ActiveMine has been installed since August 2006 in underground mines. Customers have found that the system increases their productivity significantly. Clear, digital two way voice is a huge improvement over the existing one way walkie-talkie voice of legacy solutions.  Combine that with the ability to track miners without requiring a separate tag or additional underground components and there is a solution that not only complies with MSHA but also helps get more out of a mine.

The voice and tracking solutions run over a 54M (high speed and bandwidth) standards based Wi-Fi network offering the ability to add other applications such as data and video easily without affecting voice or tracking. Customers have already added belt and CO monitoring, using the same network, lowering costs and protecting their investment.

Now, one is able to put a wireless network in once, then run many applications over it. It’s far easier to manage and maintain than today’s method of having many different wires, each for their own proprietary application. As these applications add more wires, complexity increases adding many more maintenance and inspection points. Wires corrode, get cut, and stretched constantly in a mine. It wouldn’t be so bad if one knew where they were cut and could fix them easily, but one doesn’t.  With ActiveMine, if any part of the system is damaged due to a roof fall or other event, the network management system highlights the location of the problem so one can dispatch someone in to fix it.  In fact if it is a power issue there is at least 48 hours to fix it before the battery in the node runs down. If it is an antenna issue, the network will continue to run using redundant paths.  Workers in the mine will not even notice an outage. 

If you are looking for a communications and tracking system to comply with MSHA (including the latest policy letter, PPL09) we can help!  More importantly, we can help you get more out of your mine. Be safe and make money… phone Cameron Sturgess at 416-402-0345 or e-mail cameron@activecontrol.com.