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Automatic Asset Tracking System Project

1. seccccesseseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeseeseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeenees 51 Ca Hiel 51 8 2 EU UTC 51 8 3 SWOT Analvets e seEREeEREERESEEEEERESEEEEERECEEEEERECEEEEEREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEREEEEEEEREEEEEEEREEEEEEEREEEEEEEREeEEEEENEN 52 Ghapter 9 COnCIUSION sas ri 53 Chapter 10 Acknowledgment ooccccccccnnnnnnncccncnnnnnconnnnnanacccncnnnnnnnnnnnnncnnrr ren 54 Chapter 11 Reference irmninnnalanrad 55 Chapter 12 APpendiceS iinicriii n ni 56 12 1 Responsibility Matrixss soiisscccesscecsscssisccseastecc cesses cosvascecs evshtscoouassacsoosstacosseseacsoveseaccauares 56 12 2 SoftWare TE 57 AA inevinarar POUMONCA DE CATALUNYA AONA Es Automatic Asset Tracking System Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3 Figure 4 Figure 5 Figure 6 Figure 7 Figure 8 Figure 9 Figure 10 Figure 11 Figure 12 Figure 13 Figure 14 Figure 15 Figure 16 Figure 17 Figure 18 Figure 19 Figure 20 Figure 21 Figure 22 Figure 23 Figure 24 Figure 25 Figure 26 Figure 27 Figure 28 Index of illustrations Airport vehicle with the Tracking Device on the roof ccccecesscesssecessseceseeecsneeessaeesseeesenees 10 Basic COMMUNICATION NetWork eeeeeeeeseceesceceeceeceeeeeaaeceeaceceeeeecaeeeeaaeceeaeeceeeeesaeeeeaaeeeeaeeeaes 11 Communication NetWork ici ssecesdacsedesienscueesicsvesntessanerssdtvesaechateevossedenhspdlaersessedesssneduresse 12 Concept OF lateratl obt ii dan NEE 14 GPS chipset from RF Solutions GT 220R co
2. self menubar wx MenuBar wx MB_DOCKABLE Menu File HAHHHHHHHHHHH HHH HHH HHH HHH NH HNH HNH self file wx Menu self chooseFiles wx Menultem self file 1 u Choose what files to read self chooseFiles SetHelp u Choose the files self file Appenditem self chooseFiles self Bind wx EVT_MENU self OnchooseFiles id self chooseFiles Getld self file AppendSeparator self quit wx Menultem self file 1 amp Quit tCtrl Q self quit SetHelp Exit the program self file Appenditem self quit self Bind wx EVT_MENU self Onquit id self quit Getld self menubar Append self file amp File Track Menu HHHHHAHHH AH HHH HH HDH MH HDH NH HHH self track wx Menu self simulateTrack wx Menultem self track 1 Draw a simulated track self simulateTrack SetHelp Simulate the track with the mouse self track Appenditem self simulateTrack self Bind wx EVT_MENU self OnsimulateTrack id self simulateTrack Getld self liveTrack wx Menultem self track 1 Display live tracks self liveTrack SetHelp Display real time collected track self track Appenditem self liveTrack self Bind wx EVT_MENU self OnliveTrack id self liveTrack Getld self stopLiveTrack wx Menultem self track 1 Stop the display of live tracks self stopLiveTrack SetHelp Stop displaying real time collected track self track Appenditem self stopLiveTrack self Bind wx EVT_MENU self OnstopLiveTrack id self stopLiveTrac
3. Figure 4 Concept of trilateration OE Ee 1 Se Automatic Asset Tracking System 4 1 1 General features The GPS chosen is a GT 320R manufactured by RF Solutions This device meets all the demands of our project The GPS module is continuously tracking all the satellites to provide accurate positioning data Furthermore this device is suitable for our system because of the good performance ability the low purchase costs and its maximum flexibility Figure 5 GPS chipset from RF Solutions GT 320R Features such as 16 parallel channel or 4100 simultaneous search bins provide fast satellite signal acquisition and guarantee a short startup time Furthermore 140dB acquisition and 155dB tracking sensibility offer a good navigation performance Other important aspects to choose this device were the availability of an interface a LVTTL level and RS 232 serial connectors Additionally the power supply offers a high flexibility 3 8V to 8V is supported Once the device is connected the GPS sends the received coordinates through both output interfaces The information is sent each second by the previously configured protocol In addition to that another useful feature of this device is that it has different types of output protocols which are NMEA 0183 GPGGA GPGLL GPGSV GPVTG and GPZDA The serial port interface protocol is based on the National Marine Electronics Association s NMEA 0183 ASCII interface specification This standard
4. invaserat POUMONCA DE CATALUNYA AONA Es Automatic Asset Tracking System Chapter 4 Hardware Implementation This chapter provides the reader with all the necessary information regarding any technical aspects related to all the hardware components of the system The materials defined as hardware are all the tangible and physical elements included in the Automatic Asset Tracking System The main function of the hardware is to gain the position of a tracked vehicle and to transmit this information to the receiver where all the information will be interpreted and displayed Furthermore due to the requirement to send the data in real time 1t is essential that all the devices are synchronized Also the system has to be absolutely reliable because it not only ensures a safer airport environment but also logs all the files in case of an accident In order to determine the position of a vehicle it is crucial to implement a highly accurate GPS Global Positioning System device In addition to that a communication network needs to be established The network is composed of a receiver a transmitter and a Personal Computer PC The transmitter is integrated within the same box as the GPS to send the acquired position coordinates and other irrelevant parameters to the receiver Nonetheless the only function of the receiver is to process the information to a Personal Computer which analyses and processes all the information Additionally the commun
5. Assistant Installation The Assembling of the device is predicted to take 1 hour in total which will make a total of 1000 working hours The installation of the devices onto the cars however should be done in approximately a half hour summing up to 500 working hours 6 3 Materials The following table lists all materials involved in a whole prototype system In addition to that it also presents the cost for each of those materials and the number of those needed In the end the prices are being cumulated to determine the overall price per Unit Table 11 Material costs Material Price in Units Overall Price in GPS 320R 45 00 1 00 48 95 M868 tiny plus with IP67 239 70 1 00 239 70 case Tiny One Pro Demo Kit B868 437 00 1 00 437 00 with two modules USB to RS232 Adapter 24 95 1 00 24 95 RS232 DB9 2 00 3 00 6 00 Printed Circuit Board for the 15 00 1 00 15 00 GPS Supply Block 23 00 3 00 69 00 VERIG 7 80 1 00 7 80 Li Ion Battery Varta 23 00 1 00 23 00 9 V Battery Duracell 5 00 1 00 5 00 Box 22 90 3 00 68 70 Cumulated Price 945 10 45 OE Ee 1 l Ge Automatic Asset Tracking System The cumulated price represents the cost for one prototype package including a receiver a transceiver and a node router However to give a better understanding for the calculations below the prices for each devise are as followed The transmitting device is composed of the GPS the M868 tiny plus with a IP67 case a RS232 DB9 plug
6. During the first introductory meeting it was decided that a provisional antenna needed to be installed somewhere within the area of the airport in order to try the system in its full potential The decision was made to place it on the roof of the Technical Block located near the Terminal 2 Due to that reason a testing area was dedicated to the project team inside the Technical Block building to be able to use the received signal with ease The group visited the airport on three different occasions During the first visit the main focus was placed on getting the software to work under the required conditions As soon as the system was assembled the group suffered a minor setback in the form of compatibility issue concerning the operating systems on the personal computers It appeared that the application did not work under Linux distribution Ubuntu 11 04 as it was supposed to However the problem was narrowed down moderately fast to be caused by not being able to access the universal serial port in the same manner as it was under Windows The solution was merely a matter of knowledge and consequently solved after doing some research That is after realizing that the COM ports are not named the same way under Linux as they are under Microsoft s operating system Therefore only some parameters had to be changed The second problem that emerged was caused by passing wrong arguments to one of the functions responsible for translating latitude and longi
7. Received Data Transmitted Data Data Terminal Ready Common Ground Data Set Ready Request to send Clear to send 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Ring Indicator The serial port transmits and receives data through a UART Universal Asynchronous Receiver Transmitter 4 2 2 LVTTL TTL Low Voltage Transistor Transistor Logic is a simple universal and well understood data interface This interface became important because it was the first time that low cost integrated circuits made digital techniques economically practical for tasks previously done using analog methods The fundamental switching action of a TTL gate is based on a multiple emitter input transistor The active operation of this input transistor removes stored charge from the output stage transistors more rapidly than a comparable DTL gate making TTL much faster in switching A small amount of current must be drawn from a TTL input to ensure proper logic levels The total current drawn must be within the capacities of the preceding stage which limits the number of nodes that can be connected the fan out All standardized common TTL circuits operate when the voltage supply is 5V If the supply VCC is lower TTL levels are no longer viable A TTL signal is defined as low or L when the voltage is between OV and 0 8V with respect to the ground terminal and high or H when between 2V and 5V For instance LVTTL uses as a standard supply 3 3V In this project the connec
8. frame always begins with the two ASCII AT characters standing for Attention For example to change the value of a register the following command is used ATSn m where n is the registration number in the value that is given Once the register is changed by running the command AT S status of all relevant registers the new values of all registers can be seen 7 2010 Manual TinyTools_v1 1 29 6 AA be 1 Se Automatic Asset Tracking System In the configuration module a click on establishes the communication with the device If this link is set up the radio module will answer OK otherwise the communication has failed and an error message will be received When the configuration is finished the command ATO will reset the radio module into functional mode The ATO command also gives an instant access to the modems operating mode configured in the S220 register In the following table a short description of the most important registers used to make the ideal communication between radio modems is presented Register S200 S201 S202 S204 S206 S210 S212 S213 S214 S216 S220 S223 Table 7 Register description Description Sets the radio channel or frequency used for communication Selects the transmission speed or baud rate Allows choosing the maximum output power or consumption of the module Sets the duration in milliseconds of the radio carrier sent before the
9. hardware are presented in the Hardware chapter in the Modems section Aside of the communication another important element of the system is the GPS Global Positioning System The function of the GPS is to determine the mobile device s actual position which is composed of the longitude and latitude parameters at a specific time Moreover a significant aspect of the system is that it updates the location every second In order to transmit all the information collected by the mobile case to the fixed module the GPS and the transmitter need to be connected to each other As a result each second the acquired frames will be sent by the mobile device at a specific frequency channel This channel should also be used by the configured fixed module In figure 2 the Automatic Asset Tracking System is illustrated On the left side the mobile case containing the GPS and the transmitter modem can be seen On the right side of the picture is an illustration of the receiver connected to the monitor which will display the location of the trucks at the airport area d Transmitter Receiver Figure 2 Basic communication network 11 Automatic Asset Tracking System Taking into account that the system needs to cover a ten kilometer area the addition of node router would be recommendable This new element doubles the possible tracking range making it a very useful accessory In order to fully reach the best functionality the router has
10. GARMIN 60Cx was used to ensure that our device send the data correctly as well as to observe the appeared errors in the transmitting process and to check if the system is accurate enough This Garmin GPS uses the same protocol messages NMEA 0183 as the new system This GPS has the update rate of 1 second and the accuracy of the position of the vehicle is less than 10 meters These two devices have been used to confirm the accuracy of one another during the testing between terminal T1 and terminal T2 The outcome was very satisfying For example the coordinates shown below were received by the Garmin GPS while testing the accuracy N north 41 18 238 E east 2 04 923 For the GPS 320 we received almost the same coordinates only with a difference in the last number of the frame which means that the accuracy is within 10 meters for both devices Therefore the accuracy for our GPS alone is 5 meters of the actual position 50 A ARAS wemmer steet DE CATALUNTA AONA Es Automatic Asset Tracking System Chapter 8 Future Improvements This chapter explains what kind of improvements could still be done in order to enhance the performance of the system There are several aspects and features which could be added not only in the hardware part but also in the software development In addition to that a SWOT analysis had been made 8 1 Software Even though the software has been designed and tested it canno
11. Track 1 self parent GetParent avtStatus SetStatusText Saved in self trackFilename 2 62 0 a 6 NOVIA SOUITONCA DE CATAUITA AOD Es Automatic Asset Tracking System def OnMotion self evt function allowing to draw simulated track on mouse movement pt evt GetPosition if pt 0 lt self cz 0 and pt 1 lt self cz 1 and pt 0 gt 1 and pt 1 gt 1 and evt LeftlsDown and self parent GetParent drawSimulatedTrack self parent GetParent avtStatus SetStatusText Mouse at str pt 2 self simulatedTracks append pt dc wx ClientDC self dc Clear self DrawShapes dc dc SetPen wx Pen wx RED 2 dc DrawLines self simulatedTracks def OnLeftUp self evt print LeftUp def OnRightDown self evt zooming dunction if self parent GetParent drawSimulatedTrack False pos evt GetPosition view self GetViewStart if self scale lt 3 0 self scale self scale 1 0 self maxColumn int self scale self W self maxRow int self scale self H self SetScrollbars 1 1 self maxColumn self maxRow O 0 self Scroll view 0 pos 0 view 1 pos 1 else self scale 1 0 self SetScrollbars 1 1 1 1 0 0 for shape in self shapes shape ChangeScale self scale for icon in self icons icon ChangeScale self scale self Refresh self Update def OnPaint self evt function drawing the map and vehicles dc wx PaintDC self dc Clear self PrepareDC
12. a simulated track Display live tracks and Stop displaying live tracks The first option was created with the purpose of testing the program It was mainly used at the time when the part responsible for reading the data from the port had not been ready After selecting this option as the name clearly states the user is given the opportunity to draw an artificial route of an imaginary vehicle The path is being sketched with a red color while keeping the left mouse button pressed The program records the trail in the same form as if it was received via the universal serial port i e using pixel coordinates When the route is ready the user has to double click the left mouse button within the area of the map and a new window will appear Then the possibility to type in the filename and save the route as a file with txt extension is given After saving the file it will be recognized as a file created in the ordinary manner The user can afterwards use this file to check whether the movement is displayed properly by using the following menu option The second option is in fact used to start the primary feature of the application After choosing this option the program starts to present the current positions of the vehicles As the structure of both the artificially made files and the files created by the received data are similar the program will print all routes simultaneously Details of how it is done are explained more deeply in the section 5 2 4 Pr
