ARCPROTECT, a system to protect Archaeological sites

Original artwork by Richard Baker for the BK Sentry ARCPROTECT System.

In late 2000 my LLNL coworker Rick Kimble suggested that we build a system to detect potential vandals at American Indian archaeological sites. Rick has been interested in the Indian rock paintings and wall carvings or petroglyphs and has traveled to several of the sites in the Western U.S. taking photos. He was distraught at the damage done by vandals and thieves at many sites. Incredibly the rock art would be damaged by these vandals and sometimes they would even cut away sections of a petroglyph to take for selling to collectors. Rick and I worked on the HIPROTECT system that I reported on earlier post, "My Second Job, Lawrence Livermore Lab, Final Projects," a system to detect intruders and vandals at the Yuchi Town site (http://tps.cr.nps.gov/nhl/detail.cfm?ResourceId=1&ResourceType=Site) at Fort Benning in Alabama and Rick suggested that he and I should develop a system that we might sell to archaeologists at the Indian sites. We chose BK Sentry Systems as the name of our company for Baker-Kimble.

Rick had many archaeologist contacts around the U.S. and began contacting them to see if there was an interest is a system that we might develop. I started working on designing a system consisting of various sensors and conceiving a system more advanced than HIPROTECT. Also I contacted my artist brother Richard Baker of BakerStudio to see if he would be interested in helping out by producing artwork for a website that I would put together. Richard has been freelancing in the advertising business for some years and has a website: http://bakerstudio.carbonmade.com/. Fortunately Richard was interested and willing to provide some terrific artwork for our website. The above computer painting is for the header of our website.

I came up with a rough system design consisting of a primary sensor and a low-power communication system for communicating between sensor system locations, since we expected that there would be several pictograph sites in a particular park or reserve. We called the low power comm system, LATN, for Local Area Telemetry Network. LATN would communicate between sensor systems. Then for long distance communication, I planned to use a Low-Earth-Orbit Satellite system. The satellite comm system would communicate to a computer located at the Park Ranger station and a paging system, Pager, would alert the Rangers of an intrusion.

As the primary sensor to detect intruders and potential vandals, I chose the highly sensitive ultra- low-power and reliable fluxgate magnetometer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetometer#Fluxgate_magnetometer) for detection of vehicles and metal tools that might be used for vandalism purposes. The magnetometer design would my design but similar to that developed in the 1980's by Robert E. Brown of the U.S. Navy for detecting sea mines, http://www.prc68.com/I/FGPat.shtml. I wanted to use a fluxgate magnetometer as it would be very good at detecting metal objects such as shovels and vehicles and also a magnetometer would be

Magnetometer shown in Fake Rock.

less likely to produce false alarms than an infrared sensor or a geophone, both of which would be triggered by indigenous animals or other curious critters. The magnetometer could either be buried or emplaced in a fake rock as shown in the cutaway image to the right.


We anticipated that Park Rangers would be skeptical of even the highly reliable magnetometer detection signals and so for verification purposes, I was planning on developing a freeze-frame video system that would send video images to the Ranger's computer monitor.

Sensor with Satellite Transmitter.

LATN, the Local Area Telemetry Network, would be required since there may be numerous pictograph sites in a particular park or reserve. LATN would be a low-power local communication system to send messages from sensor system to sensor system in a network and then connect to a long-distance communication system for communicating to a computer located at the Ranger station.


We had used a cellular phone system for HIPROTECT but we could not count on cell phones for these often remote sites, and so I planned on using low-orbit (LEO) satellite communication

Low-Earth-Orbit Satellite Comm

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_satellite#Low-Earth-orbiting_satellites) for long distance communication. At the time in 1993, I was hoping to use satellite communication provided by ViaSat, https://www.viasat.com/ and had contacted them finding that they would be able to provide communication for our ARCPROTECT system, then using ground equipment from Scientific Atlanta (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_Atlanta), now part of Cisco Systems and apparently out of the satellite communication business as far as I can tell from the Cisco website.

Alert messages would be transmitted to a computer system at the Park Headquarters and displayed on the Ranger's monitor along with showing freeze-frame video images of  the trespassers/intruders to

Ranger's Monitor showing Alert.

the archaeological site.



I began designing the component systems of ARCPROTECT: the fluxgate magnetometer, the microcontroller system and the freeze-frame video system. I started selecting individual components for the magnetometer and the microcontroller board. I selected a very low power (consuming) Microchip 16F877A  microcontroller (http://www.microchip.com/wwwproducts/Devices.aspx?dDocName=en010242) and began designing the board using ExpressPCB (http://www.expresspcb.com/) printed circuit board design (CAD) software. I was familiar with the 16F877A microcontroller from previous projects and knew that I could put it to sleep to save energy between times that the magnetometer was triggered. Also I selected a magnetometer transformer and began designing the fluxgate magnetometer. My fluxgate magnetometer would use modern CMOS integrated circuits to reduce power consumption to the minimum.

When I began designing the component units of ARCPROTECT, I also I started writing up a system description for the website. My brother Richard began producing graphics for the website and Rick began contacting archaeologist  acquaintances to see if any would be interested in purchasing an ARCPROTECT System.

Richard quickly produced several images for our website. Richard put the images to show the overall system, that 1) a vehicle enters a restricted area and is detected by the magnetometer. Then 2) the magnetometer sensor unit relays an alert message to a second sensor unit or 3) a third sensor unit, etc and the sensor unit with the attached satellite transmitter sends a message by way of 4) the LEO satellite to the ViaSat Communication Center. The ViaSat Communication Center emails the alert message on to 5) the Park Communication Center. The alert is displayed on the Comm Center Computer monitor and 6) a Ranger is dispatched to apprehend the trespasser.

Overall ARCPROTECT System.

The ARCPROTECT website with Richard's artwork and my descriptive text looked great and several of Rick's archaeologist acquaintances were very interested in obtaining a system.

However, none of Rick's archaeologist acquaintances had any funding to purchase a system even though we had priced it very low, not wanting to gouge the archaeologists and hoping to get ARCPROTECT out in the field to stop the vandalism and destruction of inestimably priceless and irreplaceable Indian artifacts. Probably I priced the system unrealistically low but even at the very low system price there were no buyers. So sadly we abandoned the project. In retrospect I probably should have gone ahead and completed the system design and development but producing the system would have required making a commitment to ViaSat or some other satellite communication  company in addition to the electronic component and board fabrication costs, consequently costing us a few thousand dollars. I wasn't willing to put up the funds at the time, considering that we had no potential paying customers. So it turned out that our only product was the website with my brother's terrific images. I feel guilty that we didn't go ahead with the project but it could be resurrected. New designs could be produced and we could find a new Satellite Communication company as many more companies are in the Sat Comm business now as can be seen by doing an Internet search.