Patent ID: 7650841

Claim:
A blasting system for selectively detonating a plurality of charges located in a plurality of boreholes at a blasting site, comprising: a blasting controller; a plurality of programmable detonators operatively connected to the blasting controller, each of the detonators associated with and adapted to discharge a selected number of charges, the detonators and the respective charges located in the boreholes; a handheld programming unit, the handheld programming unit adapted to determine blasting information for at least one detonator among the plurality of programmable detonators, the handheld programming unit further adapted to communicate, at the at least one detonator, blasting information for the at least one detonator, the handheld programming unit further adapted to store the communicated blasting information and to subsequently transfer the stored blasting information to the blasting controller; and a positional device incorporated with and carried by the handheld unit, the positional device adapted to cooperate with the handheld unit to automatically determine the blasting information based on at least one of the following: a) automatically determined movement of the positional device to said at least one detonator; and b) positional data automatically determined at the actual location of said at least one detonator, whereby the use of automatically determined blasting information facilitates accurate communication of the blasting information to said at least one detonator and to the blasting controller, to help achieve a desired blasting sequence.