13. and RS232 communication interface The B868 TinyPro module illustrated in figure 13 consists of digital and RF parts The tasks of these components are data coding and frequency synthesis respectively Beside the interface board there is a DIP support with an antenna available The developing board includes an RS 232 connector a battery slot a TTL level and an on off switch Furthermore to indicate the transmission of the data the board has three LED diodes Figure 13 B868 TinyOne Pro The Tiny radio module can be placed on the host boards by pick and place mechanism like any integrated circuit with the following recommended parameters 4 3 3 Functional characteristics All the TinyPro terminals allow two types of functioning single channel mode which means that only channel number one is selected or multi channel mode which means that at least two channels are selected In single channel mode the operating frequency is 869 525MHz with an output power of 500mW In multi channel mode the frequency is 869 4125MHz with an output power of 100mW This module works in temperatures between 85 C and 40 C The relative humidity for a proper functioning of the modem varies from 20 to 75 The sensitivity range of around 100 dB for both functioning modes indicates a high quality In the following table the main features are presented which are the same for both types of modems 25 Automatic Asset Tracking System Table 6 Fun
14. data Chooses the mode of operation single channel or multichannel Selects speed connection through the serial port Sets the format and parity of characters sent by the serial port Defines number of stop bits 1 bit or 2 bits Timeout transmission of serial data This indicator decides when the data frame is finished If nothing is received for a time equal to this timeout the frame is finished This register works with the buffer size register S218 which sets the limit to activate the flow Control This is the most significant register It selects the operation mode of radio modems It represents the number of times a message will be repeated in case of non acknowledgement or the number of times the modem will try to send the message in case that the radio link is not free Allows you to enable and configure the functionality of LBT The LBT sensitivity refers to the detection on the RF level over which the RF link is considered as occupied Activates a random waiting time before each radio transmission Activation of the stand by mode designed for low power consumption of the radio modem Resembles ID of the network There can be up to 65535 networks defined but only one can work in a given area in each radio channel The user can configure a custom number between 1 and 65535 Client numbers must all be different within the same network If this register is different from zero the frames received by the serial connection will be sent to this address w
15. dc self DrawShapes dc if self parent GetParent displayTracks self Drawlcons dc def DrawShapes self dc drawing the map for shape in self shapes if shape shown shape Draw dc 63 6 a 6 UNVIRBTAT SOUITONCA DE CATAUITA AENA Es Automatic Asset Tracking System def Drawlcons self dc drawing the icons for icon in self icons ificon shown icon Draw dc def OnEraseBackground self evt self ClearBackgrouna class DragShape class containing all the parameters of the map def init__ self imatge scalei self imatge imatge self origWidth self imatge GetWidth self origHeight self imatge GetHeight self origScale scalei self upos 0 0 if scalei 1 self imatge Rescale int self origWidth scalei int self origHeight scalei wx IMAGE_QUALITY_HIGH self width self imatge GetWidth self height self imatge GetHeight self omp wx BitmapFromImage self imatge self shown True self scale 1 def ChangeScale self scale function to change the scale of the map after zooming self scale scale if self scale 1 0 imageFile google_map7 JPG if self scale 2 0 imageFile google_map14 JPG if self scale 3 0 imageFile google_map21 JPG self imatge wx Image imageFile self omp wx BitmapFromImage self imatge self width self imatge GetWidth self height self imatge GetHeight def Draw self dc drawing the map memDC wx MemoryDC memDC Se
16. ensure the transmission of an accurate position four main signals are needed Those are the communication signals between at least three satellites and another signal form the receiver which is the GPS chipset placed on the mobile case with the transmitter To track a position the receiver sends an identification signal and a time signature Using these signals the satellites synchronize the time signature and calculate the time it took to receive them Due to the cooperation between these satellites the proper coordinates are sent back to the GPS device The data is transmitted as electromagnetic waves with a microwave frequency between 1 2 and 1 645 MHz This would not be possible without the cooperation of five monitoring stations spread all over the Earth which control and verify the state of each of the satellites in real time Knowing the position of the satellites the propagation speed of signals and the time the signal needs to reach the receiver the receiver s position on Earth can be calculated by trilateration In figure 4 a theoretical view of the trilateration concept is shown Also it is a common mistake to confuse triangulation with trilateration Triangulation in geometrics is a process to determine a position by measuring the angle between known and fixed points On the contrary trilateration is used to determine absolute or relative locations of points by measurement of distances using the geometry of spheres or triangles
17. figure 22 The one found to the left is mainly responsible for display additional informative statements to the user When the program is launched the initial text represents a concise message from the authors Additionally when any of the menu options is hovered over a short message is shown explaining briefly what the highlighted option does The middle section is assigned for more important messages like displaying the number and time of the latest update and the information about which menu option has been selected Finally the last segment of the status bar is meant for displaying additional urgent messages 5 3 2 Menu bar Situated at the top part of the window the menu bar is split into three separate menus named File Track and Help The File menu consists of two options Choose what files to read and Quit At this moment the first option is not implemented yet Its task is to make it possible for the user to choose some already recorded data files to display the vehicles route This should be done faster than the real time displaying one update per second The quit option causes an additional window to appear which gives the user the possibility to confirm whether to close the application or not e B Automatic Vehicle Tracking 0 0 Quit Figure 23 The File menu 41 Automatic Asset Tracking System The Track menu is composed of three options as seen in figure 23 These options are Draw
18. must be tested at the airport field To improve the detection coverage of the signal between Terminal 1 and Terminal 2 it is advisable to use more than one router To increase the accuracy of the vehicles position the actual GPS320R can be switched to a superior one The power supply of the mobile case can be done by a car charger instead of batteries 8 3 SWOT Analysis In order to make our system a valid alternative in comparison to other solutions some actions have to be done and some points taken in to consideration If the suggestions stated in the table below are followed the new system has the potential to be a competitive system in the Automatic Asset Tracking Systems market Table 14 SWOT Analysis oe Strength Weakness Analysis Reduction of development costs and increased range can make one of the best system on the market Eliminate any outside interference to make ita solid and consistent system Opportunity Implementation of node router and more accurate GPS can eliminate any threat of low accuracy or range Improve the user interface and fluent system flow with the improvement of the software Threat 52 6 a 6 UNVIRBTAT SOUTTONCA DE CATAUITA AENA E Automatic Asset Tracking System Chapter 9 Conclusion Even though the current market offers numerous Asset Tracking solutions the new and innovative system described in this paper has the potential to become a major compet
19. of Ubuntu 11 04 This system is very user friendly and fully fits the needs of the project 35 A ARAS wemmer steet DE CATALUNYA AONA Es Automatic Asset Tracking System 5 1 Programming environment With the intention of realizing the project in a modern way research was carried out in order to choose a proper programming environment Choosing between different languages relevant for the system a decision was finally made to use the Python language This is mainly due to its open source structure that will contribute to lower the total costs of the project but also because of its flexibility that will make the program run smoother 5 1 1 Python Python is an open source programming language that was developed in the end of the 1980 s Since its release the language has developed into a powerful and at the same time easy to use language that supports several programming styles structured object oriented and functional programming Therefore the user is not restricted to just one style and can feel more independent while creating a program A distinctive characteristic of the programming language is its clean coding structure as it uses indentations instead of braces to divide the code into sections Furthermore it does not use semi colons to state the end of each line Additionally Python is a version dependent programming language and at the moment there are two versions that are being used 2 x and 3 x These ver
20. of such systems are companies who need a fleet tracking system to monitor all their trucks and cars on the road In the following sections the state of the art of current systems used to track and control cars or objects as well as the new technology implemented in the developed system 1s described 2 1 ZigBee GPS ZigBee is a wireless mesh networking standard In combination with a GPS device it could function similarly to our solution The benefit of a ZigBee network is its low cost and low power consumption As a result the low cost enables a wide spread of this technology in wireless controls and tracking or monitoring solutions In addition to that the low power consumption promises a better usage of smaller batteries with a higher charge level The ZigBee network is also known for its high reliability Even though all these attributes would fit perfectly in our concept it has one major flaw In order to send the data over more than 200 meters a hop is needed Therefore we would need a complete mesh hop network around the airport area which would lead to bigger cost due to the equipment needed as well as an increased sending time Consequently our data would be send every second but arrive with a delay at the receiver Furthermore the data volume which 1000 vehicles would produce would go beyond the recommended and supported bandwidth of ZigBee modules 2 2 ADS B Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast ADS B is a sur
21. takes place once per second This frequency has been chosen based on the knowledge that new GPS data will be received with a regularity of one second The map with a few vehicles marked can be seen on figure 22 Automatic Vehicle Tracking 0 0 EPs for AENA UPC 2010 11 lu date 69 at Mon May 30 11 29 17 2011 tic Vehicle Tra Figure 22 The program displaying the positions of the vehicles 40 Automatic Asset Tracking System 5 3 Graphical user interface Since the basic aim of the project is to develop a system which is able to monitor and what is most vital display the movements of vehicles in the airport area a very important aspect of the application 1s to make it as user friendly as possible while maintaining full functionality Therefore adjusting the interface to the users needs was a big challenge The appearance of the application is not entirely ready yet Nevertheless the following chapter is meant to describe its current functionality When the program is launched the initial window looks as depicted in figure 22 The most crucial and largest part of the window is a map of the airport located in the central part To help understand what is going on a status bar is situated in the bottom part of the application A menu bar can be found at the top of the interface 5 3 1 Status bar Located at the bottom of the window the status bar is divided into three sections horizontally as it can be seen in
22. the modem the carrier duration the time for the transmitted radio data consisting of one byte and the time to transmit one character from the modem In spite of these values no data control neither on the serial link nor on the radio link is performed by these radio modems in transparent mode Therefore the data control must be passed on to the software application and in this case the users must adequately verify that all frames are transmitted properly taking into account that an interrupted transmission may lead to characters or buffer losses After the quality had been proven a decision was made to work in a different mode which can assure data control Because of this the addressed secured mode was chosen to allow a good communication between the modules as well The addressed secured mode offers an optimal radio link quality given by the multipoint access of the transparent mode in combination with the security of the secured transparent mode Furthermore all modems can communicate with each other addressing each frame to one of them This mode can handle 255 up to 65535 clients 27 an i OE ES Automatic Asset Tracking System Compared to the transparent mode which addresses each data frame to a specific modem the addressed secured mode includes some additional features such as Fully verified data transmissions The modem works similar to the transparent mode but differs by adding frame encapsulation Iden
23. 041 1 Decimal degrees format 18 4041 Decimal degrees Se 0 3067666667 2 Degrees format 41 3067666667 Degrees minutes and seconds format 41 184041 Degrees 41 Minutes 18 0 4041 Seconds E aa 24 246 Degrees minutes and seconds format 41 18 24 246 20 6 a Bi UNVIRBTAT SOUTTONCA DE CATAUITA AENA E Automatic Asset Tracking System 4 2 Communications One of the most important parts of this project is the communications between the devices Because of high reliability that this system should present the communication has a significant role For this reason all the cables should be placed in the proper way The main signals that the system has to manage are basically the transmitter bit 7x receiver bit Rx and common ground GND A very important fact that has to be taken into account is that the transceiver and the receiver have Tx and Rx pins twisted to make the communication protocol possible For instance to establish the connection between the GPS and the PC we use the RS 232 interface with the purpose of making the proper settings The transmitter modules use the same kind of interface as well Afterwards the GPS and the modules are configured with the correct parameters the communication between these devices is made via LVTTL Low Voltage Transistor Transistor Logic 4 2 1 RS 232 This serial port is an interface for communication with the use of digital data which is s
