It goes on the controls you already have.
There is nothing new to learn. A kit comes to your machine in a case, sits on the sticks and the pedals the machine already has, and goes back in the case when the recording is done. You press start, you work, and you press stop.
An excavator parked on the gravel beside the feed bins · The group's own photograph
The day is the day you would have had anyway.
Eight things happen, and the ones that matter are yours. What gets recorded between one press of start and one press of stop is a session, which is the name here for one recording of one person working. A day can hold one or several, and each one stands on its own.
The walk-around
You do the walk-around you always do, on the machine you always run. It is yours, it comes first, and nothing of ours stands in for it or shortens it.
The kit goes on
It comes in a case. It is fitted to the sticks, the pedals and the wheel the machine already has. Nothing is cut, nothing is tapped, nothing is plugged in and no power is taken off the machine to put it there.
The controls are run through
Every stick, wheel and pedal is moved through its travel before anything starts, and it has to feel like yesterday. If it does not, the kit does not go on.
The photograph, before
The kit where it sits, the controls it sits beside, and nothing connected to the machine. The photograph goes inside the record, where it cannot be swapped out quietly.
You press start
Nothing is recorded before that. A person presses it, on the day, and there is no clock and no setting that can press it for you.
You work
The machine is yours to run and the job is the job you were going to do. Nothing asks you a question, nothing tells you what to do next, and nobody is standing there timing you.
You press stop
Nothing is recorded after that. Stop and start again and you have two sessions, not one, and each is licensed, paid for and taken back on its own.
The kit comes off
It goes back in the case and leaves no mark. The machine is photographed again as it was found, and the two photographs and the check between them are kept with every session made under them that day.
Nothing about your day changes except that there is a kit on the controls and two photographs of it. You dig where you were going to dig, on the ground you were going to dig it on.
It sits on the controls the machine already has.
This is the question people ask first and the one the rest of the page rests on, so here it is as a person standing at the machine would see it.
It goes where your controls already are.
On the sticks, the pedals and the wheel the machine came with. It sits beside the controls you use, on the levers and pedals that are already there, and it adds no control of its own. There is no new lever, no new pedal and no new screen to look at. What you reach for tomorrow is what you reached for yesterday.
It comes in a case, and it goes back in the case.
It arrives in a case, it is fitted after the walk-around, and it goes back in the case when the recording is done. It is a round trip. The machine you give back is the machine you were given, and the person who owns it can look at it and see that for themselves.
It is fitted at the controls.
It goes on the sticks, the pedals and the wheel the machine already has. You get in, you sit where you sit, and you run it. Nothing of ours is left behind on the machine when the day is done.
It takes no power off the machine.
It runs on its own battery. There is nothing of ours on the machine's electrical system to find, so a person who wants to check has one place to look and one answer to get, and the answer is the same every time.
If you walked up to a machine being recorded, you would see a kit on the controls and nothing else.
No box wired behind the seat. No lead running off into the loom. No trades work done to the machine to make it ready. A kit on the sticks and the pedals, a case, and a machine that starts, runs and stops the way it did last week.
A kit on the controls is all there is to fit, and it is the reason every promise on this page can be checked from the ground by somebody who does not trust us. You are not being asked to believe a description. You are being asked to walk up and look.
You run the machine the way you always have.
The ground does not get easier because there is a kit on the sticks, and nothing about the job is arranged for the recording.
A rock channel through open water, an excavator at its head · The group's own photograph
Nobody from us is in the cab, and nobody is at the track watching you.
The kit is fitted, the photograph is taken, and then the day belongs to you and your crew. Our part of it is over until the kit comes off.
Nothing asks anything of you between start and stop. It does not prompt you and it does not ask you to say what you are doing. A person explaining their work while they work is doing a different job, and the record would be of that job instead of yours.
What is recorded is you working the way you actually work, on the job you actually did, and not a performance for the recorder. A tidy day put on for us would be worth nothing to anybody, because the days worth keeping are the awkward ones: the wet corner, the bank that wants to go, the pass you had to take twice. Those are the days a person is asked for by name, and they are the days the record is for.
If you or somebody with you wants to mark a moment, you can, against the session's own clock. A note marks a place in the record without changing anything in it, so it is a way of saying look here, and never a way of saying this bit was good.
What a person can walk up to and check.
There are four promises about the kit, and not one of them asks you to take our word for anything. Each is written here twice: once the way you would say it at the machine, and once the way it stands in the agreement.
