GPS Tracking System Amany El Gouhary – elgouhar@cs.utah.edu Richard Wells – richard.wells@utah.edu Anthony Thatcher – quebert@outgun.
Table of Contents Abstract...........................................................................................................................................3 Motivation.......................................................................................................................................3 Background Information.............................................................................................................. 4 Similar Products...............................................
Abstract The purpose of this project is to design and construct a hand-held wireless GPS tracking device that can be tracked from the Internet. The project consists of three parts. The first part is a mobile device with an embedded GPS and wireless Internet connection to transmit its current location. The second part is a web server that will receive the data, parse it, and store it for access over the Internet.
In designing our device we decided to make it a general purpose hand-held GPS tracking device. Having a hand-held form factor will allow it to have increased applications and usefulness. All that will be required for it to function is a 9-volt battery and a wireless Internet connection. It will be capable of tracking a single person, groups of people, or a vehicle.
CDMA/1X, GSM/SMS, and GPRS. The size of the unit is 15 x 15 x 3.5 cm. There is StarFinder AVL software available which serves as a control center. This software can track an unlimited number of vehicles in real-time. The software needs to be connected to a map database such as Microsoft MapPoint.4 Functional Description Overview 1.Hand-held GPS device: a. Calculates current latitude and longitude from GPS signals b. Authenticates with the university’s secure.utah.edu network c.
The second section will display the fields from the parsed NMEA data. It will include the following information: latitude, longitude, altitude, speed, GPS fix, and wireless Internet connection status of the hand-held device. These fields will be refreshed periodically with the data that is streaming from the hand-held GPS device. The third section will consist of buttons and drop down menus to customize the user interface. Through one drop down menu the map refresh interval will be selectable.
Info boxes – These boxes pop up allowing us to provide information to the user. Presently the information presented includes the distance from the shuttle and links to get directions to or from the location clicked on. As an extra feature, we are planning to supplement the current information with shuttle specific data such as times the shuttle is scheduled to stop at the nearest shuttle stop. We interface with Google Local to provide directions.
Block Diagram Hardware Description Some aspects of the GPS tracking system would be difficult to implement with a traditional microcontroller. Wireless authentication with the secure.utah.edu network is one of those aspects. To allow us to concentrate more on hardware and not programming a wireless 802.1x authentication program we chose to use a platform with a basic operating system. We will load onto the platform a program to handle the 802.1x authentication.
Processor: The Gumstix Connex 400-xm has an Intel XScale PXA 255 Processor on it. It runs at 400 MHz which is sufficiently fast. The XScale processor also supports the peripheral devices that we will connect to it. RAM: The Gumstix board has 64Mb of RAM. With running such a small stripped down version on Linux, it should be more than sufficient for our needs. Flash: The Gumstix 400-xm has 16Mb of onboard flash memory. The Gumstix runs a stripped down Linux implementation with a footprint of less than 4Mb.
formatted data over the connection to the Gumstix at 4800 baud. LCD Display We will use a character LCD screen to provide information to the user of the hand-held GPS device. We will display the current latitude, longitude, state of GPS fix, and status of the wireless Internet connection. We will use the AMC1602A-B-B6WTDW. It has two lines, each with a width of 16 characters. Size is an important factor. That is why we are limiting it to such a small LCD display. The LCD display is 80.0 x 36.0 x 14.0mm.
Netgear. The concerns with the Socket card include that it has not been tested before Gumstix and also has a reduced range. The Netgear card has been tested to work with the Gumstix. Gumstix users have also reported success using the card manufactured by Belkin. Socket Communications WL6000-320 Belkin F5D6060 Netgear MA701 802.
plugged into a car or shuttle cigarette lighter. This allows it to be mobile while the user doesn’t have to be concerned about battery life. To scale down the voltage to five volts we will use a voltage regulator. We found the Maxim 649 chip would meet our needs. It will take any voltage from six to eleven volts and output five volts. The Max 649 chip was chosen over the earlier considered Max 639 chip because it was able to handle more current.
MC34064 senses an input voltage lower than 4.6 V it will lower the reset signal. The not gate will invert that to an asserted high signal and source the current required to power the LED to inform the user that their battery is about to die. The built-in hysteresis of the MC34064 will prevent the user from seeing the low battery light intermittently turning on and off when the output is around 4.6V.
Expand user interface to display data obtained from the database (Richard) Phase II: Wireless Connection - Deadline: August 24, 2006 June 15, 2006: Install wireless card (Amany) July 8, 2006: Obtain a wireless Internet connection (Richard) August 15, 2006: Authenticate with the secure.utah.
Testing Procedures Wireless Connection: Connecting the wireless card to the processor will be tested by accessing a terminal and issuing an ifconfig command, and checking to ensure the wireless card is detected and configured. Another test to confirm its functionality is associating with an access point that does not require authentication and ping a another computer.
Web server: Moderate risk. No team member has experience setting up or administering a web server, or accessing databases. GPS Interfacing: Low risk. No team members have dealt with processing GPS data; however, the protocol is simple, and sample code for parsing the data is available under a free license. 802.11x authentication: Moderate Risk.
LCD Display, Orient Display AMC1602A-B-B6WTDW, $15, ShopEio.com, no name , no telephone number, 22412 Normandie Ave., Unit A, Torrance, CA 90502 Max 649 5V Voltage Regulator, $2.07, Maxim Integrated Products, Inc., no name, 120 San Gabriel Drive, Sunnyvale, CA 94086, 408-737-7600, Fax: 408-737-7194 Max 6326 Power Reset IC, $0.99, Maxim Integrated Products, Inc., no name, 120 San Gabriel Drive, Sunnyvale, CA 94086, 408-737-7600, Fax: 408-737-7194 SI9430 P Channel Enhancement Mode MOSFET, $0.48, www.
6. Internet, February 21, 2006, http://character-lcd-lcds.shopeio.com/inventory/ catalog.
Appendix Gantt Chart 19