24. 1s fully defined in NMEA 0183 Version 3 01 The default speed to transmit the data is 4800 baud Patch nterna pin 1 Figure 6 GPS pin connectors In order to establish a connection it is crucial to take the pins mentioned below into consideration Otherwise the GPS will experiment a malfunction or it might even damage the chipset In the table below different inputs and outputs of the GPS chipset are shown 15 6 A Ee 1 EX Automatic Asset Tracking System Table 1 Pinout description Pin Number Signal Description 6 Serial Data Out 1 Asynchronous serial output at LVTTL level to output NMEA message Serial Data In 1 Asynchronous serial input at LVTTL level to input command message Serial Data Out 2 Asynchronous serial output at RS 232 level to output NMEA message Serial Data In 1 Asynchronous serial input at RS 232 level to input command message Power 3 8V to 8 0V input Ground Ground signal 4 1 2 NMEA 0183 Protocols In the past there were as many GPS protocols as there were GPS manufacturers However the NMEA National Marine Electronics Association 0183 protocol has evolved to become the protocol of choice for most software applications The NMEA 0183 defines an electrical interface and data protocol for communication between marine instrumentation Furthermore is can also be applied to other fields Table 2 NMEA 0183 Protocols Acronym Name Description GGA Global Positioning System T
25. 2 260511 000 9478 E 000 0 245 2 260511 000 9478 E 000 0 245 2 260511 000 9478 E 000 0 245 2 260511 000 9478 E 000 0 245 2 260511 000 9478 E 000 0 245 2 260511 000 9478 E 000 0 245 2 260511 000 9456 E 001 1 240 4 260511 000 9456 E 001 3 236 5 260511 000 9456 E 001 3 236 5 260511 000 9456 E 001 7 260 2 260511 000 9180 E 002 6 272 0 260511 000 9180 E 005 6 277 9 260511 000 9158 E 009 4 284 8 260511 000 Be Oe OR OO ROR EO BELO PLL ELLE ZE ZE SLRS ELLE ZEZZZEZZE L nea 1 columna 1 Figure 9 GPS Output format 19 an i OE E Automatic Asset Tracking System As presented in the previous section the latitude and longitude are received in a specific format Therefore the received data should be converted to the standard format in order to make it easier for the software to process and display the information To convert the received data the format has to be transformed from fractions of minutes to decimal degrees In addition there is no need to transform the first figures because they represent the degrees and consequently are the same for both formats The last required change is to move the comma two digits to the left GPRMC 141140 95 A 4118 4041 N 00204 9820 E 009 7 211 6 260511 000 0 W A 29 Time 14 11 39 Latitude 41 3067666667 Longitude 2 08306666667 GPS degrees and fraction of minutes format 4118 4041 gt 41 184041 gt 41 18 4
26. 8 10 Latitude 41 2938283333 Longitude 2 05902833333 GPRMC 140811 97 V 4117 6297 N 00203 5417 E 260511 N 4B Time 14 08 11 Latitude 41 2938283333 Longitude 2 05902833333 YS PLCS REV PLO12031S01 050511 131032 rr CHECKSUM ERROR calculated 23 received GPRMC 140815 00 V 4117 6296 N 00203 5417 E 260511 N 40 re CHECKSUM ERROR calculated 64 received 40 SGPRMC 140816 00 V 4117 6296 N 00203 5417 E 260511 N 43 Time 14 08 16 Latitude 41 2938266667 Longitude 2 05902833333 SGPRMC 140817 00 V 4117 6296 N 00203 5417 E 260511 N 42 Time 14 08 17 Latitude 41 2938266667 Longitude 2 05902833333 SGPRMC 140818 00 V 4117 6296 N 00203 5417 E 260511 N 4D Time 14 08 18 Latitude 41 2938266667 Longitude 2 05902833333 SGPRMC 140819 00 V 4117 6296 N 00203 5417 E 260511 N 4C Time 14 08 19 Latitude 41 2938266667 Longitude 2 05902833333 SGPRMC 140820 00 V 4117 6296 N 00203 5417 E 260511 N 46 Time 14 08 20 Latitude 41 2938266667 Longitude 2 05902833333 SGPRMC 140821 00 V 4117 6296 N 00203 5417 E 260511 N 47 Figure 21 Log file in which checksum errors have occurred Now since the data is already received in an easy to manage form and ready to be displayed the second part of the software has to take care of it This must happen in real time i e as soon as new data is written to the file it is being interpreted and printed In fact it is a separate p
27. 956 389123 01 30 15 23 4705483333 120 94888 23 28 13 974 N 120 56 55 968 E GPRMC 013016 00 V 2328 2329 N 12056 Checksum calculated 40 Checksum received 40 Pixels 1941956 389123 16 23 4705483333 120 94888 13 974 N 120 56 55 968 E PLCS REV PLNO12031S01 050511 131032 culated 6D Checksum received hot recorded 328 2329 N PLCS REV PLNO12031S01 050511 13032 Checksum calcul 5 Checksum received SPLS REVOEISSPLCS REV PLNO12031S01 050511 13103204 N 40 lculated 57 239 N 12056 9328 E 200204 N 40 Frame corrupted not recorded Figure 20 The console showing a corrupted frame Neither the data that fails the checksum test nor the one that is inappropriate for the program is being recorded in the log files and only data that fulfills all the criteria will be passed on for further functions This is a measure taken to facilitate the workload of the program even though the original data is always logged in its raw form for administration purposes 5 2 2 Creation of log files and data files Once the discarding of all the unnecessary data and the identification process are done the vital data is saved in a log file with the purpose of making it easier for the user to check for possible faults done by the program The user can for example check all the positioning data timestamps and checksums if he or she suspects that there has been an error in the displaying process For this reason all the data i
28. After that the checksum is stated Table 3 GPGLL Graphic Position Latitude and Longitude Name Example Description Message ID GPGLL GLL protocol header Latitude 2328 2329 ddmm mmmm Degrees and minutes N S Indicator N North South Longitude 12056 9328 ddmm mmmm Degrees and minutes E W Indicator E East West UTC Time 161229 487 hhmmss sss Degrees minutes and seconds Status A A valid position V warning Mode indicator A N Data invalid A Autonomous D Differential E Estimated Checksum Security number to verify the data Table 4 GPRMC Recommended Minimum Specific Data Name Example Description Message ID GPRMC RMC protocol header UTC Time 161229 487 hhmmss sss Degrees minutes and seconds Status A A data valid V data not valid Latitude 2328 2329 ddmm mmmm Degrees and minutes N S Indicator N North South Longitude 12056 9328 ddmm mmmm Degrees and minutes E W Indicator E East West Speed over ground 0 13 knots Speed of traveling Course over ground 309 327 Degrees of inclination Checksum 25 Security number to verify the data With regard to the previous tables an appropriate operating protocol had to be chosen Even though both protocols RMC and GLL can be used the RMC protocol is the better choice because of the more complete and useful information which can for example be used in case of an accident at the airport Once the PC receives the RMC message the program will automatic
29. E Automatic Asset Tracking System UNVENBITAT POUTECWCA DE Cat uer A Chapter 11 References 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Carles P rez Xavier Cano Jos Juan Guirao and Josep Maria Fabrega Xarxa inal mbrica a la Banda ISM per a la monitoritzacio d un dispositiu GPS 2009 Bachelor Project Rappin Noel and Robin Dunn wxPython in Action Greenwich Manning Publications Co 2006 Barry Paul Head First Python Sebastopol CA O Reilly Media Inc 2010 Bodnar Jan The wxPython tutorial Online http zetcode com wxpython March 10 2011 Bodnar Jan The Python tutorial Online http zetcode com tutorials pythontutorial March 10 2011 Parkin Tim Python Programming Language Official Website Online http www python org March 7 2011 Wikipedia www wkipedia org M868 TINYPRO TECHNICAL MANUALS One RF Technology 2008 following internet URL http www one rf com One RF Technology Manual M868 TinyPro_vl 3 datasheet 2007 2008 pp 16 18 One RF Technology Manual B868 TinyPro_v1 3 datasheet 2007 2008 pp 17 One RF Technology Functionalities and Operations modes v1 3 datasheet 2007 2008 pp 19 20 One RF Technology Manual DemoKit TinyPro_v1 1 datasheet 2007 2008 pp 16 18 One RF Technology Manual TinyTools_v1 1 datasheet 2007 2008 pp 18 Microchip Technology Incorporated PIC24FI6KAI02 Family Data Sheet d atasheet 2009 pp 27 28 www microch
30. W ES R tinyrech v i Jog USE Serial pot USB Serial pot Speed Seed Number of bito Numbor d bite Fam Paily Gi Number d Stop bet Nureber d Stop bit Detector Ki TinyTools v 1 00W Detectan US Tin Took e 1 00W Cotten Corsgaenon USB Seral pot COM 1 gt Pai ene RE Speed 200 X L Nurbar cf bite gt x Pany aurasso Nunberct stp ta EI o yen Ode Desecton Figure 16 Tiny Tools v 1 00W Software When Tiny Tools software is launched a window appears which allows the configuration of the serial port It is a straightforward process and the user can rapidly choose which Com port Speed Parity and Number of Stop bits to use After the configuration part is finished the detection of the modem will be started If the link between the modem and the software program is made and the module characteristics are shown at the bottom of the software page then the Go to Tiny Tools button can be selected and further configuration of the modem are allowed 4 3 6 Settings To receive GPRMC Recommended Minimum Specific Data frames properly from the GPS 320RW the radio modems and their registers were configured in order to enable communication between them To configure the Tiny Pro modules the registers were set with the Tiny Tools program This configuration allows access to the register by AT or Hayes commands to modify each register A data
31. above the last three registers are configured with different values This is done because one modem is transmitting and one is receiving The S252 register shows the assigned client number and the register S256 indicates which modem is sending the frames The router can receive data from different modems as well as transmit it further to several other devices Therefore the router settings are based on how many clients are used in the network 32 Automatic Asset Tracking System During the field tests the hardware was configured like GPS mmm mobile modem router fix modem 252 10 20 30 255 80 80 80 256 20 30 20 Figure 17 Register configuration This figure shows how the GPS is transmitting the coordinates of the vehicle to the mobile node which has the client number 10 It is set to transmit this information further to the address 20 representing the client number of the system s router The router sends the data to the fixed modem which has been assigned the address 30 Furthermore the fixed modem sends the data through a RS232 USB convertor cable to the software application This is processing all the data and displaying it on the user interface 33 OE Ee 1 y E Automatic Asset Tracking System 4 4 Mounting The quality and range of our system will increase if the device is mounted high and free of and reflective materials Therefore it would be best to install the system on the roof of the monitored
32. acking system solution on it This system reveals a lot of potential 1f configured tested and implemented correctly Finally the system can serve not only as an airport surveillance system but also in a harbor in a production area a major construction side or a mid range cab tracking system The varieties will grow as soon as the range can be improved even more Taking everything into account the system can become one of the next major systems in the field of real time vehicle surveillance 53 3 E A t OnE S 5 Ss Automatic Asset Tracking System Chapter 10 Acknowledgment The EPS group would like to thank all colleagues and students who contributed to making this project possible We are grateful to our supervisor Vicen Parisi for giving assistance and guidance through the whole project and to all the professors that contributed with their knowledge during the development of the system The EPS group is very grateful for the cooperation and interest of the employees at Aeropuertos Espa oles y Navegaci n A rea Barcelona Airport This project would not have been possible without their interest in developing this system Last but not least we would like to thank the Escola Polit cnica Superior d Enginyeria de Vilanova i la Geltr Universitat Polit cnica de Catalunya and the International Coordinator of the EPS program Patricia Benson for giving us the opportunity to participate in the European Project Semester 54 OE ena
33. ally log all the parameters into an external file which can be checked at any time Even though the software will only display the latitude longitude and time it is very useful to save and have further information as well Therefore we opted to use the RMC protocol 17 AA e UNVERBITAT PCUMONCA DE ien AENA SC Automatic Asset Tracking System 4 1 3 Connecting the GPS In order to monitor and verify the correct performance of the GPS chipset it has to be supplied with a power between 3 8V and 8V Moreover the output pins have to be properly connected Therefore the output pins have been manufactured with a special output plug RF Solutions offers the possibility to buy the right connector to make the connection between the GPS and the interface easier The picture number 7 shows a CBA LS 40M cable Figure 7 Cable assembly for connection with GPS 320R modules Once the cable was plugged into the GPS dowel a RS 2323 connector was used to make the connection with the interface possible Most importantly the Rx Receiver pin Tx Transmitter pin and GND Ground pin have to be attached to the GPS chipset After following all these steps 1t was possible to verify a behavior structure of the GPS chipset connected to the RS 2323 which is plugged together with the RS 2323 to USB Universal Serial Port converter The USB converter is very useful because most of the current computers have a USB In Output After gaining all the af
34. ars as a result of the protocols used when sending the data Unwanted parts are being discarded by using a function that recognizes what valuable lines of information look alike Afterwards each piece of information has to be taken care of separately in order to define all the different values e g speed course and checksum The whole process has to be done with assurance that no important part of the information is going to be lost Furthermore it is very crucial for the accuracy of the vehicles positioning that the software can check if the frame received is corrupted or not Each frame is followed by a checksum in hexadecimal form It is calculated as an exclusive OR function of all elements within the particular frame To be able to check its correctness a function that is reviewing all the checksums of the received frames has been created This function calculates the checksum of the specified frame on its own and compares it with the received one computed and sent by the GPS If the outcome of the comparison between the two checksums is different the software will make a notification in the log file to inform the user about the corrupted data 37 Automatic Asset Tracking System enzQubuntu Desktop newest program File Edit View Search Terminal Help received 42 941956 389123 23 4705483333 120 94888 974 N 120 56 55 968 E GPRMC 013015 00 V 2328 2329 N 12056 Checksum calculated 43 Checksum received 43 Pixels 1941
35. atusText EPS for AENA UPC 2010 11 0 class CollectEvent wx PyCommandEvent event used to collect the coordinates using threading def init__ self etype eid wx PyCommandeEvent __init__ self etype eid class CollectThread threading Thread class containing parameters of threading def __init__ self parent threading Thread __ init__ self self finish threading Event self finish clear self parent parent self interval 0 3 def stop self function used to stop the threading 65 6 a 6 UNVIRBTAT POUMONCA DE CATAUITA AENA Es Automatic Asset Tracking System self finish set def run self function used to start the threading while 1 self finish wait self interval if self finish isSet break if self _finished isSet return event CollectEvent myEVT_CollectLocations 1 wx PostEvent self parent event if name _ main_ Hinitializing the window app wx PySimpleApp avtFrame MainFrame parent None id 1 avtFrame Show app MainLoop 12 2 2 Reading serial port import serial import time import math def read_pixelz lati longi function used to translate longitude and latitude into pixels print str lati str longi lati_diff 41 31029951631133 lati longi_diff longi 2 05843448638916 pix_row round lati_diff 0 000045846 pix_col round longi_diff 0 000061222 return str int pix_col str int pix_row def pixelate line func
36. ble If this function is activated before sending data the transmitting modem will scan the radio link and verify that it is available no radio activity This is done to avoid collision Modem N 1 Modem N 2 Modem N 3 1 sends ABCD to 2 lt 2 ABCD gt gt lt 1 ABCD gt OK e aeii 1 sends EFGH to 3 lt 3 EFGH gt L with a retry Sm po Waiting time 4 eg eg lt 1 EFGH gt E OK ACK 3 sends Hello as lt 3 Hello gt lt 0 Hello gt Broadcast lt 3 Hello gt lt Figure 15 Adressed Secured Mode These modems are operating in the 869 4 869 65 ISM International Science and Medical frequency band with some limitations Most of these restrictions are integrated in the conception of the module except for the duty cycle The 869 400 to 869 650 MHz band is limited to a 10 duty cycle This means that each module is limited to a total transmission time of 6 minutes per hour 28 OLE AE UNVERBITAT POUMOWCA DE CATALUNYA Aena Automatic Asset Tracking System 4 3 5 Tiny Tools For each modem used in the system certain changes to the parameters and registers were made These changes are made by the Tiny Tools software and are depending on the function of each radio module in the tracking process The Tiny Tools software provided by One RF Technology allows programming of Tiny PRO Modules by a PC In figure 16 the Tiny Tools software interface is presented RW TinyTooi v 1 00