Nothing gets wired in.
Nothing of ours is joined to the machine at all. If you find a lead going from the kit to the machine, something is wrong, and the session is refused rather than explained away. No harness cut and no controller touched. The recorder runs on its own battery and takes no power off the machine.
Your controls feel the same.
Run every stick, wheel and pedal through its travel before you start. If one of them feels different from yesterday, stop there and say so, and the day does not go ahead. A control has to behave under your hand exactly as it did before. If it changes the feel it is not fit to record the feel, and that is checked before any kit is fitted.
It cannot move a machine, or stop one.
It has nothing to push with and nothing to push against. It cannot start your machine, swing it, drop a bucket or bring one up, and it cannot hold anything back either. There is no actuator and no wire to one. It is not an interlock and it is not a guard, and no part of a safety case rests on it.
It cannot stay.
It goes back in its case when the recording is done, and it is not left on a machine. It comes off, photographed before and after, and leaves no mark.
The walk-around that goes with the fitting is written out step by step for the person on the ground, so anyone on your crew can run it before the first session and again when the kit comes off. It is not the machine's own walk-around and it does not stand in for it.
What you did with the controls, what the machine did back, and what you were looking at.
Three things, written against one clock so they line up move for move. Each is given here in plain words, and the record's own words for it are on how it is recorded.
What you did with the controls.
Where every stick, pedal and wheel was, how fast you moved it, and how hard you were holding it. The part kept closest of all is the moment a lever comes off its rest, because that moment is short and it is the part of a move nobody has ever been able to write down.
The record's own words for the controlsWhat the machine did back.
The same move is a different move on a cold machine, on a full bucket, on ground that gives. So the machine's answer is kept beside your move: whether it went past where you wanted it, how long it took to settle, whether it wandered instead of sitting still.
The record's own words for the machine's answerWhat you were looking at.
The machine tells you things while you work and you act on what it told you, so a picture is kept of what was in front of you at the moment you acted.
The record's own words for the pictureAll three run on the same clock and sit inside one chain, which here means one seal across the whole record, so nothing can be altered in one of them without the others showing it. Timed against one clock, and held inside one chain, so an altered picture fails the same check as an altered reading.
Frozen ground and ground that has been under water for a week are not the same day, and a record that could not tell one from the other would teach the wrong day. What the ground did is recorded too. The ground, the material and the weather are noted as the crew found them. They are not fields the record needs. When they are missing they are noted as missing and the session goes through. A session refused for the weather would be a session refused for something nobody in the seat could have changed.
The frame is kept tight on purpose.
Half of why you did something is what the machine had told you a second earlier.
A move on its own is a gesture. A move made while a screen was telling you one thing is a decision, and it is the decision that is worth keeping. Without the picture the record would hold the move and know nothing about what you were answering.
So the frame is held to what it needs: your screen, the controls, and as little else as we can manage. It is not there to show how the day went and it is not there to show how well anybody worked. No check anywhere grades how you worked, and there is no field in the record for a mark.
A picture inside a session is held under the same seal as everything else in it. Change it afterwards and the check fails, and the failure names the first place it went wrong, so a picture cannot be quietly swapped for a better one later.
Nothing is recorded before you press start, and nothing after you press stop.
The recorder has no beginning of its own and no end of its own. A person presses start, and from then until a person presses stop the recording runs. What was recorded between those two acts is the session, and nothing is added to it afterwards and nothing is taken out.
So the hour before you climbed in is not in it. The walk to the truck at lunch is not in it. A day you would rather not record is a day you do not start, and nobody has to be given a reason. Stopping is the same act in reverse, and there is nothing to explain, nothing to unlock and nobody to ask.
Stop and start again and you have two sessions, not one. Each carries its own name and its own seal, so each counts itself, and each is licensed, paid for and withdrawn on its own. A session is the smallest thing you can take back, so the run of them matters more than the length of any one day.
- What starts it
- A person pressing startOn the day, in the seat, after the walk-around and after the kit has been photographed where it sits
- What ends it
- A person pressing stopOr the end of the day, by a person. Nothing runs on because nobody said otherwise
- What is inside it
- Everything between those two acts, and the fitting it was made underThe three things on one clock, the ground and the conditions, the two photographs, the check, the names, and the agreement that was live at the time
- What is outside it
- Everything before start and everything after stopThere is no standby, no idle watching and no recording that begins because a machine was turned on
A box ticked in software is a claim software makes about itself.
