Outdoor GPS audioguide

Mirroring the audioguides used indoors in museums, Hoppy is a system of audio information that permits the distribution of commentaries to users who are walking or driving within a city, a park or a region.

Thanks to GPS, the device calculates in real time the position of the visitor and automatically begins a commentary as the user reaches a point of interest.

The central element of the system is the Hoppy unit. The size of a Walkman, this portable and independent device can be used on foot, on a bicycle, in a car, in a boat and with any other means of transportation. It has a storage capacity of 64 MB to 1 GB, providing from 3 to more than 70 hours of commentaries depending on the memory media and the compression rate used. The locator system has a precision of 20 to 100 m and the unit can be used with earphones, external speakers and cassette adapters or FM transmitter (eg, in a car radio).

The Fleet Manager is a centralised management tool for the units. It allows the management of: the rental contracts for the devices, with a secure payment module and guarantees on credit cards; the distribution and return of the units at different sites (for management of a pool of distributors - ie, tourism offices, hotels, specialised reception centres etc); and some of the maintenance operations for the units. It exists, in fact, on an extranet (with tools accessible on the internet but strictly reserved to individuals authorised to use the service). The installation of this service requires only that each distributor is equipped with a computer that has an internet connection.

Each unit records the distance covered, place and time spent by the users at each site. The statistics (not attached to individual names) generated by the software package constitute valuable information for tourism authorities.