The PETAS Project

The PETAS (Portable Electrical Testing and Storage) project was propsed by the Electrical Testing and Compliance Service (ETCS) and is aimed at streamlining the Electical Testing and Tagging process. Electrical Testing and Tagging is the process of performing tests on electrical equipment to ensure it is safe for normal operation. This process ensures that electrical equipment in use will be properly maintained and meet a minimum safety standard as required by law.

Reasons for PETAS

The Electrical Testing and Compliance Service (ETCS) have a computer-based system in place that allows them to perform tests, record the results and print certification labels. The current system has some limitations that ETCS would like to address. These limitations included frequent crashes and an aging hardware platform.

The current system operates on a PDA which is becoming limited in terms of hardware capabilities. The hardware limitations of the PDAs in use have been identified as the cause of frequent crashes. ETCS would like to move away from the PDA platform and onto the Ultra-Portable PCs platform. PETAS has been designed to operate on the EeePC which is a small, light-weight laptop computer and takes advantage of the additional screen space provided by this platform.