Ruggedised SmartPhone

RangerFone S18 with LiPO battery for size comparison

My last couple of blogs have been on the subject of Blue Force Tracking using either the BattleTac software from Hungary or the Slovenian PES. The posts have focused largely on the software and its capabilities.

Another aspect of this topic concerns the choice of hardware that the BFT software runs on.

If you read the other blog posts, you will know that I tried to run both software products on a Kindle Fire 7 ruggedised tablet.  This had its difficulties, but the PES software worked in the end after a number of work arounds although there were still issues with the BattleTac (free panning problem)..

This led me to the conclusion that the best way forward is probably to run the BFT apps on a self contained Android OS smartphone.

Although you can use any reasonably equipped smartphone, I have loaded the PES software on to a RangerFone S18 Ruggedised SmartPhone.

Produced in China by Shenzhen Outfone Technology Ltd it is IP68 certified which makes it dustproof and waterproof. It can apparently be submerged 1m underwater and still operate, although if it can withstand heavy Welsh rain at a milsim then most game users will be happy simmers. Certainly, other reviewers have talked about watching streamed movies in the shower, so that's good enough for me. 

It does all the normal cellphone things, so can be used as a normal everyday phone and apps like the PES software can be downloaded through the Google PlayStore. The phone is a bit chunky (250g) for casually carrying to the pub or round Tesco's when doing the weekly shopp but it's a great phone if you work or play outdoors.

What I like most about it is the integral GPS that can work with the US, Russian GLONASS and Chinese BeiDou satellite constellations, a built-in electronic compass and sensors for altitude, air pressure, temperature and humidity. It even has a torch light for searching through your rucksack at night !! 

Although I run mine on a PAYG 4G SIM so I can control costs, like most phones it can run on any normal size or micro SIM and you can use two different SIM cards if you want two numbers or a choice of networks.

The display is ideal for BFT use and is a 4.5" 960x540 TFT IPS.

The phone has a 16GB memory as standard with microSD expansion possibilities up to 64GB, which allows for greater offline storage of cached mapping.

The battery is a 3500mAH capacity and charging is carried out via a microUSB port.

One cool thing is that there are two hard function buttons on the side of the phone (in addition to the standard POWER and VOL + and VOL - buttons). Using an Andoid app from PlayStore, it's possible to programme these for custom functions.  I have one assigned to switching the torch on by touch in the pitch black and the other FUNC button switches the "do not disturb" on, when well, you dont want the phone ringing in the middle of a game.  

The RangerFone S18 is available in the UK at around £120.

PES Battlefield Management Software Review

What ?

Battlefield Management Software is a fancy title for a piece of publicly available software which allows milsim games to have that extra degree of reality.

Now it has to be said that the Slovenian maker is a real defence company which produces different flavours of this software depending on whether you are a mountain hiker, milsim player, Security/LEO or the military.

What Does It Do ? 

It's similar to a Blue Force Tracking software except it has a few enhancements which allow it to do some extra stuff like navigation, past tracking of forces, interfacing to laser rangefinders and so on.

Easier to show you..

Although it will display in landscape mode, I find there is more mapping space in portrait.
You can download a wide variety of free mapping, but this example shows Google Earth.
For this example, I am showing a milsim game in the British Army Training Village of Tyneham in Dorset (I know, we can dream).

The Blue (BLUFOR) unit is us, callsign SUNRAY. The software is showing us two civilian trucks in green, an enemy APC in red and an unknown vehicle in yellow (this follows NATO symbology doctrines for friend or foe). These objects have to be manually entered by us or one of our allies on the same net, but it means that everybody is looking at the same scenario and we then all know the same information.

So far so good.

What do I need to run this and how much does it cost ?

Well the bad news (for iPad and iPhone owners anyway) is that the Personal Eye System only runs on Android operating systems. In saying that, Apple products are probably far too valuable to expose to airsofting ?

I found that the Amazon Kindle Fire 7 made a great rugged tablet for milsim use. With its 7" display and ruggedised case, it cost £64 from Amazon. You will need to load Google Play Store on to it as the Amazon app  store doesn't sell PES. You will still need your mobile phone to act as a wifi hotspot as the tablet doesn't have data connectivity, but you can use your regular smartphone and bury it deep in your kit so it doesnt get broken. All user interaction is done through the tablet and let's face it, only one player in each squad or fireteam really needs a PES enabled tablet on behalf of their team - this is usually the TL/SL or RTO.

Edited to add - the Kindle system is a pain and I struggled to get my smartphone to provide its GPS position to the Fire 7.  In the end, I connected it by bluetooth to my Garmin GLO cigarette packet GPS and by wifi to my phone hotspot. The Garmin is fast and works on both the US and Russian satellites. However, it's probably easier to just load the PES software on an Android smartphone with its own integral GPS rather than faff about with the Kindle flavour of Android.

