All-in-one emergency communication & response unit
(by Conrad H. Blickenstorfer)

Publicly traded Catcher, Inc. (CTHH) was founded in 2005 to deliver cutting-edge, mobile, convergent computing solutions to the TSA and related entities, with an end goal of increasing operations and security efficiencies.

The company's core product is the CATCHER CCAP, where CATCHER stands for Communications And Telemetry Computing Handheld for Emergency Response and CCAP for Command and Control Application Platform. The CCAP is ruggedized Tablet PC/UMPC, running the Windows XP with pen extensions on a 1.4GHz Intel Pentium M processor. The CCAP is designed as an all-in-one "first responder" tool that can transmit voice, data and video over a variety of wireless system while also providing location and tracking information via an integrated GPS receiver.

The Catcher measures a compact 10.5 x 7.75 x 2.75 inches and weighs 5.8 pounds with two batteries. It comes with a generous 2GB of RAM, a 40GB hard disk, and a sunlight-readable VGA display measuring 6.4 inches diagonally. The devices uses an active digitizer, has a fingerprint scanner, digital audio recording and two digital cameras, one on the front and one on the rear. The cameras can do both still image and full motion video capture. 802.11b/g and Bluetooth provide wireless connectivity. Optional cellular communication is via GSM or CDMA and proprietary radios and multi-band antennas are available.

The Catcher is built to MIL-STD 810F specifications, has a wide operating temperature range between -22 and 131 degrees Fahrenheit, and is shock resistant to 55G.

Our comment: We like the overall design of what appears to be a rugged, handy touchscreen-operated UMPC targeted at first responders that need access to mission critical data. Unfortunately, the specs of this interesting device are somewhat incomplete, and we'd like to see more than 640 x 480 resolution.

In July of 2007, Catcher, Inc. announced a second generation device based on an ULV Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 4GB of RAM, a larger 8.4" display, additional connectivity (FireWire, USB, etc.), an 80GB hard disk, all in a slightly smaller and lighter package.