Practical Tiny Core in the Fire Service

Wilfredo Crespo — Wed, 24 Sep 2014 21:14:32 +0000

I'm sure many of you have at least heard of Tiny Core Linux—legends of how small it is, how little it takes it to run a system with it and even now how it's been ported to run on Raspberry Pi. It's an esoteric minimalist distribution. There was a very good September 2011 write up about it in Linux Journal by Joey Bernard.

I came to Tiny Core Linux after a protracted quest to find a good solution to a problem I've had. I am a Firefighter and EMT with the Bushkill Fire Company in Pennsylvania. Being an all-volunteer fire department while also being the primary service provider for our entire coverage area poses some unique challenges. When a dispatch comes through, fire engines and rescue apparatuses are expected to get out the door and on the road, quick.

Part of the logistical acrobatics that we perform every call is figuring out who is even coming. Different personnel bring different skills, skill levels, responsibilities and capabilities. Some are specialists in operating particular and specialized pieces of equipment, while others may bring specific types of know-how in techniques. Depending on the call, officers like to know who they have arriving as they plan out the best approach to tackle the given emergency. It's nice to know, down right imperative to know, that your best vehicle extrication technicians are responding to a motor vehicle accident involving two cars with a possible entrapment.

Technology has been at the forefront of this ongoing struggle in emergency services to solve a plethora of problems. A few companies have released Web apps designed for the fire service to tackle the "who's coming" problem. These systems consist of a Web page that acts as a dashboard and is displayed in the station. Each responder dials a number that registers his or her name as responding to the call. Officers then can assess what their man power is like and decide quickly whether they need more resources, simply by looking up at the monitor in the station. These apps do more than that, but this is the crux of what they are designed for.

It sounds fantastic, and indeed it is an enormous help and resource. Being the go-to IT guy at my firehouse, I had fallen in the enviable position of making this system work for us. The trivial solution is, of course, just to fire up Windows with IE and let the monitor sit there—in fact, the vendor suggested this to me. I suppose when you're trying to sell something as easy to use, that's what you do. That solution, needless to say, was unsatisfactory. From a budgetary standpoint, I was encouraged to keep costs down. The first decision and the easiest decision was to use Linux. I just shaved off the cost of the Windows license.

The initial requirements and constraints became as follows:

Have a low-power computer to run the Web browser—the smaller the better.

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