As part of my involvement in the Australia AMI project, I was heavily involved with a communication business partner SSN, that is based in San Francisco, USA.
As contract negotiations progressed with a particularly difficult potential customer, it became increasingly clear that they needed to “dot every i and cross all the t's”. One particular sticking point was, they wanted to see an 'over the air communication' demo with our meter and SSN's radio, to prove it was feasible, and not just a theoretical possibility.
To cut a long story short, I was asked to travel to SFO with a few of our meters, work with SSN to get a demo working and then take all the kit to Melbourne to demonstrate to the customer... all in the space of a week.
All I can say is I do not recommend doing an around the world trip in less than five days. It felt like I spent more time in the air than on the ground that week, but at the end of the day we achieved a successful demo for a tender, resulting in gaining a very large customer order, which we are still supplying.
Michael is the barbeque specialist at Winchester. He is a software engineer and is working on GBSM.