37. ctional characteristics of TinyPro terminal Frequency band 400 869 650 MHz Temperature range 40 C to 85 C Relative humidity 20 to 75 Transmission Single channel Multi channel Chanel number 1 869 525MHz 10 869 4125MHz Channel spacing wideband ERC Rec 70 25 kHz ERC Rec 70 03 03 Radio bit rate up to 38 4 kbps 4 8 kbps Output Power 500mW 27dBm 1dB 100mW 20dBm 2dB Reception consumption 6V 30mA 12V 25mA 40 V 20mA Reception Sensitivity 100dBm 2db 105dBm 2dB Range 200m 300m In difficult environment In optimal environmental 3000m 4000m 4 3 4 Transmission process The tracking process starts when the transmitter captures data from the GPS which is set to send a specific message to detect just specified parameters The frames are addressed checked through a CRC acknowledged and sent further to the receiver Information is taken from the receiver and processed in the developed software where the selection of the data needed is done After this the coordinates are interpreted decoded and shown on the map of the Aena airport Therefore all the modems are configured The modules can operate under four different modes Transparent mode the default communication protocol of the module data transmitting is made transparently without encapsulation or addressing Addressed Secured mode it is used in multipoint network protocol each module can communicate with every other module
38. dentification utility still has to be done In order to do that not only have some additional functions to be created but also some changes have to be done on the hardware side When it comes to the hardware part additional frames containing the identification number of the device have to be included in the messages sent After this is done the next step is to implement functions to recognize the identification numbers and based on what the outcome is a different file will be appended Since the software already detects all the activity on the serial port it will be a rather straightforward process 8 2 Hardware It can be said that the hardware part is already finished but some improvements can still be added Until now as it was already mentioned just one prototype has been implemented For this reason the network has not yet been tested with more than one connected transmitter 51 JO as M insnet pountowcA os Coen Aena A Automatic Asset Tracking System Taking that into account some futures improvements which can be made are The receiver s antenna can be placed in the control tower of the airport instead of the Technical Block Building This way the antenna is located as high as possible which leads to an avoidance of interference and an enlargement of the overall coverage Other tests are necessary to see which communication mode is the most proper one for the entire network The functionality of the router
39. e online de www magnet shop net 34 A ARAS wemmer steet DE CATALUNYA AONA Es Automatic Asset Tracking System Chapter 5 Software Development Although there was a rather strict division of tasks within the team since different people were responsible for the implementation of software while others were mainly focusing on the hardware development the final success could only be achieved by cooperation of these subgroups Therefore it 1s not possible to say that any of these parts were more important than another one Moreover both of them were crucial elements of the project and depend on each other In the following chapter the explanation of the software part will be done The main task of the software used in the project is to gather all the information received by the devices The data is to be presented in an application that allows the user to interact with the program In addition to that the software will log every event in order to offer help in case of an emergency situation at the airport That means that the information in the log files has to be in a readable form in order offer the user the function to check for possible errors made by the system Since there is a lot of information being managed at the same time the program needs to be as fast as possible with the purpose of avoiding unnecessary delays that could cause the program to be misinterpreted by the user Additionally the application itself needs to be s
40. e suitable and higher spot Finally there was a huge amount of buildings and metal constructions in the region where the tests were performed which also caused the signal to weaken Making a reference to figure 28 the green area represents the zone where the strength of the signal is guaranteed could be received and read without any problems This range was approximately one kilometer and two hundred meters Based on the results of the field tests the green striped area represents the zone where the system is supposed to operate without any significant interference However this has not been tested due to a lack of permission to enter the area surrounding the landing strip The purple color corresponds to the region where the system ought to work properly but could be affected by some external factors That area has been tested but the results were not satisfying because some major signal interruptions were detected The results obtained during the different field tests confirmed much of our earlier calculations and concerns Even though some parts of the system did not perform as well as predicted the results gave directions to new ideas and knowledge The guaranteed operating distance had been discovered and the positioning error is estimated to be not more than 5 meters This distance was measured without any major obstacles weakening the signal strength In the last two tests besides the transmitter which includes a GPS 320R another GPS
41. ender to the receiver through a specific channel thus avoiding collisions and making the communication more confident and safe Radio modems transmit data wirelessly transform an analog signal to encode digital information and also demodulate such signal to decode the transmitted information The aim is to create a signal that can be easily transmitted and decoded in order to reproduce the initial digital data Radio modems are used to create a Private Radio Network PRN for the Aena Company These are generally used in industrial applications when real time data communication is needed and it is preferred to be independent from telecommunication or satellite network operators 4 3 1 Hardware components All the hardware components used to develop this tracking system for one airport vehicle are the following transmitter receiver modems one GPS module connection cables and additional PCB printed circuit board realized to connect the GPS to the modem Additionally one or more node routers can be placed at the airport to improve the covered distance range The classification of the chosen modems one fixed node radio modem Tiny Pro M868 with IP67 Fig 11 a connected to a PC one node router radio modem Tiny Pro B 868 Fig 11 b with a serial port RS232 an interface board a radio module on its DIP support an antenna one mobile node radio modem Tiny Pro B 868 connected to the GPS GT 320 RW 23 Automa
42. ent bit by bit To make the link between the device and the computer a physical port is needed It is also referred to as COM Currently this type of communication is not used much and has been replaced by the USB interface which is much faster However the serial port can still be found in industrial automation systems since its use is simpler and cheaper and also allows data exchange between different types of devices RS 232 Recommended Standard 232 is the interface to make the communication with the devices possible The next figure shows the physical connector RS 232 In addition to that the table number 5 presents the pins and corresponding signals Figure 10 DB9 Connector The RS 232 interface is designed for short distances up to 15 meters as the standard for communication speed is low no more than 20 kilobits per second It can work in synchronous or asynchronous communication and in the following channel types simplex half duplex or full duplex In a simplex channel data is always transmitted in one direction Picture from http www hflink com 21 OE Ee 1 y GH Automatic Asset Tracking System In the half duplex channel data can travel in both directions switching necessary to change the direction of transmission In a full duplex channel data can be transmitted in both directions simultaneously Table 5 Relation between Pins and Signal e Signal Data Carrier Detect
43. eristics offered by this device fulfill all the requested needs like data transition range frequency band sensitivity and communication protocol The common features will be presented in this part of the report Both of the modems are powered with a power supply block of 7 5V or with a 9V battery 24 Nai NAS 6 f Ss Automatic Asset Tracking System The distance in an optimal environment in which the radio modems are sensitive to receive and transmit data is ranged between 3000 and 4000 meters However in zones with many infrastructural barriers the achieved distance is only between 200 and 300 meters which is not enough Therefore all requirements for locating the modems must be strictly respected All these limitations to the range of the rules lead to the necessity of using an additional router or two The TinyOne Pro M868 radio modem with an IP67 case is a complete radio frequency solution for tough environments and weather conditions In the Technical Block Building where the work conditions are not the best the electronic parts need to be especially protected This modem includes a 500 mW radio module with an advanced embedded firmware as well as a reinforced hard metal casing and a quarter wave antenna The modem communicates with the host through a RS232 USB cable connected to terminal blocks on the mother board B868 TinyOne Pro is chosen as the transmitter because this model allows having direct access to the LV TTL
44. h needs to be covered has a maximum range of 10 km This enables the possibility that the limits of the area are clearly stated and the software and maps can be adjusted to these facts AA inevinarar POUMONCA DE CATALUNYA AONA Ss Automatic Asset Tracking System Since no employee will have any experience with a newly developed system and in order to make the handling of it as user friendly as possible the software part of the project also has to take some facts into consideration Firstly the interface should be easy to understand and operate in order to enable everyone to use the system without a special training Secondly the software should be written in an open source programming language to easily implement the system without buying any licenses or patents Moreover open source based programs can be improved and evolved more smoothly in comparison to licensed programs or languages due to the larger information freely available on the internet Finally the software should run under every operating system like Linux and Windows Furthermore the program needs to be fast and accurate to fully support the hardware features and to be refreshable once every second All these demands have to be combined in a system which is not only highly reliable efficient and accurate but also has to be very cost efficient as well Hence a comparison between already existing systems and the system in development has to point out the benefi
45. hreadAlive False self displayTracks False self avtStatus SetStatusText Draw a simulated track 1 self simulateTrack Enable False self liveTrack Enable False self stopLiveTrack Enable False self Refresh self drawSimulatedTrack True def OnliveTrack self event function displaying the vehicles in real time self files self Filelterator del self avtDisplay coords del self avtDisplay icons for path in self files self avtDisplay coords append 1 1 num 1 for coordinate in self avtDisplay coords self avtDisplay icons append Icon int coordinate 0 int coordinate 1 1 num num num 1 self displayTracks True self collectThread CollectThread self self collectThread start self threadAlive True 60 A AA UNVERETAT POUMONCA DE CATALUNYA AONA Es Automatic Asset Tracking System self simulateTrack Enable False self stopLiveTrack Enable True self liveTrack Enable False def OnstopLiveTrack self event function to stop the real time displaying if self threadAlive self displayTracks False self avtStatus SetStatusText Live tracks disabled 1 self collectThread stop self threadAlive False self liveTrack Enable True self stopLiveTrack Enable False self simulateTrack Enable True self Refresh def Onmanual self event function showing the manual not yet implemented self avtStatus SetStatusText Not implemented yet 2 time sleep 1 0 self avtStatus SetSta
46. ication network operates through different frequency channels which means that the acquired information has to be sent through an addressed secured mode Considering that the aim of the project is to survey the entire airport area the receiver has to be positioned in a strategic place preferably as high and free as possible The same goal applies to the transmitter which is why it should be placed on the roof of the airport vehicles In summary the system is basically composed of A GPS Global Positioning System A Transmitter A Receiver A node Router A Personal Computer Connection cables devices In the following subsection a description of every device and connection used in order to develop the first prototype will be given as well as an explanation of their essential contribution to our system 13 d Automatic Asset Tracking System 4 1 Global Positioning Systems The GPS Global Positioning System is a worldwide navigation system that provides reliable location and time information Originally it was developed installed and operated by the Defense Department of the United States of America This system works in a network of twenty four synchronized Navstar Navigation System and Ranging satellites to cover the entire surface of the Earth These satellites constantly send their orbital position the exact time when they are emitting the signal and the positions of the other GPS satellites In order to
47. ignificant support from our supervisor Viceng Parisi The project resembles a great challenge for everyone involved A AA wemmer ste DE CATALUNTA AONA Es Automatic Asset Tracking System 1 1 Background In 2007 the Airport of Barcelona acquired a new Terminal in order to offer a larger variety of flight opportunities destinations as well as the growing number of customers in the Air Travelling Sector This expansion led to an increase of 6 5 to a total of 29 2 million passengers in 2010 compared to 2009 Today the Barcelona airport is considered the 10 busiest airport in Europe As a result of this development the number of supporting vehicles in the airport has increased dramatically Today over 1000 buses cars trucks emergency cars and other vehicles are needed to run an airport safely and smoothly However the coordination and traffic control has become harder and harder due to the lack of an electronic surveillance system Until now the airport is surveying their vehicles with the help of ground personnel communicating the information to the Headquarters This solution however is not very accurate or efficient For this reason the AENA Company started to think about a better way of handling this problem As a result of this a new project was founded with the title Automatic Asset Tracking System This project was given to the EPSEVG for the European Project Semester Considering the fact that over one thousa