In terms of operating costs, the organiser or team leader needs to buy the PES military app which is £12 and then have a PES server subscription which is Euro 4.80 per month for 10 users (or Euro 48 per annum). Players wishing to be on the net are then invited to use a free version of the app and join the network using a PIN that the organiser or team leader will give you. There are lots of purchase options for this application and its use and I won't go into them all here (check out their website which I will post a link to at the bottom).

My experience of this kind of software is that due to the low volume take up/niche market, most developers go in too cheap to attract players and then can't afford to maintain the software. The makers of PES, Mil Sistemika are a resourced defence company and make a reasonable charge for the application and its maintenance.

Other Features

Here you can see that SUNRAY has plotted an indirect flanking action (blue route line) around the back of the buildings to come up behind the enemy APC. Using the fly-out menu on the right, anybody on the net can create a new route and add waypoints to show all the allied units how they will approach.

The same fly-out menu has a flip side (selected by the reversing arrow on the bottom soft key) which allows the user to enter new reference positions for navigation, new targets to direct colleagues towards or add new enemy or civilian units. Note - BLUFOR units on the same network will appear and move automatically due to the embedded tracking functionality.

COP stands for Common Operational Picture and is effectively what is shared between users over the net. The COP list is a list of all the assets in the COP.

You will also notice that the top line (just below the words Personal Eye System) shows own position which is derived from your phone triangulation or its inbuilt GPS if it has one.

Towards the bottom of the screen is a black text line which displays chat between units. Any user can send a message to other units using secure datacomms (only visible by those using the same PIN number).

Here we have chosen for only one line of chat to be visible to maximise the mapping space but users can adjust this up to 4 lines in settings.

If you press the three vertical dots shown in the top right hand side of the screen, you get the drop -down settings menu. You can elect to have the software update your COP at preset intervals or you can manually update (sync COP picture) at times when you wish to conserve data or work between data dead zones.

Website: Mil Sistemika

Blue Force Tracking for Milsims

Blue Force Tracking is in common use by modern day real world armies.
Originally developed around 2001 to enable forces to know the location of other friendly forces (presumably to avoid friendly fire incidents), it was also used to identify the suspected or observed location of enemy forces.

BFT usually comprises of a processor running bespoke software and which is connected to a military GPS for position reference and a tactical radio or satellite terminal for the sharing of encrypted data over the battlespace.
Initially fitted to military vehicles as a PC-based installation, improved battery technology and the reduction in the size of modern electronics, has enabled BFT to become a personal tool for the battlefield soldier, running on a portable ruggedised tablet.

As well as allowing the avoidance of friendly fire, BFT permits commanding officers to know the positions of their forces, direct them to desired locations using mapping on the screen and to communicate with them using text messaging.

BattleTac is a Hungarian software company which has developed a version of BFT for military gaming use.

The BT software can run on a smartphone or tablet using iOS or Android operating systems. The host platform used in gaming, just like the real BFT, needs to have a position reference which can be derived from an internal GPS or cell triangulation using the mobile network and it needs to have a data connection via GPRS, 3G/4G, etc.

In practice, an inexpensive smartphone can be used for personal use at a milsim (I have an LG one which cost £50 from Tesco). More expensive phones offer bigger screens to make mapping clearer but are more vulnerable and a bigger monetary loss if damaged in the field. Battlefield commanders who observe and manage their forces from relative safety often use a larger tablet to view proceedings.

Screenshot of BattleTac from Tablet

The above screenshot shows the position of friendly forces (blue) being directed to enemy forces (red) at a farmhouse. This image can be viewed by either the force commander on his tablet or the players in the field using smartphones or small ruggedised tablets. The grid is displayed in MGRS and as you can see, the software is providing a range and bearing to the enemy (189m at 300 Degrees). As users are all connected on the same encrypted network by sharing a common password, any change to the mapping will be shared and viewed by all. This means that either the commander or the players in the field can add information at any time.

As the operation of such a system can be difficult in the field, players can choose just to be tracked (by burying their smartphone in the relative safety of a pouch or bergen) and this means that their commander will know their location as they move around. The commander can use this positional information to direct them by normal radio commands. How often have you been asked for your position over the radio by Command, only to find that one tree looks much like another in woodland and you really aren't sure. This call becomes unnecessary with BattleTac tracking and the position that the C.O sees is much more accurate that your estimation could ever be !! Not only does this remove errors from poor verbal communication but it frees up the player to concentrate on the enemy rather than radio requests for updated positions.

Sometimes, Squad or Team Leaders will carry a small tablet in a ruggedised case. This enables them to reach a place of reasonable safety out of a potential contact situation and consult the tactical situation on the screen while the rest of the squad provide him with cover.