FIGURE G

Tapping on any one of the active codes will display more information.

The Lifetime icon opens the Lifetime Totals screen, showing the totals accumulated over the lifetime of the truck. It's pictured in Figure H.

FIGURE H

The Lifetime Totals screen shows the totals accumulated over the lifetime of the truck.

The Trip icon opens the Trip Totals display, showing the totals accumulated during the last trip, as seen in Figure I.

FIGURE I

Trip Totals shows the totals accumulated during the last trip.

Additional Pocket Technician software features include:

• 1-800: gives you several 1-800 numbers for help with your Caterpillar Engine and support for using the software;

• Maint: allows you to track routine maintenance intervals, and;

• Theft Det: enables a security system that is built into the electronic engine controls.

In addition to the features available while connected to an engine, the Demo feature allows you to use the entire program in a demonstration mode with canned data. This is a great tool for learning the program and for sales personnel to show the program to customers without actually connecting to an engine.

Bringing the information back to the office
Viewing the information from the engine in real time is incredibly valuable to the customer, but the feature that makes the Pocket Technician system shine is the ability to save this data and bring it back to the PC in the office to review later. Often times, a fleet manager will want to record the Trip Totals from a truck and show those totals to the driver before the next trip, so they can discuss and improve his or her performance.

When we first decided that we needed to save data with the Pocket Technician software, the obvious solution was to create a custom conduit to bring the data back to the PC into a text file. We then had an idea that turned out to be easier to develop and more valuable to the customer. Craig programmed in the ability to save data to Memo Pad entries on the Palm device. By selecting Save to Memo from the Options menu within Active Codes, Lifetime, and Trip Totals, you can create Memo Pad entries with the saved data.

There are several advantages to using Memo Pad versus creating a custom conduit. First, the user can view the saved data on the Palm handheld by simply launching the Memo Pad application. We title the Memo Pad entry based on the feature that was saved. We also time and date stamp the entry and add the Vehicle ID for tracking purposes. The second advantage to using the Memo Pad application to save data is that we didn't have to create a custom conduit. The normal HotSync process will bring the Memo Pad entries back into the Palm Desktop software. From the Palm Desktop software you can view, print, and copy the contents of each memo.

Where to go from here?
Our division has learned a lot about what it takes to develop Palm applications and to bring this type of product to market. Since our first version of the Pocket Technician software works for on-highway trucks, we'll be looking at all of the other applications that use Caterpillar engines to see what products we'll develop next.