The platform

A mobile field laboratory without the laboratory.

CapnCoil combines a four-season mobile platform, custom vehicle computing, cameras, sensors, communications, power systems, and experimental hardware into one continuously evolving field environment.

The point is not to own a mobile platform. It is to have somewhere real to take technology and find out what it actually does.

Why

It exists to expose technology to conditions that are hard to reproduce on a workbench.

Lab equipment is built for a room. Field equipment is built for everywhere else. The nine factors below are the ones that turn a working prototype into equipment that survives a season of daily use.

Weather: Rain, snow, and ice on hardware that was specified for an indoor environment.
Temperature: Freezing a display, a battery, and a LiFePO4 charge cycle that does not care about the datasheet.
Moisture: Condensation forming inside sealed enclosures every time the temperature swings.
Vibration: Road input loosening connectors and turning a working prototype into a broken one.
Power constraints: Running compute from a finite battery with no mains to fall back on.
Connectivity limitations: Cellular that drops in a valley and stays dropped for the rest of the trip.
Mobility: Hardware that must work while the thing it is measuring is in motion.
Continuous operation: Leaving software running unattended for weeks and finding out what it did.
Human interaction: The part that matters most, and the one hardest to simulate: a driver using it while driving.

Modules

What the platform is made of.

Mobile Platform

Current

The vehicle itself: mobility, off-grid power, four-season exposure, and continuous operation. It is the deployment environment for everything else on this page, and the reason the rest of the platform exists.

A working Ford Transit used as a four-season deployment environment.

Head Unit

Current

Integrated vehicle computing — navigation, positioning, camera display, communications, system monitoring, and offline operation — in one interface designed around a driver’s hands rather than a developer’s desk.

Navigation, camera feeds, media, phone integration, and system monitoring, running on the vehicle.

Perception

In development

Cameras and sensors turned into useful events rather than stored video. The motion-detection and tracking pipeline is built and running on the vehicle; the model-driven part is not installed yet.

The motion-detection and tracking pipeline runs locally, but no AI model is installed yet, so it does not identify people. Detection, tracking, and event generation are real; zones, line-crossing, occupancy counting, and recording are not.

Field Nodes

Concept

An idea for small modular sensing hardware that could be deployed around the vehicle or left somewhere on its own. Nothing has been built, and this page says so.

Modular sensing hardware intended to extend beyond the vehicle. Nothing has been built yet.

How to read these

Four statuses, and nothing else.

Most hardware websites blur the line between what exists and what is planned, usually by accident. CapnCoil uses four words and holds to them, because the only thing this platform produces is findings — and a finding nobody can trust is worth nothing.

Implemented and usable: Built, running, and verified against the code. If it is labelled Current, you can go and use it.
Being built right now: The work is underway and incomplete. Some of it works; the rest does not yet.
Intended, not started: Decided to happen, with no implementation behind it yet.
Being explored: An idea under consideration. No hardware, no code, and no schedule.

Architecture

How data moves through the system.

From a physical condition to a record someone can act on. This is the shape of the platform rather than its implementation.

Stage 1 of 6: Field environment

Weather, temperature, moisture, vibration, motion, and everything else the platform exists to survive.

Stage 2 of 6: Sensors, cameras, and GNSS

The inputs. Cameras feed the head unit live; positioning and timing come from GNSS.

Stage 3 of 6: Edge systems

On-vehicle processing, so analysis does not depend on a network that may not be there.

Stage 4 of 6: Head unit and gateway

Where the data becomes something a person can see, and where it can be acted on.

Stage 5 of 6: Events, data, and monitoring

Measurements recorded over time, rather than impressions recorded once.

Stage 6 of 6: Operator, API, and storage

Where results go: a person driving, an interface reading them, or data kept for later comparison.

Every stage here is deliberately abstract. The real implementation — specific hardware, addresses, and services — is not published, and does not need to be for this diagram to be true.

The method

Build. Deploy. Measure.

Build it, deploy it into conditions that will try to break it, and measure what happens. The measurement is the product — everything else is a vehicle for it.

Build

Hardware and software assembled for a real environment, with the compromises that implies.

Deploy

Installed in the mobile platform and left there, through the seasons, in daily use.

Measure

Instrumented so results are recorded rather than remembered, including the failures.

How testing works See the deployment environment

Platform access

Need technology measured in real conditions?

CapnCoil takes product evaluation, field validation, and technical partnership work. Tell us what you are building and what you need to know about it — and we will tell you honestly whether this is the right place to find out.

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