48. ime position and fix type data and Fixed Data GLL Geographic Position Latitude longitude UTC time of position fix and Latitude Longitude status GSA Global Active Satellites GPS receiver operation mode satellites used in the position solution and DOP values GSV Global Satellites in View The number of GPS satellites in view satellite ID numbers elevation azimuth and SNR values Recommended Minimum Time date position course and speed data Specific GNSS Data As seen in table 2 NMEA has different types of configuration and depending on the protocol used the data transmitted includes a variety of parameters Taking the parameters which represent the position on a map into consideration the most relevant information is the longitude and the latitude Thus the main protocols that comply with the requests are GLL and RMS Specific Information from www kronosrobotics com 16 Automatic Asset Tracking System Having in mind that in order to send the data it must be modified and processed Therefore the proper protocol should just contain the useful information and the minimum size To test the prototype the GPS device was connected to a Personal Computer Once the correct settings were made a real location could be printed on a map The messages name which is also referred to as the option is composed of the characters following the GP Each data element is separated by a comma and is terminated by the character
49. in the same network the frames are addressed checked through a CRC and acknowledged 26 an i SES E Automatic Asset Tracking System Downloader over the air allows re flashing of remote module Auto repeat mode the module sends back the frames it has received radio or serial without echoing used for testing the module remotely In the beginning the modems were programmed to work in transparent mode to see if they work properly because in this mode all the frames are transmitted transparently This mode reproduces the half duplex function of a RS232 serial link which means that only one device can send or receive at a time It allows Point to Point or Point to Multi point transmission of data with all the modems receiving the messages sent by any modem as shown in figure 14 MA Modem N 1 Modem N 2 Modem N 3 1 sends ABCD lt ABCD gt a lt ABCD gt lt ABCD gt 2 sends Hello lt Hello gt a a lt Hello gt gt lt Hello gt Figure 14 Transparent mode Every unit configured in transparent mode will receive every radio data flowing on the same communication channel in the same frequency In this communication mode radio modems automatically transmit every serial data received on their radio link or radio data received on the serial link The time between switching from reception mode to transmission mode is reduced as far as possible The latency time includes the time for one character received by
50. inting process The final option allows the user to stop displaying the tracks without closing the application itself Therefore after pausing the application when the Display live tracks button is pressed again the program will continue instantly from the point it was interrupted in 8 5 Automatic Vehicle Tracking 0 0 0 File Track Help Draw a simulated track Display live tracks Stop displaying live tracks Figure 24 The Track menu The third menu section Help is created to offer the user different kinds of assistance The menu options are Show user manual and About If the first menu option is selected a user guide is opened This guide should cover all the basic functions of the program and instructions on how to use them If one has any doubts of how to do a specific task the answer will be found in the guide Finally the About option was created in order to present the software s developers and contact information of the people responsible for the development 42 Automatic Asset Tracking System D amp Automatic Vehicle Tracking 0 0 A GS Il Fite Track Show user manual About Figure 25 The Help menu 5 3 3 Zoom function The program has an integrated zoom function so that each user has the opportunity to show the map in a bigger scale Not only will this make small details clearer but also minor movements of the vehicles will be easier to notice The fu
51. ional cost than the installation and material costs In order to be an alternative this system would need to evolve a great deal However this system provides the basic level of communication of the new system by using those radio frequencies to send the data packages 2 5 RF GPS Solution The State of the Art of the newly invented solution combines the positive aspects of the systems mentioned in the Alternatives section of this report The new tracking system uses a Radio Frequency Device to communicate not only the characteristic of the object e g the size speed and classification of the car but also the position gained from the GPS device Therefore the result is a more mobile solution that only uses one receiver In addition to that it functions similar to the GPS GPRS GSM system but eliminates the need of a mobile contract because of the RF communication AA inevinarar POUMONCA DE CATALUNYA AONA Es Automatic Asset Tracking System Chapter 3 Automatic Asset Tracking System Nowadays many companies around the world offer automatic asset tracking systems which can meet the demands of the project As it is mentioned in the previous chapters the system that is going to be designed will track the location of one thousand vehicles around the airstrip and the area of the Barcelona Airport in real time Therefore the system needs to be mobile and able to support the bandwidth needed for such an amount of cars Consequently
52. ions 1 class MainFrame wx Frame Automatic Vehicle Tracking Frame def init__ self parent id wx Frame __init__ self parent id pos wx Point 0 0 size wx Size 1280 800 style wx DEFAULT_FRAME_STYLE title Automatic Vehicle Tracking 0 0 Main parameters objects variables self mapFolder self panel wx Panel self self imageFile google_map7 JPG self W wx Image self mapFolder self imageFile GetWidth self H wx Image self mapFolder self imageFile GetHeight self avtDisplay MainDisplay self panel 1 self mapFolder self imageFile self W self H self avtStatus AVTStatusBar self self SetStatusBar self avtStatus self updateNumber 0 self threadAlive False self displayTracks False self drawSimulatedTrack False self avtStatus SetStatusText Choose a task from the Menu 1 A button self button wx Button self label Save pos 0 0 self Bind wx EVT_BUTTON self OnClick self button Bindings self Bind wx EVT_CLOSE self Onquit self Bind EVT_CollectLocations self OnCollectLocations Menus self SetUpMenus self stopLiveTrack Enable False READING 57 AA UNVERETAT POUMONCA DE CATALUNYA AONA Es Automatic Asset Tracking System def OnCollectLocations self evt Hfunctions used to collect locations self updateNumber self updateNumber 1 files self Filelterator for path in files self avtDisplay coords files index path self Reade
53. ip com Online http tom pycke be mav 84 connecting my gps eb 85 to a pic microcontroller pp 27 Online http www rapidbridge com productbriefs ligio_lvttl_pb pdf pp 26 ELPRO Technologies Wireless Solutions for Process Applications Tech Article No 1 3 pp 22 Shai Vaingast Ou Daem Beginning Python Visualization Crafting Visual Transformation Scripts 2009 55 UNIVERSITAT POUITOWCA DE CATAUNYA AENA i Chapter 12 Appendices 12 1 Responsibility matrix Automatic Asset Tracking System elo P oe GO D Rese O rea R S S S ala O O D R de o omp on of R S odule omp ono E S otoco A a le ara R ompone SO b Te S S R S oleme O R al e e O e s Da e q R S 08 Rese O 4 S R og g Language S on of Prope S S R o read erpre on of D R S pleme o SO e S S R e O O O R O O e S R S g oO eld Te R R R R Ove Do e O R R R R eate dte Repo R S S S q ese O e al S S S R S O A a a Review O gt s R R S S e epo O q eation o A S R S R R Responsible S Support 56 AA UNVERETAT POUMONCA DE CATALUNYA AONA Es Automatic Asset Tracking System 12 2 Software source code 12 2 1 Main program import wxversion wxversion select 2 8 import wx import time import glob import os import threading myEVT_CollectLocations wx NewEventType threading events EVT_CollectLocations wx PyEventBinder myEVT_CollectLocat
54. ission re Te 26 4 3 5 Ereegnes 29 4 3 6 SEM ii A A A A a eee 29 AA AAPP EE EEEREEEEEEENEEEEERNEREEEE SERA EEN KEE EEEEe 34 Chapter 5 Software Development ccccccesesssseeeeeeeeeeeeeseeseeeeeeeeeeeeeeesenees 35 5 1 Programming environment ccsssccccssssceccssssceccenssssccanssssccacssseccccssssccacssseecausssseeeesess 36 5 1 1 E 36 5 1 2 MAM EA e TEE EE 36 5 1 3 A 36 AA inevanartar rouno ot amun Aena A Es Automatic Asset Tracking System 5 2 Receiving data wiccciissicccsisssscccssasecctsssivescsssvesccassseessaasacedeasinescoabavesccasasescsausaectoasinesssabases 37 5 2 1 The receiving proOCesS cccsessscccececsssessnaececeescesseeaaececeeecesseseaaeseceescessesuaeaeesesseesessaaaees 37 5 2 2 Creation of log files and data files nnnnnnnnnnennneeenenssennnnrennnssennnssernnssennnsserensseennsserenso 38 5 2 3 Reading MeS oriri rrna EA NIEREN A 39 5 2 4 ThE printing Process icien iita aaa 40 5 3 AI osses otopa snene EC geed 41 5 3 1 SUS ii Ai seas 41 5 3 2 Men Dustin ide dit 41 5 3 3 ZOOM hl e 43 Chapter 6 Economic Evaluation c eeecccceeeeeeeseeeeeeeeeeeeeseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees 44 6 1 Development ico a 44 6 2 Immplementatiopn 2sseeeeEEeSEESERKSEEEEEESEEEEEREEEEEEEEEEEESERESEEEEEEEEEESEAEE ENEE ESEKAN SA NSS REENEN 44 6 3 AAA A EI EESEEREKSRAKEEEEEEEEReR 45 B 4 e Ee E 46 Chapter 7 Field Tests mnnn 48 Chapter 8 Future Improvements
55. ithout any header detection done 30 6 a UNVIRBTAT POUMONCA DE CATAUITA AENA EA Automatic Asset Tracking System All the devices modems as well as routers are configured with the same appropriate values After both of the communication protocols were tested the configurations for the application remained as followed A single channel mode at a frequency of 869 525MHz which means that the first mentioned register is automatically set to 10 The radio baud rate is 38 4 kbps for all the modems because it works in single channel mode and allows a low power consumption value of 500mW To obtain broadcasting time and smaller power consumption the duration of a radio carrier given has a value of 5ms For all the modems the speed rate was set to be the same as the GPS 4800 bps The format has been set without parity which equals a value of 1 The serial timeout value is 3 ms which is according to the serial baud rate A choice to not have a flow control on the serial link was made in order to prevent the buffer from overflowing Furthermore the host must manage its outgoing data frames and activate the LBT function in case of high sensitivity The number of repetition has to be kept as low as possible to ensure that the system works in real time In this case the value has been set to two which is the number of times the message will be repeated in case of non acknowledgement Two is also the number of times
56. itor in this particular field This system is the most cost efficient solution available at the moment as well as it works with an open source based software These facts are just two of the major achievements of this project In addition to that the new system tries to transfer the best functions and abilities of other solutions to combine them in a system that not only does a very proper and effective job but also aims to be the most complete system overall Another benefit of this system is that once all the testing is done the system could actually be offered to airports or companies in need of such a system This will cover the development costs of the project and after some time 1t might even start to raise a profit which would lead into making the new system cheaper for the users and in a long term even profitable Although the project has ended successfully the developed system is far from being done The most essential future improvement is to execute a major testing phase where one hundred up to one thousand vehicles are being monitored This test could work out perfectly while at the same time any kind of problems could occur Such problems could be interference the loss of a signal or the bandwidth not being able to support the necessary amount of data coming from that many devices In order to conclude this paper and this project it has to be stated that a good basic level has been created to base a successful Automatic Asset Tr
57. k Getld self menubar Append self track amp Track Menu Help 4 HH H AHHH HHH HHH HH HE HDH HHH HHH NH self help wx Menu self manual wx Menultem self help 1 Show user manual self manual SetHelp Show user manual self help AppendItem self manual self Bind wx EVT_MENU self Onmanual id self manual Getld self about wx Menultem self help 1 About self about SetHelp Information about this project self help Appenditem self about 59 AA invaserat POUMONCA DE CATALUNYA AONA Es Automatic Asset Tracking System self Bind wx EVT_MENU self Onabout id self about Getld self menubar Append self help amp Help Menubar Ends HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH self SetMenuBar self menubar def OnchooseFiles self event function enabling viewing the files not implemented yet self avtStatus SetStatusText Not implemented yet 2 time sleep 1 0 self avtStatus SetStatusText 2 def Onquit self event function showing additional window after pressing the Quit option ret wx MessageBox Are you sure to quit last question wx YES_NO wx NO_DEFAULT self if ret wx YES if self threadAlive self collectThread stop self threadAlive False self Close self Destroy def OnsimulateTrack self event Hfunction activated after pressing Draw te simulated track if self threadAlive self collectThread stop self t
58. lectObject self bmp dc Blit O O self width self height memDC O 0 class Icon class containing all the parameters of the icons def init__ self posX posY scale num self scale 1 0 self posX posX self posY posY self radi 5 64 AA inevinarar POUMONCA DE CATALUNYA AONA Es Automatic Asset Tracking System self shadowColor Red self shown True self num num self font wx Font 16 wx SWISS wx NORMAL wx BOLD if scale gt 1 0 self ChangeScale scale def ChangeScale self scale changing the scale of the icons self scaleOld self scale self scale scale self posX int self posX self scale self scaleOld self posY int self posY self scale self scaleOld def Draw self dc drawing the icons dc SetPen wx Pen self shadowColor 1 dc SetBrush wx Brush self shadowColor style wx SOLID dc DrawCircle self posX self posY self radi dc SetTextForeground self shadowColor label str self num w h dc GetTextExtent V label dc SetPen wx Pen wx WHITE 1 dc SetBrush wx Brush Yellow style wx SOLID dc DrawRectangle self posX 2 self radi self posY w 2 h 4 dc DrawText V label self posX 2 self radi 1 self posY class AVTStatusBar wx StatusBar class containing the parameters of the status bar def init__ self parent wx StatusBar __ init__ self parent 1 self SetFieldsCount 3 self SetStatusWidths 1 1 1 self sizeChanged False Field O self SetSt
59. longi_d longi_m longi_s E An fwrite An 69
60. ly which is supports this device The box is designed to maintain the internal elements safe from all weather conditions Additionally the case has a magnetic surface at the base which is necessary to keep the device in a fixed position on the roofs of the cars as displayed in figure 1 Figure 1 Airport vehicle with the Tracking Device on the roof The picture shown is not an actual vehicle of the Barcelona Airport 10 OE Ee 1 y E Automatic Asset Tracking System The antenna will be placed in a strategic point at the area of Terminal 2 of Aeroport el Prat de Llobregat In other words this element is situated on the roof of the Technical Block Building to eliminate interferences and improve the signal strength The device is actually a receiver with an external and prolonged antenna attached to it A long antenna has to be used due to the fact that the fixed module has to be in reach of a Personal Computer PC which is located inside of the building A transmitter which sends the information as well as a receiver are providing the networks communication Initially the connection between the two points is made by configuring the two modems properly Therefore it is crucial to select the same frequency channel to maintain a virtual connection between the devices Another very important aspect to take into consideration is the baud rate because it represents the actual speed in which the data is send Further details about the
