Thread: Interest Check: GPS Tracker Hardware

Originally Posted by millers

http://www.maxon.com.au/products_mod...ifications.php

this may also be of use, although it doesnt seem to have GPS capability.

also how do you intend on tracking the card? i assume it will1 require a Telstra or Bigpond account (possibly a Telstra sim car with a data pack?) to make a data connection for the tracking?

Hi Millers,
We have used the maxon modules in the past, that device is around $400AU and whilst it does WLAN, it doesn't do GPS. The Sierra Wireless card is Telstra NextG approved.

You will require any SIM card with a data plan, or prepaid with data allowance. You can get NextG compatible pre-paid cards with different allowances on them. If you are also going to allow your CarPC to share the data connection, you might want to get at least a few Mb, and disable automatic windows updates.

Cheers

This is awesome! I am interested as well. Can it be optional to have one with WLAN since my phone is not GSM (CDMA) and I can take advantage of more available wi-fi.

Well this doesn't actually use your phone for data access, it needs its own GSM/3G SIM card/account (which you may be able to get pre-paid?). Is this what you're asking about? Technically yes, you can use a PCIEmini WLAN card, but you wouldn't have GPS, and a PCI WLAN card is much cheaper.

would it be able to report position "on the fly", or just in periods of lets say 5s or more?

the option of having line in to hear in car conversation sounds great. in case you car gets stollen (or you are victim of carjack) you can hear the plans of the thieves inside the car. also a phone controled relay to connect to the ignition would be great, so you could disable the car once they are at a "safe" distance

if the car could report the info to a specified ip address (configurable through a phone call also) you could have it sending coordinates to your home pc whenever you wanted or to your laptop if you were on vacations.

Originally Posted by Rowan

That's really clever Chris, how you managed to do all that in ASM is amazing!

The good thing about the MC8775V is that it has GPS built in, so you don't need to spend another ~$80 on a GPS for a device (tracker) that won't allow your computer to share it. The other good thing is that we can also have it share the internet (data) connection. Theoretically, 1 USB plug could provide GPS, Internet and GPIO by making three virtual COM ports for each device or to get full speed use Ethernet for data.

PIC can do alot of things if you write it on ASM. I was trying to bring the cost down as much as possible, hence the choice of PIC MCUs all in one solution.

Im not too sure how you are going to track the car and get other infos as well as set the OUPUTs? Is there going to be a web interface? is this going to be a mini webserver, the user logs on check everything via the web?

How is the tracking done? coordinate is ploted on google maps?

Originally Posted by BrianMay

would it be able to report position "on the fly", or just in periods of lets say 5s or more?

the option of having line in to hear in car conversation sounds great. in case you car gets stollen (or you are victim of carjack) you can hear the plans of the thieves inside the car. also a phone controled relay to connect to the ignition would be great, so you could disable the car once they are at a "safe" distance

if the car could report the info to a specified ip address (configurable through a phone call also) you could have it sending coordinates to your home pc whenever you wanted or to your laptop if you were on vacations.

Reporting time can be configurable, most GPS's report at 1Hz, so 1 second would be the minimum report interval, however because of the nature of the internet and lag, the time to actually post the report might take longer than 1s, so most likely 5s update would be the minimum.

I was thinking about the idea of a 'cutoff' or immobilisation output too, however this wouldn't be safe to do it if the vehicle was travelling at any speed so it could be setup though to cut off the engine as soon as they next stop.

Technically you can have the software do whatever you like, samples could be provided to show how to parse the gps data in C, which would then just need to be cross-compiled to arm-linux, and uploaded to the device. You could have it connect to a MySQL server and post updates, which is basically what our current tracking devices do. There's then a front-end that you log into to see your tracked vehicle on google maps.

Originally Posted by Chris31

PIC can do alot of things if you write it on ASM. I was trying to bring the cost down as much as possible, hence the choice of PIC MCUs all in one solution.

Im not too sure how you are going to track the car and get other infos as well as set the OUPUTs? Is there going to be a web interface? is this going to be a mini webserver, the user logs on check everything via the web?

How is the tracking done? coordinate is ploted on google maps?

There will need to be a server.. We can run a webserver (and anything else linux can run) on it, however most GSM based data assigned IP addresses are NAT'd, so you have an IP like 10.20.30.12 which isn't accessable from the outside world - So, the software will have to connect to an external server and send updates and retrieve configurations (ie output commands). Outputs will also be able to be changed via the CarPC.

First prototypes are due in next week, will post up pics when the boards arrive..

We've got plenty of interest, for gps tracking and remote access of things like weather stations, plc's etc

Specifications are:
Internal:
Processor 32bit 210MHz ARM9
Volatile Memory 32/64MiB SDRAM
NonVolatile Mem 512MiB Flash
OS Linux 2.6
Additional Storage MicroSD

Communications:
Wireless 850/1900/2100 MHz 3G
UMTS/HSDPA
850/900/1800/1900 MHz 2G
GSM/GPRS/EDGE
GPS
Wired 10/100Mbps Ethernet
Protocols SMS, TCP/IP, PPP, HTTP & M2MXML

Antenna Connectors:
Ant A SMA for 3G/GSM
Ant B SMA Receive diversity 3G 850/2100 or GPS Antenna

GPIO:
Digital Inputs 8 (Optically isolated +24v max)
Digital Outputs 8 (500mA max sinking each)
Analog Inputs 4 (10 bit 0-5 vDC or 4-20 mA)

Serial Interfaces:
RS232 Port 1
1wire Bus 1
USB 2.0 Host Ports 2

Power:
Power Supply 8 – 28 vDC


Physical:
Dimensions 103 x 83 x 30 mm (cased), 100 x 80 x 20 (PCB)
Case Extruded aluminum, powder coated

any news? do you need a beta tester in Portugal??

This project sounds very interesting I will be sure to keep an eye on it.