Timed Relay / Timed Power-Off Harness

What is it?

The timed relay is a piece of hardware that works by cutting power to the Smartrak hardware after a 24-hour period (for petrol/diesel ICE vehicles) or a 30-minute period (for electric or hybrid vehicles) or once the resource’s battery is outputting less than a certain voltage. The voltage drop isolation is determined by the relay itself, not the AVL unit. Please note that these settings are configurable see Default Settings below.

How is it installed?

The timed relay sits between the main power feed (and ground) of the Smartrak hardware and the vehicle (image below FYI). The timed relay will only allow power draw from the vehicle battery to the Smartrak hardware for the timed period which is by default set to 24-hours/30-minutes.

Open

24-hour time limit for ICE vehicles

The reason for a 24-hour time limit for ICE vehicles is to allow a worker to have emergency protection (via lone-worker hardware) for up to a 24 hours - this can be managed and if they are in a remote location for more than 24 hours with a vehicle, they can turn the vehicle on and off again to re-set the 24 hour timer.

During this 24-hour timed period the internal battery (in the AVL) will continue to be charged. After the timed period, no power will be drawn from the vehicle’s battery by Smartrak hardware.

Events continue to be captured and transmitted over the initial 24-hour period when the device remains connected to the vehicle’s battery. These events include key on, emergency triggers - including those triggered from Inovonics and Lone-worker devices.

Default Settings

The default setting is power-off time - 24 hours and power-off voltage - 8.5v for a standard 12v battery.

(The power-off time can be set to 30min, 1hr, 3hr, 6hr, 12hr, 18hr, 24hr, 36hr, 48hr and 72hr and power-off voltage can be set to 8.5, 10.5, 11, 11.5, 12v)

What about EVs & Hybrids?

We recommend a timed relay be installed in electric vehicles and hybrids with the power-off time set to 30 minutes. This is best practice to ensure limited battery-related issues are experienced.

Does it cut the power to any other vehicle hardware?

It is important to note that the timed relay ONLY isolates power to the Smartrak hardware - If the battery loses power due to additional equipment (RTs, Beacons etc) being connected then the timed relay won’t mitigate the issue. We would recommend using bigger/additional batteries or a generator if this scenario is common.

What happens once the timed relay kicks in?

Once the timed relay has disconnected the Smartrak hardware from the vehicle power, no events will be transmitted until the vehicle keys on again.

No emergency activations will be captured once the timed relay disconnects the vehicle power after the timed period as power is no longer connected to this hardware. The driver would have to ‘key on’ the vehicle to reconnect the vehicle battery to the AVL before emergency activations can be transmitted – and wait up to 10 seconds for devices to come back online.

How do I get one installed?

Please contact the Customer Support team via the Service Desk to arrange for a quote for installation.

Timed relays are now part of the standard kit along with AVL, wiring loom and aerial and will be installed at the time of initial installation. They can also be retrofitted to existing vehicles.