61. m 1 for coordinate in self coords self icons append Icon int coordinate 0 int coordinate 1 self scale num num num 1 self shapes append DragShape self imatge self scale bindings self Bind wx EVT_ERASE_BACKGROUND self OnEraseBackground self Bind wx EVT_PAINT self OnPaint self Bind wx EVT_RIGHT_DOWN self OnRightDown self Bind wx EVT_MOTION self OnMotion self Bind wx EVT_LEFT_DCLICK self OnLeftDoubleClick self Refresh self Update def OnLeftDoubleClick self evt function allowing to save the simulated track after double left click if self parent GetParent drawSimulatedTrack dig wx FileDialog self Where do you want to save the simulated track self mapFolder Files TXT txt txt wx SAVE wx FD_OVERWRITE_PROMPT wx FD_CHANGE_DIR if dlg ShowModal wx ID_OK self trackFile dlg GetPath self trackFilename dlg GetFilename if self trackFile 4 txt self trackFile self trackFile txt self trackFilename self trackFilename txt with open self trackFile w as simulatedTrackFile for pt in self simulatedTracks simulatedTrackFile write str pt 0 str pt 1 simulatedTrackFile write An simulatedTrackFile close dlg Destroy del self simulatedTracks self parent GetParent drawSimulatedTrack False self parent GetParent liveTrack Enable True self parent GetParent simulateTrack Enable True self parent GetParent avtStatus SetStatusText Simulated
62. nction works even when the application is running By clicking the right mouse button anywhere inside the map the area will enlarge After the zooming depending on where the button is pressed that place will be the new center to make it as instinctive as possible There are two magnifying steps the map size can be twice and three times as big as the initial size The feature is realized by replacing the original map with a larger one as soon as the button is clicked Since the resized maps do not fit inside the main window entirely scrollbars appear in order to be able to view the whole area Automatic Vehicle Tracking 0 0 Figure 26 Initiating the program 43 Automatic Asset Tracking System Chapter 6 Economic Evaluation This chapter will show in detail what costs are involved in order to develop and install such a system in an airport This will involve the costs of the engineers and software designers as well as the cost for assembling such a device Furthermore the prices of every material used in the device will be stated and added up to show the cost of one unit In the end our system will be compared to a valid existing solution 6 1 Development In order to develop an Automatic Asset Tracking System a lot of different specialists engineers and coordinators are needed This means that we need at least 2 technical engineers 2 software designers 1 person from the marketing and research department and a supervisor t
63. nd vehicles are moving and surveying the Airport of Barcelona a system that could be implemented must have a high performance rate and reliability However no matter how good the system is it will be difficult to monitor each and every car not only because of interferences or system limitations but also for the controller to spot that many vehicles at once Hence it would be better to decrease this number by any means possible This leads to the suggestion that there is no reason to control all the airport vehicles just those that can be involved in an accident or represent a high risk for the safety of the airport Therefore the vehicles which should be monitored are all the cars that have access to the airstrip like airplane tugs fire trucks maintenance cars etc 1 2 Project Specification The project aims to search for an existing system or develop a new solution which is able to track all vehicles moving in the airport area Furthermore the positions should be available once every second in order to monitor the cars in real time Another very important specification is that the displayed position needs to be within 5 meters of the actual location in order to clearly see if a vehicle is on a real street on the runway or on a field This information can be used to prevent accidents or collisions inside the surveillance area Therefore the accuracy of the entire system has to be 5m The next requirement is that the area whic
64. nnnnr nn nannnnnnnos 17 Table 5 Relation between Pins and Signal 22 Table 6 Functional characteristics of TinyPro Terminal 26 Table 7 Register description DE 30 Table 8 Configuration of the radio modems 32 Table 9 Costs for human resources nenii aia rana rara rra 44 Table 10 Costs for assembling and installation 45 Table 11 Material COStS ato iia 45 Table 12 Material costs for the entire airport 46 Table 13 Curmulated COS Sucios condal dera suede iaa td cian dic 47 Table Ta SWOT E EC 52 AA invaserat POUMONCA CATALUNYA AONA Es Automatic Asset Tracking System Chapter 1 Introduction Nowadays companies focus on a worldwide perspective due to the increasing globalization in recent years Therefore a variety of employees is needed to fulfill the global market demands Additionally the majority of working methods to solve problems shift towards a more team based approach in which different skill sets backgrounds and point of views are required Realizing these requirements the Engineering College of Copenhagen founded the European Project Semester EPS The program offers the opportunity to learn to work in teams in an international multicultural and interdisciplinary atmosphere and thereby providing the students with the proper knowledge of the future work life This year the EPS at the Escola Polit cnica Superior d Enginyeria de Vilanova I la Geltr Universitat Polit cnica de Catalunya is offered for the fou
65. o Ae 8 NVS nenat POUMONCA DE CATALUNYA AENA Y Ss Automatic Asset Tracking System Table of contents Chapter 1 Introduction asics steps nnna 5 Lt Background EEEE E E E EE E E T A O IE E ER Ee 6 L Project Specification sessen ENEE 6 1 3 Planof DevelopmMent i oiooociinocoocinioicccinnooircianoonrciinocn senn nenen nOon Snn GEES NENE SSES AEN 7 Chapter 2 State ofthe AM ssissidiscscsisisascsacasancssccsscdsadacancnccasensesdasencsadawendueseseasnacanas 8 KAN P AT E 8 2 2 RR E EE 8 2 3 GPS GPRS GSM iiivceccciven ecsvciesscssivdessvcsveteescvveonsssdanecsscvvenescceverseives sgueesieceseivebeesiubeescasixes 9 E E desccicctescceseceleticscescutsteescessutescuvdvesssssaeccecersdcessutestcesessicetsunsecessetecee sseaaseeesencecssecssveasees 9 252 JIRE GPS SOIUtIOMN ssi NT 9 Chapter 3 Automatic Asset Tracking System ccccccsssessseeeeeeeeeeeeeeees 10 Chapter 4 Hardware Implementation cccccccssssssseeeeeeeeeeeeeseeeseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees 13 4 1 Global Positioning Systems 0 sceeseccscossessccsesnsccceosessccnssnsscconsnsscccosnssccessnssccecsnsses 14 4 1 1 General features ocn dada 15 4 1 2 NMEA 0183 Protocolos 16 4 1 3 Connecting the GPS seiis ie 18 4 1 4 EI el atada dd 19 4 2 e un UN CT 21 4 2 1 RS 23 ET 21 4 2 2 ANNE ER 4 3 E NA O 23 4 3 1 Hardware Components 23 4 3 2 Characteristics ceresna aatinaa E rdcads 24 4 3 3 Functional characteristics ssec sisiane bi 25 4 3 4 Transm
66. o coordinate everything Therefore the chart below shows the hours one engineer or software designer would need to develop such a system The price per hour is not the actual hourly earnings of an engineer but how much his work is worth if he would do something else Table 9 Costs for human resources Overall Costs Field Department Working Hours Cost per Hour Technical Engineer 22 000 Software Designer 400 55 22 000 Research Marketing 200 55 11 000 Supervisor Management 3 750 6 2 Implementation The actual implementation consists of assembling the devices and then installing them on each car and the receiver in a tower or any other location where it could operate most efficiently This work can be done by normal technical assistants which do not cost as much as specialist in their fields However the costs and time involved has to be taken into consideration Therefore the next chart shows the time and cost to assemble the devices and on the other hand the installment costs to provide 1000 vehicles with this system 10 The cost per hour are taken from Xarxa inal mbrica a la Banda ISM per a la monitoritzaci d un dispositiu GPS 2009 Bachelor Project 44 Automatic Asset Tracking System Table 10 Costs for assembling and installation Field Department Working Hours Cost per Overall Costs Hour Technical 40 000 Assistant Assembling Technical 20 000
67. omatic Asset Tracking System Overall Costs for a GPS GPRS system Development Costs 0 Implementation Costs 20 000 Material Cost 100 000 Monthly Fee 10 000 Overall Costs 120 000 10 000 per month As one can see the GPS solution is much cheaper in a short term point of view due to the fact that the system already exists thus having no development costs as well as the fact that a wide range of products is available which reduces the price immensely However in a long term analysis the GPS system will cost 10 000 per month for as long as it exists Therefore the new system will become profitable after 3 Years This development is shown in the table and graph displayed below Table 13 Cumulated costs Cumulated Price New Cumulated Price GPS GPRS System System 447 966 50 120 000 447 966 50 240 000 447 966 50 360 000 447 966 50 480 000 447 966 50 600 000 447 966 50 720 000 800000 700000 600000 500000 ak 400000 E Cumulated Price New System 300000 200000 m Cumulated Price GPS GPRS System 100000 0 Figure 27 Comparison of long term costs of the two systems 47 A AA wemmer steet DE CATALUNYA AONA Es Automatic Asset Tracking System Chapter 7 Field Tests This chapter will guide through every gained experience with the new system while testing it In the beginning of the project every hardware or software
68. omewhat user friendly making it easy to configure and utilize it even while being run Bearing the requirements of the software in mind a decision was made to split it into two independent programs which work simultaneously and interact with one another The first program handles the receiving of the data and takes care of creating the additional files needed such as the logs Meanwhile the other program takes care of the interaction with the user and makes sure that all the data is displayed properly Since all the conversions are mainly being done by the first mentioned program the workload of the program that handles the displaying of the data will be significantly less A decision was made to use only open source solutions in order to lower the costs as much as possible The fact that open source software is being used will make the future modifications a lot more trouble free and provides the possibility to use the software in any way needed Apart from that there are already numerous examples available to use freely for programming The final crucial thing to mention is that the operating system under which the new programs have to run has to be one of the Linux distributions The reason for that is the speed and versatility of the system When run under Windows some image flickering is clearly visible when the application is refreshing the map This issue does not occur under Linux The distribution that was chosen is the latest version
69. ords first_line pixel_column pixel_row pixelate Time time Latitude lati Longitude longi f2 write pixel_column pixel_row n print Pixels pixel_column pixel_row f write Time time Latitude lati Longitude longi n print time lati longi lati_d lati_m lati_s N longi_d longi_m longi_s E n f write n while True loop dealing with the rest of the received frames with open filename a as f with open coordinatez txt a as f2 line ser readline f write line printing into the log file print line outcome calc rec check_checksum line if not outcome calculating pixels checksums and printing on the screen and into the files print Frame corrupted not recorded f write CHECKSUM ERROR calculated calc received rec n n else time lati lati_d lati_m lati_s longi longi_d longi_m longi_s read_coords line pixel_column pixel_row pixelate Time time Latitude lati Longitude longi print Pixels pixel_column pixel_row 68 Automatic Asset Tracking System f2 write pixel_column pixel_row n f write Time time Latitude lati Longitude longi n print time lati longi n lati_d lati_m lati_s N
70. orementioned information the GPS was ready to be tested However to ensure the best possible connection a specific driver for the USB input output had to be installed in order to recognize the USB converter Otherwise it would not have been possible to monitor the GPS These drivers are free and available for all types of Personal Computers courtesy of Future Technology Devices International Ldt Company who offer their products to every interested user This tool is called Virtual COM Port VCP and it causes the USB device to appear as an additional COM port available to the PC The market offers a lot of free software tools to check the coordinates on the PC The program used during this project is called Celestron 4 1 3 1 GPS Software Celestron Celestron is a free program which is not only used for monitoring but also offers the users the function to select and configure almost all of the parameters Especially that different type of frames can be requested from the GPS Another feature of this program is that it can be used to configure the time clock of the GT 320R receiver Picture from RF Solutions http www rfsolutions co uk Drivers available at this web http www ftdichip com Drivers VCP htm 18 Automatic Asset Tracking System Since the default time is set in a UTC Coordinated Universal Time format the time had to be set forward by two hours to synchronize with Spanish real time The
71. r path self updateNumber H print path D print self avtDisplay coordsifiles index path num 0 for coordinate in self avtDisplay coords self avtDisplay icons self avtDisplay coords index coordinate Icon int coordinate 0 int coordinate 1 self a vtDisplay scale num num num 1 self avtStatus SetStatusText Update str self updateNumber at time asctime 1 self Refresh self Update def Reader self filename n function reading the coordinates with open filename as f lines f readlines if len lines lt n n len lines line lines n 1 strip split return line def Reader_2 self filename n alternative function to read the coordinates with open filename as f first f readline if f readline checks if files consists of more than one line return first strip split else offset 4 while True if more than one line than gets the last line immediately f seek offset 2 lines f readlines if len lines gt 1 last lines 1 strip split break offset 2 return last def Filelterator self function finding all the txt files fileList for infile in glob glob os path join os getcwd txt fileList append infile return fileList def SetUpMenus self Hfunction creating the menus Menubar Begins HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAHHHAHHHHHH HHH HHA HH He He HDD 58 AA INVENIA POUMONCA DE tg AONA Es Automatic Asset Tracking System
72. radio frequency device The General Packet Radio Service GPRS aims to send data packages to GSM and UMTS networks Nonetheless it needs a SIM card and therefore a telephone contract to send the position This leads to fixed cost every month of around 10 Euros per car which will quickly add up However this system is able to track assets with a 1 second location rate which would meet our demands In addition to that there are a lot of different systems available already This system would be the easiest safest and most tested used solution due to the fact that it is used by a lot of companies which have a Fleet Managing and Tracking System On the other hand it is also the most expensive solution considering the long term costs 2 4 RFID Radio frequency identification RFID is a technology that uses communication through the use of radio waves to exchange data between a reader and an electronic tag attached to an object for the purpose of identification and tracking This system however is not able to track cars in real time It is normally used in supermarkets or other stores to read barcodes Also the manufacturing business uses it to track their materials throughout their entire production area This means that the system can rather be used to restrict areas or monitor cars going in or out of a certain area but not tracking the vehicles in real time on the whole airport area Nonetheless this system would have no service fees or addit
