uncertainty often remains.

The solution

To gain a better understanding of the performance of the instrumentation deployed in the field, BC Hydro has field-tested Nupoint System’s Remote Viewer satellite cameras to obtain real-time images of its monitoring sites and essentially ‘monitor the monitoring equipment’. Under normal circumstances, the images are sent from remote locations to the office once a day in the morning. The images serve a number of additional purposes: hydrologists monitor the elevation of the snow line; meteorologists watch the weather; helicopter pilots use the weather information to plan their work in remote and mountainous areas of the province, and avalanche professionals use evidence of recent activity for preparing avalanche travel advisories.

The introduction of the Remote Viewer to our remote monitoring program has been a great success, meeting our image quality expectations along with very reliable data transmission and low power consumption. We plan to revise our camera mounting locations and methods during the warmer summer months to further enhance the system functionality and effectiveness and look forward to deploying more systems in the fall.

“At BC Hydro multiple Nupoint Remote Viewer satellite cameras are being used to solve some of the real challenges posed with remote monitoring in BC’s harsh climate; the introduction of the Remote Viewer has been a great success, meeting our image quality expectations along with very reliable data transmission and low power consumption. Hydrologists use the photos delivered by the system primarily to monitor existing on-site monitoring equipment. The Remote Viewer images are also used by hydrologists to monitor snow line elevation; by meteorologists to watch the weather; by helicopter pilots to plan their work in remote and mountainous areas of the province; and by avalanche professionals as evidence of recent activity for preparing avalanche travel advisories.”

—Frank Weber, P.Geo., Hydrometeorologic Field Programs Scientist, Generation Resource Management, BC Hydro

Remote Viewer’s performance review by BC Wildfire Service forest professional

As an eighteen year veteran of Parks Canada and BC Wildfire Service, professional forester, Andy Low, knows more than a few things about wildfire prevention and suppression. Now as a partner with the Frontline Operations Group, he is highly sought after for his expertise and operational know-how. During his time at BC Wildfire, Low dealt, “pretty much exclusively with wildfire operations and preparedness,” he told us during a recent telephone interview. Since moving to the private sector his consulting practice has expanded into wildfire hazard assessment and mitigation, as well as community wildfire protection planning.

Client Stories

Review on Remote Detect’s performance from 25 year veteran

Remote Viewer is a game-changer