LAS VEGAS, Nev. (FOX5) – One million dollars. That is how much Clark County says it has cost to replace all the copper wire stripped from streetlights since 2022.
What can be done to stop it and save taxpayers in the long run? FOX5′s spoke with a local entrepreneur creating a solution.
David Rosales is a life-long Las Vegan and for most of it, he’s been tinkering with electronics and computers.
“I got my first computer in 1981. It was Texas Instruments 99/ 4A and I just took to it,” Rosales recounted. That is when he started creating things and hasn’t stopped. His technology security company Reimagined Innovations recently launched a catalytic converter alarm system.
“I bought a used car and the person I bought the car from told me a story about his catalytic converter being stolen… I was worried about it and I developed my own product for myself. I thought maybe it would be a product that people would be interested in and built a company around it,” Rosales shared.
“The unit attaches underneath the hood connects to the battery and sensor wires actually wrap around the exhaust system, encapsulates the catalytic converter, so if a cut is made it sets off the alarm,” Rosales described. Now Rosales is working on a similar system for streetlights, where if the copper wire is cut, a signal would go out alerting authorities or whoever is monitoring the system. He calls it the Municipal Asset Protection System (MAPS).
“In essence it is two computers, and the copper wire is the ethernet cable so when the communication stops, it knows that the cable has been cut,” Rosales explained. Rosales hopes to build the wire theft detection system out and offer a real solution to a huge and costly problem in Clark County and beyond.
“We all know the money that the county is spending on repairing this can go to a lot of better things,” Rosales contended.
Rosales is looking for investors to make the streetlight alert system a reality. His catalytic converter alarms are currently up for sale on the company’s website: https://www.reimaginedinnovations.com/
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