73. rogram which presents the data for the user in such a form that it is as easily understandable as possible This is achieved by using the already divided files for each asset one file per vehicle Each second the program is being updated checking all the data files for new information If a new position is located the program is refreshed using the new data 5 2 3 Reading files Files which are required for the printing process to work are the data files the ones with just the pixel coordinates A method which searches the specified directory to find all the txt files and writes their paths into a list is not only being executed with the start of the program but also with every iteration of the program so that if new file new vehicle appears while the program is already running it is immediately taken into account and becomes visible on the map When found each file is assigned a number which later allows the recognition of the vehicles representations on the map This feature will be described in more detail in the following section After that the initial coordinates of each objects 1 1 are put into another list With every iteration of the program i e every second the newest coordinates in the form of a line from each file are being read and compared to those read in the previous step If they are the same nothing happens but if they differ they are replaced by the newly read ones The total number of refreshing cycles i
74. ronan nn nnonnn nn ncnnnnss 15 GPS PIN CONNECLONS atm eege eege 15 Cable assembly for connection with GPS 320R modules 18 Celestron inte au dEE 19 GPS OUtpUt O Matias a 19 DB9 Connector 21 Modems Tiny Pro a M868 IP67 and b B868B A 24 Connection between TinyOne Module and Computer 24 B868 TINVYONS PrO arses aani aaaea a a aedeagus aaa aaa a iaaa anaE aaraa 25 Transparent MOUE arrir ciencia canoa A EAEE A TAARA AE 27 Adressed Secured Mode ceci adi 28 Tiny Tools V 1 0OW Software 29 Register configuration ccsscceesceceecceessecesssecseeeeceueeecsuecsessecseneecuecussueesesseceseeesaesesaaaessneeees 33 SUCIO el Die EE 34 Magnetic system E 34 The console showing a corrupted Trame 38 Log file in which checksum errors have occurred cooococcccoccccnononcnonononanononononononananononnnannncnanonos 39 The program displaying the positions of the vebices 40 The Ele Me Uriarte 41 ThE Track MENU circa till 42 The SWUM ni a EE 43 Initiating The pro ida 43 Comparison of long term costs Of the two svstems 47 Coverage area at the Airport of Barcelona coooocccconocccccanonnncnononnncnanonononanonnnccnnn cnn ccnnannncnnnns 49 an OUE y Ge Automatic Asset Tracking System Index of tables Table 1 Pinout description EE 16 Table 2 NMEA 0183 Protocol Suicidio rre ai eieaa 16 Table 3 GPGLL Graphic Position Latitude and Longttude 17 Table 4 GPRMC Recommended Minimum Specific Data ooooonococoncccnonnnononnnnnnnnnnnn nono r
75. rth time The European Project Semester gives students the possibility to work in a team with the same goal Besides the different backgrounds the young engineers have to manage the project development by demonstrating the skills gathered during the studies Therefore the variety of studies does not create distance during the work process Moreover the diversification of ideas leads to discussions and debates which will enrich each members knowledge Hence the project offers the opportunity to improve greatly in all the aspects possible The biggest hurdle to overcome is an effective communication because it is fundamental to establish a good team work For this reason not only does everyone have to get a proper usage of the English tongue in order to share their opinions and develop the project but also each team member needs to be confident to express his or her ideas and criticism Therefore a good and friendly relationship as well as respect for one another must be established This paper deals with the collaborative project Automatic Asset Tracking System which is performed in cooperation with the AENA Aeropuertos Espa oles y Navegaci n A rea Company in particular with El Prat de Llobregat Barcelona Airport and the Escola Polit cnica Superior d Enginyeria de Vilanova I la Geltr The Aena Company offers the opportunity to work on a pioneering project for the biggest airport in Catalonia In addition to that we received s
76. s presented in such form that it will be easy to read and identify what the different numbers represent It will also be easy to localize corrupt data since the program will make a notification in the log file Additionally to the log files the software simultaneously creates a separate data file including only the pixel coordinates created from the longitude and latitude information of each frame received as well This is simply done with the intention of separating files meant to be read by the users by the files that have an actual purpose for the program A separate data file is created for each vehicle and new coordinates are recorded into the file as soon as new positioning information is being received The form of the data stored in the files is width and height in pixels The reason of this format is to make the process faster when it is time to print the position of the vehicles Because of that a function transforming the longitude to width in pixels and latitude to height in pixels is being activated as soon as it is time for the program to make a new entry in the data file 38 Automatic Asset Tracking System a apen y save E a _ GPS 2011 05 26 13 59 17 txt NR Time 14 08 07 Latitude 41 2938283333 Longitude 2 05902833333 SGPRMC 140808 97 V 4117 6297 N 00203 5417 E 260511 N 43 Time 14 08 08 Latitude 41 2938283333 Longitude 2 05902833333 GPRMC 140810 97 V 4117 6297 N 00203 5417 E 260511 N 4A Time 14 0
77. s being counted and displayed within the toolbar at the bottom of the screen As a result it is easy to check how much time has passed since the program had been launched and what the exact amount of updates is 39 Automatic Asset Tracking System For safety reasons and to guarantee longer faultless uptime the part responsible for reading the files is handled by a separate thread Threading is particularly useful in applications with their own graphical user interfaces to take care of long lasting processes running in the background This approach ensures that the action taking place in the background is not interrupted by user interactions 5 2 4 The printing process The next step is to use the coordinates in order to create a list of Icon class objects This class gathers all the basic properties of the icons representing the vehicles to be drawn within the window the current scale recent position on the map and the number assigned after the corresponding file has been found Whenever a vehicle changes its position the coordinates of the corresponding icon are being superseded The final part of each iteration of the printing process is to redraw the map of the airport and the vehicles representations on top of it Additionally each of the objects marked on top of the map has its own label in the form of the letter V followed by an appropriate number which allows the vehicle to be identified at once The update event of the window
78. sions are not fully compatible with each other Nonetheless new packages are being developed for Python constantly By installing one of these modules the language s potential and capabilities in the form of new classes and functions will be extended In the end version 2 7 was chosen because compared to the 3 x versions it has got greater compatibility with additional components 5 1 2 wxPython The most vital extension module that is being used is wxPython It is a wrapper which allows the user to create a graphical user interface GUI more effortlessly compared to using the native Python interface called Tkinter The task of wxPython is to import wxWidgets a library written in C into the programming language making additional components for creating GUIs available for the programmer With similarity to Python wxPython is also an open source module and made in a similar sense of simplicity This extension module is being used in order to create a window which will be used to show the map with the vehicles depicted within it Therefore it plays a huge role in the interpretation of the application Besides that this extension is being used to offer the user the possibility to interact with the application more naturally 5 1 3 pySerial Another important Python extension used in the development of the software is pySerial It is a library which provides support for serial connections over a wide range of different devices Bl
79. solution was only made on a theoretical basis However to present the system to the airport officials a practical test was absolutely necessary However one test was not enough which lead to many more experiments in the laboratory of the university at first Nonetheless during the later stages of the development the tests had to take place in the actual working environment to gain valid information from the results and learn about problems that could only occur in this particular area Each time a newer version of system was available tests were performed to try the new features that had been implemented If any mistakes or defects were discover they were dealt with at once to improve the overall experience After that the tests were repeated to check 1f any new problems arose During the entire development process the whole improving testing procedure was absolutely crucial in order to pinpoint where the weaknesses of the system were One of the main issues discovered during the lab tests was that 1t appeared that the GPS unit needs some time to warm up As a result after turning on the GPS during first few minutes it is constantly receiving the same data even though the unit is moving It occurs due to the fact that the GPS unit needs some time to establish the connection with the satellites After three months of working in the laboratory the team was given the opportunity to go to Barcelona Airport itself to perform some actual field tests
80. stem The third and last day of field tests continued in the same manner as the previous one That day the project team was also given access to a car which allowed a wider test radius and also the possibility to test the device s signal strength within the zone where airplanes are present Two members of the team were situated in the car together with a set composed of a GPS unit and a transmitter The rest of the team was monitoring the receiver on a PC and ensuring the proper performance of the system The communication between these two parts of the team was established by walkie talkies The car was driven to areas on the airport further away and closer to the location of the antenna The strength of the signal differed from place to place The inspected range of reception is marked on figure 28 Ka E Y Figure 28 Coverage area at the Airport of Barcelona 49 AA wemmer ste DE CATALUNYA AONA Es Automatic Asset Tracking System The covered area as displayed in the picture above is not homogeneous This is due to the fact that in numerous locations within the area of the airport the signal encountered some interference with other communication systems already present in the facilities of the airfield Another reason that could affect the reception of the signal is that the location of the antenna was not yet the appropriate one In case of the actual system implementation the aerial would be installed in a mor
81. t be said that it is completely finalized The greatest importance was attached to creating a whole functionality of the most crucial parts of the software Therefore the graphical user interface is not yet entirely finished Nevertheless in the shape as it is in now it can safely be implemented in the new system and the airport network In this section some improvements and changes which could significantly enhance the user application interaction are being proposed Examples of what could still be done are as followed Implement a terminal within the main window of the application to be able to keep an eye on all the events in just one window Display a list of all the observed devices with the possibility to choose which ones to show Add additional data to be viewed e g the current speed of the vehicle and its direction Include warning sounds when corrupted data is received Replace the currently used map with one of higher resolution to be able to zoom in more Implement the possibility to grab the map and move it in the desired direction for more intuitiveness than using scrollbars Make the menu options which are not implemented yet available i e Choose what files to read and Show user manual as described in the section 5 3 2 Until this point the focus has been put in getting only one device to work properly Since the main task of the system is to monitor several vehicles at once the implementation of the i
82. ter considering all the protocols that can fulfill the project requirements the Recommended Minimum Specific Protocol was chosen due to the facts mentioned in section 5 1 2 E GPs 2011 05 26 13 12 33 Bloc de notas Archivo Edici n Formato Ver Ayuda GPRMC 141152 95 A 4118 3914 N 00204 GPRMC 141153 95 A 4118 3914 N 00204 on A 4118 3914 N 00204 on A 4118 3914 N 00204 on A 4118 3914 N 00204 o A 4118 3914 N 00204 on A 4118 3914 N 00204 on A 4118 3914 N 00204 on A 4118 3914 N 00204 on A 4118 3914 N 00204 on A 4118 3914 N 00204 on A 4118 3914 N 00204 on A 4118 3914 N 00204 on A 4118 3914 N 00204 on A 4118 3914 N 00204 o A 4118 3914 N 00204 on A 4118 3914 N 00204 95 A 4118 3914 N 00204 on A 4118 3917 N 00204 on A 4118 3917 N 00204 on A 4118 3917 N 00204 on A 4118 3917 N 00204 on A 4118 3817 N 00204 on A 4118 3817 N 00204 GPRMC 141228 95 A 4118 3831 N 00204 4 m 9478 E 001 4 245 3 260511 000 9478 E 001 0 245 9 260511 000 9478 E 000 7 246 0 260511 000 9478 E 000 5 245 8 260511 000 9478 E 000 3 245 2 260511 000 9478 E 000 2 245 2 260511 000 9478 E 000 1 245 2 260511 000 9478 E 000 1 245 2 260511 000 9478 E 000 0 245 2 260511 000 9478 E 000 0 245 2 260511 000 9478 E 000 0 245 2 260511 000 9478 E 000 0 245
83. the RFID system and the ZigBee solution are not a fitting choice for the task Furthermore the new system should be as cost efficient as possible and not produce any long term costs Thus the GPS GPRS solution cannot be used for our project Finally after researching the market for other available tracking systems the choice was made to develop a new system with a mix of the aforementioned solutions Considering the pros and cons it became clear that a Radio Frequency technology will be the most appropriate communication system It was chosen not only due to the low costs of the transmission modules but also because it does not produce any additional monthly expenses In order to make the system more mobile than the normal RFID solution we added a GPS device to determine the position Therefore the data can be sent from the RF device to one central receiver thus avoiding any fixed checkpoints for determining the position Our system is basically composed of a mobile device which is used to keep track of the current position of the vehicles placed on the roof of each car In addition to that a fixed antenna which will receive the position is installed in a central and high position This combination enables the data to be displayed on a monitor in close proximity to the receiving point The mobile device is a plastic box containing all the elements that establish a remote connection Those elements are a positioning system and a power supp
84. the modem will try to send the message in case of an unavailable radio link when LBT functionality is activated M868 B868 TinyPRO modems can communicate in addressed secured mode only if they are a part of the same network Therefore the ID network given by 252 register is set to be the same for all devices Although there can be up to 65535 defined networks only one can work in a certain area of each radio channel Even though the client numbers can vary between 1 and 65535 it has to be unique for the receiver and transmitter The number for the system s mobile modem was set to 10 and for the fixed one to 20 For displaying the sender address the register S255 is set to the default parameters which in conclusion means that each of the bits has the appropriate value The S256 register sets the address where the frames are being sent Table 8 represents the values of the registers used to configure the radio modems 31 Automatic Asset Tracking System Table 8 Configuration of the radio modems Registers Fixed Node Mobile Modem Router Modem S200 S201 S202 S204 S206 S209 S210 212 S213 S214 S215 S216 S220 S223 S226 S227 S240 S250 S252 S255 S256 p j CO En ra F A M NY E Lu ra ka L O O 0 Nu x ofo fE H w H e Li rz r e e Go HH WwW O O 2x P2P N W N Un be e U gt E G Ny o N al o oo CO m al gt gt N As it can be seen in the table
