Fire apparatus cabs are one of the most hostile environments a consumer tablet will ever operate in. Direct sun through the windshield, engine heat radiating up through the floor, and a device running continuously for the length of a shift or an incident — it's a combination that standard mounts and consumer-grade cases were never built to survive. For Murrieta Fire & Rescue, that combination was showing up as a recurring, predictable failure: tablets thermal-shutting-down mid-incident, right when crews needed mapping, dispatch, and reporting tools most.
That's not a minor inconvenience. A device that drops offline during an active response is a gap in situational awareness at the exact moment a crew can least afford one.
The Engagement
Murrieta approached this as a fleet-wide standardization problem, not a one-off fix. Rather than patching individual units as they failed, the department moved to standardize its apparatus fleet on the X90 Ruggedized — the product built specifically for environments where active cooling, high-temperature rating, ruggedized construction, and intelligent charging all need to work together, not just one of them.
What X-Naut Solved
The core operational problem was thermal shutdown under sustained heat load. The X90's active cooling system is designed to keep an iPad within its safe operating temperature range even when cab temperatures climb well past what a passive consumer mount can dissipate. Intelligent charging manages battery health across continuous vehicle power, which matters for a device that may be plugged in and running for an entire shift, not just a commute.
The Outcome
Murrieta has now deployed the X90 across 32 units fleet-wide. Since standardizing, the department has run without a single thermal failure — a meaningful data point for any department still troubleshooting shutdowns on a legacy mount, and a strong reference point when evaluating fleet-wide procurement.
Why It Matters Beyond Murrieta
This is the pattern X-Naut sees repeatedly in the Fire/EMS vertical: a department starts with one or two problem units, traces the failure back to heat rather than the device itself, and moves to a fleet standardization decision once the root cause is clear. Murrieta's 32-unit rollout is a useful reference for any department currently running that same diagnostic.
Next step: If your apparatus fleet is experiencing thermal shutdowns on iPads, request the catalog or book a call to talk through which X-Naut configuration fits your rig.