Two photographs are taken every day a kit is on a machine: one when it goes on, one when it comes off. They are not for a file somewhere. They are how anybody, years later, can see that what this page says was true on that machine on that day.
A photograph of the disconnected state, carried inside the record where it cannot be swapped out quietly, is a claim a person made and can be held to. That is a different kind of evidence, and it is the kind that survives somebody asking hard questions years later.
Who makes the claim.
A person, on the day, with their name on it: before the first session and again when the kit comes off. Anyone on the crew can stand beside them and see the same thing at the same moment, and a photograph two people looked at is worth more than a message a machine sent itself.
Where it lives.
Inside the session, under the same seal as everything else in it. A session whose photograph is missing cannot show its set-up, so it is refused, and the reason says which part was missing. The photograph is not a file kept alongside the record. It is part of the record.
It cannot move your machine, stop it, or grade you.
Every one of these is a refusal, and each of them is the sort a person can stand in front of a machine and satisfy themselves about.
- It cannot move a machine. There is no actuator and no wire to one, and nothing of ours is joined to anything that moves.
- It cannot stop one either. It is not an interlock and it is not a guard, and no part of any safety case should rest on it.
- It cannot take power off your machine. It runs on its own battery and comes off with it.
- It cannot stay on the machine, and it leaves no mark when it goes.
- It cannot grade you. Nothing in the record is a mark, a rank or a verdict, and there is no field for one.
- It cannot be fitted without your yes. An owner can arrange a recording. Only you can agree to one, and you are told what is recorded, in plain words, before it starts.
Every reason is about equipment or paperwork.
A session is checked before anybody learns from it, and a refusal is never a word about the person in the seat.
A berm closed across open water, machines at the far end · The group's own photograph
A procedure, not a judgement, so it is written as one.
Admitted means the record is whole and the paperwork was right, so something can be built from it. Refused means one of three things about the equipment or the paperwork was not right on the day. Neither word is about how you worked, and there is no third word that is.
The record is incomplete
A field the record needs is missing, or the chain does not verify. The reason names the first span that failed.
The consent was not live
The agreement covering the recording was not in force at the time it was made. The consent is the agreement you gave for that recording, and it is checked at the moment the recording happens rather than looked up afterwards.
The set-up cannot be shown
Something was connected that should not have been, or the photograph or the check is missing, or the machine is not the one the session says it is.
A session is admitted when none of these apply. Refused is not a criticism of you. Every reason is about equipment or paperwork, and no check anywhere grades how you worked. A refused session is kept rather than thrown away and the reason travels with it, because a record of what went wrong is worth as much to us as a record of what went right.
An admitted session is one of the records a way of working is built from. A way of working is this site's name for how a named person runs a family of machine, once their sessions have been built into something a machine can run. A family of machine is a kind of machine rather than a model number. The building happens away from any machine, and a named person signs what comes out of it. Where the record itself goes after you press stop is the next page.
For the owner, the operator and the people who can say no.
A kit goes on the controls your machine already has, you do your own walk-around, and then you press start and work the way you work. Nobody is in the cab, nothing asks you anything, and nothing anywhere grades the day. You press stop when you want the recording to end, and you do not have to give a reason for it.
Nothing of ours is connected to the machine while a person works. It has no actuator and no wire to one, so it cannot move a machine and it cannot stop one, and no part of any safety case should rest on it. The controls are run through their travel before the kit is fitted, the disconnected state is photographed before and after, and the check is written for the person on the ground.
Nothing is cut, tapped or powered off your machine, and no trades work is done to it. The kit arrives in a case and goes back in the case, leaving no mark. Your operator's day is unchanged, your walk-around is unchanged, and the photographs of the disconnected state sit inside the record for the day somebody asks you about it.
The record identifies the person in the seat by design, so the agreements are theirs to give and theirs to take back, one at a time and checked live at the moment of recording. Every reason a session can be refused is about equipment or paperwork. Where a works council, a union or another body has a say in whether recording happens at all, its signature is asked for beside the operator's own rather than worked around.
Ask to see a kit go on before you agree to anything.
If you want to watch one fitted, run the check yourself and look at both photographs before you say yes to a session, write to us. Bring whoever on your crew has to be satisfied before anything is agreed.