Legend has it that many of the world's biggest businesses started out as an idea scribbled on a cocktail napkin. If that's the case, ETS Instruments could be facing a bright future.
The Auckland-based electronic data acquisition provider literally started out as an idea on managing director Murray Tippins' kitchen table. Eight years later, ETS is a global business supplying motor racing teams, bus operators, train companies and, if current negotiations go according to plan, the airline industry.
Motor sports were a natural start for Tippins. He put together his first data-acquisition unit on his Pukekawa kitchen table in 1997 to monitor engines he had built for a local jet-ski racing team.
The team had some good riders, but they didn't have much mechanical knowledge, which made gathering information on the jet skis' performance a problem, Tippins said. "So we built units that brought that information back by telemetry to the shore."
From there, the mysterious appearance of an advert supporting his system in a motocross magazine - which Tippins suspects was placed by an enthusiastic friend - led to a contract with automotive parts manufacturer Robert Bosch on a fuel-injected jet-ski project in the United States.
Encouraged by Bosch, Tippins decided to commercialise his technology.
"The challenge was to develop systems that would read multiple inputs fast and deliver a stable result in an environment characterised by noise, temperature extremes and super-high vibration levels," Tippins says.
Motor-racing teams now use ETS sensor and data-gathering technology to measure steering-wheel position, g-forces, suspension travel, exhaust gas, oil and water temperature, engine pressures, clutch performance and even wheel spin.
Tippins was surprised to find demand within the haulage industry, particularly in Australia, to monitor vehicles. So it didn't take long after that for the company to outgrow its cottage-industry beginnings.
"It got to the stage where the kitchen, one bedroom and the lounge were full of people and desks," he said.
Since moving the business to Pukekohe in 1999, ETS has built a customer base stretching from an Ashburton bus company to South American gold mines.
"Initially we were thinking of the motor-sport side, but the industrial side is where the numbers are," Tippins said.
In September 2004, US automotive performance parts manufacturer and distributor Competition Cams bought a 50 per cent stake in ETS, giving the company a US base and an established sales network in the United States and Europe.
"It just gives us a broad reach, and they are also located in an area that is a trucking hub in the US, which should pay dividends," Tippins said.
ETS's latest development uses a "controller area network" to increase dramatically the number of signals simultaneously captured by sensors. Intermediary smart nodes collect data from multiple sensors before feeding information to a central black-box recorder.
Those nodes can be installed up to 100 meters away from the data recorder, opening up the possibility of monitoring industrial machinery in factories.
Some customers, such as drag-racing teams, use a compact flash card to record data for post-event analysis. That's being boosted by mobile broadband connectivity, which is increasing the ability of online real-time monitoring of data, Tippins said.
A central transport office "can look at whether the driver is driving too fast, whether he's using too many RPMs or whether he's in an area he's even allowed to be in."
Technology New Zealand has invested $216,000 in an ETS project to develop electronic control technology. The precise nature of the project is being kept under wraps, but Tippins said it's an evolutionary move for the company, with results expected early next year.
The company is also in negotiations to provide flight data recorders to the airline industry.
ETS Instruments
* Who: Managing director Murray Tippins.
* Where: Auckland-based, with an office in Memphis, USA.
* What: Data-gathering technology used in motor racing and industrial sectors.
* Why: "It was really to get info back for the racing engines I was building. If I was to say it now, it would be to build a company."
Motor racing data-gathering puts ETS Instruments on fast track
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