FIELD OF INVENTION
The present invention relates to a mechanical contraption system for reliably and electronically capturing any event of lid opening. The invention more particularly relates to a reliable way to automatically detect if lids or valves of a tanker have been opened in unauthorized manner and report such incidents to concerned users in real time as well as through periodic or on-demand reports.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Our country consumes a huge quantity of petrol and petroleum realted products every day. Accordingly, to cater the demand large volume of liquid petroleum products is transported to every corner in India everyday via rail and roads. These products are usually transported in tankers. These products are expensive and transporters usually incur heavy revenue losses due to stealing, pilferage and adulteration which occurs on-route. As the cost of petroleum products increases these tankers are becoming more prone to theft and adulteration.
These pilferages are hard to track because large volume of fuel is transported over long distance via remote areas. Deployment of man power to monitor such incidences seems less practical. Using GPS receivers, exact location of the vehicle can be found and this helps to identify unplanned stoppages or any deviations in the route followed by vehicle but these are not full proof to ascertain that any pilferage with the cargo has occurred.
Prior art is full of references where inventors have come up with various means to check fuel theft occurring from the tank which supplies fuel to the engine. Several

fuel meters and various anti-siphoning devices have been reported in literature but no one has come up with a method to check theft from tankers carrying liquid cargo in real time monitoring basis.
Proximity sensor which detect if a metal part is near the sensor are commonly used to detect if a door or cover is open or close. Typically when the door closes a metal piece comes near the sensor and thus one can detect if door is closed. Typically such sensors are used in transporting sensitive or precious materials in order to detect possible pilferage and adulteration. However the sensors can be easily fooled by putting a metal piece permanently in front of the sensor and thus making the sensor based application think that the door is closed even if the door is opened.
Another challenge is to ensure that whatever the system is installed on the tanker should be safe from any electrical short-circuiting because the petroleum products are highly inflammable. Our proximity sensors are intrinsically safe which means that they do not draw more than 6mA of current in any state (on/off). This less amount of current ensures that no spark can be produced in case of a short circuit.
Technologies like RFID which are used extensively cannot be used here because of the high current requirement by the RFID reader. Such high current can lead to sparking in case of any short-circuiting in the connecting wires.
There are other similar technologies available which all draw large currents and are not intrinsically safe to be installed on the tanker taps. Also since the power requirement of the sensors and the GPS device installed being small we can draw current from the truck battery itself without fearing its discharge below the rechargeable level. This is advantageous because trucks are usually left stranded in queues in oil depots for more than 12 hours.

WE CLAIM:
1. A mechanical contraption system for reliably and electronically capturing any
event of lid opening comprising:
a base unit having a housing in which a controller and a cellular
transmitter/receiver coupled to the controller are disposed;
an alarm sensor coupled to the controller;
the portable security system having a battery power switching circuit that,
when the portable security system is in a disabled state partially powers the
portable security system and when the portable security system is in an
enabled state fully powers the portable security system; and
the controller when the portable security system is in the partially disabled
state responsive to an enable command received from a host system via the
cellular transmitter/receiver to switch the battery power switching circuit to
switch the portable security system from the disabled state to the enabled
state.
2. A portable alarm system for a container, comprising:
an alarm module programmable through an input device in a housing common
to the alarm module and the input device;
a plurality of sensors connectable to said alarm module, for detecting events
associated with said vehicle; and
a vehicle location system for determining a location of said vehicle responsive
to a signal from said alarm module;
wherein said alarm module includes an event memory for storing a plurality
of event records corresponding to events detected by said plurality of sensors.
3. The alarm system of claim 2, wherein said alarm module is compilable to a separate device for downloading said event records to said separate device.
4. The alarm system of claim 2, wherein said alarm module further comprises a processor for monitoring inputs from said sensors and writing said event records to said event memory.
5. The alarm system of claim 2, further comprising software for processing said event records.
6. The alarm system of claim 2, wherein the vehicle location system is configured to use global positioning system (GPS) data.