85. the printed circuit Board for the GPS a supply block a magnet a LI Ion Battery a 9v Battery and a box which have a combined price of 387 35 The receiver on the other hand is composed of a Tiny One Pro Demo Kit B868 with two modules a USB to RS232 Adapter a RS232 DB9 plug a supply block and a box which has a value of 509 85 The node router consists of one of the two modules from the receiver no additional costs a supply block a RS232 DB9 plug and a box summing up to a price of 47 90 Taking into consideration that we only need one receiver and one node router the major cost factor as seen in table 12 will be the transmitter because the network consists of 1000 vehicles which have to be tracked Table 12 Material costs for the entire airport Device Overall Price Receiver 509 85 509 85 Transmitter 387 35 1000 387 350 Node Router 47 90 1 47 90 6 4 Cost effectiveness As a result of all the factors mentioned above the development implementation and the materials will cost a lot of money in the beginning However from a long term point of view this will be a profitable investment as the comparison with a GPS GPRS solution shows Overall Costs for the new system Development Costs 58 750 Implementation Costs 60 000 Material Costs 387 907 75 Receiver 509 85 Transmitter 387 350 Node Router 47 90 Overall Costs 447 966 50 46 Aut
86. tic Asset Tracking System a Figure 11 Modems Tiny Pro a M868 IP67 and b B868 The fixed modem is connected to the PC through a RS 232 cable to the serial port as shown in figure 12 Additionally the modem receives data from the mobile device connected to the additional PCB board with the GPS module If it is necessary because of distance range coverage it can get data from the router as well The received data will be displayed on a graphical interface which allows locating the GPS module TinyOne Module Figure 12 Connection between TinyOne Module and Computer As mentioned before the fixed modem is placed in the Technical Block Building at the T2 terminal and the antenna is located on the rooftop of the building to improve the receiving quality and to allow the transmission and receiving of data to be done directly The node router is used for instance when the distance between receiver and transmitter is too big In this case the role of the router located in a midpoint of the surveyed area is to receive the signal from the mobile device and to transmit it further through a specified channel to a fixed modem Before proceeding to more detailed explanation of the role of each device in the system it is very important to know the characteristics of these modems 4 3 2 Characteristics Two different types of modems are used to create a more complex system in addition to cover all the set requirements The charact
87. tifying clients with a specific number added to each data frame The receiver recognizes the transmitting modem by the first number of the data frame The possibility to add one frame ending character is given The addition of Carrier Return lt CR gt after each received frame is distinguishing Data frames can easily be transmitted simultaneously from one modem to any other modem in the same network The secured algorithm of address secured mode is if nothing is received after a delay equivalent to 3 serial time outs after the flow control signal activation the following frame will be considered as going to a new modem If something is received during this delay it will be considered as going to the same unit This way a long frame can be sent and will be split by the flow control Each of the radio modems are set to operate in addressed secured mode because all the frames are addressed checked and acknowledged through a CRC cyclic redundancy check In this operation mode the TinyOne Pro modules can communicate only if they are all part of the same network This means it is necessary to set the same network ID However it is essential to set different client numbers as transmission addresses in order to indicate the default address to which every radio frame will be sent This is described in figure 5 For both communication protocols Transparent and Addressed Secured Mode the LBT Listen Before Talk function is availa
88. tion between the mobile modem and GPS is made using LVTTL LVTTL cable http www rapidbridge com productbriefs ligio_lvttl_pb pdf 22 A ARAS wemmer steet DE CATALUNYA AONA Es Automatic Asset Tracking System 4 3 Radio modules The purpose of the project is to locate vehicles within a small space less than 10km and to then represent their positions on a screen thus improving overall security To realize this and to see the coordinates on an interface a way to transmit this information from the spot where it is placed or runs the track must be picked This information is sent to a PC with the intention of monitoring the safe landing of airplanes on the runway To implement this system radio modules were chosen because the other alternatives which are GPS GPRS GSM Global Positioning System General Packet Radio Service Global System for Mobile communications ADS B Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast and RFID Radio frequency identification are too expensive A decision has been made to work with radio modules TinyOne Pro M868 provided by Telit RF Solution for the reason that they have the essential characteristics required by the system they are cheap they use a free license frequency band the distance range in which they are sensitive to transmit and receive data is significant they are accurate and also possess some additional functions that improve the tracking process The information travels from the s
89. tion used to select which lines to translate latitude 0 0 longitude 0 0 split_line line strip split if split_line O Time latitude split_line 3 print latitude longitude split_line 5 print longitude return read_pixelz float latitude float longitude def check_checksum row function calculating and comparing the checksums item row 1 checksum_received 66 6 a 6 UNVIRBTAT SOUITONCA DE CATALINA AO Es Automatic Asset Tracking System s 0 result True for iin range len item if item i checksum_received item i 1 i 3 break s s ord item i checksum_calc convert to hex s 02X s checksum_calc s print Checksum calculated s checksum_calc print Checksum received s checksum_received if checksum_received checksum_calc result False else pass return result checksum_calc checksum_received def read_coords row function reading and splitting the received frames latitude longitude t_seconds roow row strip split if roow 0 SGPRMC pass else t_seconds str roow 1 0 2 str roow 1 2 4 str roow 1 4 6 latitude str float roow 3 0 2 float roow 3 2 60 0 latitude_degrees str int roow 3 0 2 latitude_minutes str int roow 3 2 4 latitude_seconds str float roow 3 4 60 0 longitude str float roow 5 0 3 float roow 5 3 60 0 longitude_degrees s
90. to be placed in a strategically valuable point The new structure of the network it is shown in figure 3 d D Transmitter Node Router Receiver Figure 3 Communication network No solution that met all the requirements of the project was available at the beginning of the semester For this reason a program managing the data had to be created entirely from scratch In order to present all the information received through the fixed antenna the modem is connected to the computer s serial port Furthermore the data received is managed by the application that is able to read and analyze the information One of the key elements why this project is made is that operators should be able to monitor the vehicles from one single screen Therefore the application prints a map covering the airfield and additionally plots all the locations of the vehicles on it depending on the information received from the devices Since the system should be able to handle the locations of at least one hundred vehicles the program should handle a large amount of data in real time Besides the importance of fluency in the program there are some features that will make the application as user friendly as possible Therefore a logging function recording all the received and interpreted information has been created The feature makes it possible for the user to come back and check the log files if something needs to be examined 12 AA
91. tr int roow 5 0 3 longitude_minutes str int roow 5 3 5 longitude_seconds str float roow 5 5 60 0 return t_seconds latitude latitude_degrees latitude_minutes latitude_seconds longitude_degrees longitude_minutes longitude_seconds ser serial Serial dev ttyUSBO 4800 opening the port path data GPS 4d 02d 02d 02d 02d 02d txt filename path time localtime 0 6 with open filename w as f a instead of w with open coordinatez txt a as f2 longitude 67 A AA inevinarar POUMONCA DE CATALUNYA AONA Es Automatic Asset Tracking System while True ttloop finding and analyzing first proper line line_begin ser readline split first_line first_line_to_print if line_begin 0 SGPRMC pass else for element in line_begin if line_begin index element 12 f write element printing the line into the log file first_line_to_print element first_line element break f write element first_line_to_print element first_line element break print first_line_to_print outcome calc rec check_checksum first_line if not outcome calculating pixels and checksums and printing on the screen and into the files print Frame corrupted not recorded f write CHECKSUM ERROR calculated calc received rec n n else time lati lati_d lati_m lati_s longi longi_d longi_m longi_s read_co
92. ts of creating a new system and spending a lot of money for the research and development Thus the system should always try to spend as little as possible on parts or materials which is why an open source software is very useful 1 3 Plan of Development To guide the reader through the development and research the report is divided into the following sections I State of the Art In this section an overview of the current state of the art systems for monitoring and tracking vehicles or objects is given II Hardware Implementation Contained in this section is a detailed description of the components used to develop the new system HI Software Development This section presents the design and development of the software used to run and operate the system IV Field Tests In this part the results of the tests performed to confirm the functionality of the system are explained in detail V Economic Evaluation A cost analysis in comparison with other systems is presented in this section VI Future Improvements This section lays out the future improvements and innovations of the new system VII Conclusion The final section is a summary of the founded results and a critical review of the entire project A AA wemmer steet DE CATALUNYA AONA Es Automatic Asset Tracking System Chapter 2 State of the Art There are already several existing solutions in other airports around the globe to track vehicles Also the biggest users
93. tude into pixel coordinates The outcome was that the coordinates did not appear in the proper position It was resolved relatively quickly as well after doing some debugging To sum up the first day the system was adapted to the circumstances of the airport and ready to be used in conditions similar to the real ones 48 U eo Esgiereria de Vilanova iin e SS Aena YY Automatic Asset Tracking System On the second day of field tests the time had come to test the GPS device more intensively This was achieved by walking around the airport area and thereby gathering data and checking for possible errors During these tests it was noticed that a huge amount of disturbances was present in the area which is supposed to be covered by the system After some consulting with the airport personnel it became clear that it was in fact a commonly occurring problem in the airport s communication Another problem regarding the quality of the received signal was that there is a huge amount of metal elements present throughout the airport area These disturbances caused a decreased signal strength and in some cases even a complete loss of the signal One of the possible solutions for this problem is to install an additional router which will collect the signal from the GPS and resend it to the fixed antenna Implementing this device makes it possible to double the distance range Nevertheless the tests were reasonably profitable for the development of the sy
94. tusText 2 def Onabout self event function displaying the About window description u This asset tracking system is a joint project between AENA and Universitat Polit cnica de Catalunya licence Contact Vicenc Parisi upc edu and jcoronelWaena es info wx AboutDialoginfo info Setlcon wx Icon screenruler png wx BITMAP_TYPE_PNG info SetName Automatic Vehicle tracking info SetVersion 0 0 info SetDescription description info SetCopyright C 2011 AENA UPC info SetDevelopers Jakub Wychowaniec Leonard Filip Philipp R hle Oana Beatu Linus Storhannus info SetLicence licence wx AboutBox info class MainDisplay wx ScrolledWindow class containing the map def _ init self parent ID mapFolder imageFile W H wx ScrolledWindow __ init__ self parent 1D 125 10 W H wx HSCROLL wx VSCROLL wx SUNKEN_BORDER self parent parent self mapFolder mapFolder self imatge wx Image mapFolder imageFile self iH self H H self iW self W W self SetSize self W self H self cz self GetClientSize self scale 1 self shapes 61 AA UNIVERBITAT POUMONCA DE CATALUNA AONA Es Automatic Asset Tracking System self icons self vehicles self coords self simulatedTracks self files self parent GetParent Filelterator finding the Got files for path in self files self coords append 1 1 applying initial coordinates nu
95. uetooth dongles infra red ports universal serial ports and RS 232 ports It is mainly used for accessing the serial port and allows the data to be read directly in Python The RF receiver is connected to the computer via an RS 232 to USB adapter serial port and the received coordinates can easily be gathered and operated on by using pySerial 36 6 a Bi UNVIRBTAT SOUITONCA DE CATAUITA AENA E Automatic Asset Tracking System 5 2 Receiving data The data received through the universal serial port is in a rather complex form before being dealt with by the software It contains not only the GPS coordinates which is the most important part of the data but also some other information This information needs to be filtered by selecting only the parts of information that store information needed to display the data properly Once a connection between the RF sender and the receiver has been established the system is capable of receiving the information The recognition of what parts are needed is being done in a fully automatically way The part of the software that handles the reception of the data will utilize two text files to store the needed data One of those is meant to be read by the users and the other is including the data needed in the printing process 5 2 1 The receiving process When the data created by the GPS is sent through the radio frequency devices some unwanted data will also occur This unwanted information appe
96. user friendly interface makes it very easy to fully understand and uses all features of this software KSE lestron lt lt 2004 2716 Setup View Reload Trace j JA 12056 9326 E Altitude d No fix a ES pooP foo sat i2 min Restart 01h Configure 10 02h Set Datum 03h Configure NMEA 04h Query Firmware Revision 05h Set Factory Default 08h Set ID 0Dh Query ID DEN Set DOP mask Fh Set Elevation Mask 10h DGPS Control 11h 1PPS Control 12h Set Output Format 13h E x IN Configure NMEA 04h emch een eut pat eat eet ECH I Check Sum o O Ra Query Navigation Setting 17h ge 40 A Log Send Q OO OF OOH OH D 3221231810 6 14 2 22285 Command 25 25 F 04 01 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 f5 Od Oa ACK C NACK GPAMC 134339 00 V 2328 2329 N 12056 9328 160204 N 49 a GPRMC 134349 00 V 2328 2329 N 12056 9328 160204 N SGPAMC 134350 00 V 2328 2329 N 12056 9328 160204 N ik Figure 8 Celestron interface Figure 8 presents a screenshot of the GPS software In top left corner the available satellites are shown In the middle all the options which can be modified are displayed As a last part at the bottom of the picture the GPS output is exposed 4 1 4 GPS Output The information provided by the GPS receiver as mentioned in previous paragraphs can be different depending of the protocol used For this reason and af
97. vehicles In order to do this we need a solution that can withstand the forces attacking a driving car in addition to emerging forces of gravity This means the mounting device must hold at least 5 kilograms With the purpose of achieving this goal and also providing a smooth mounting and demounting method several ways were taken into consideration However most of them would be permanently on the car such as tape screws or glue In the end a decision had to be made between two solutions 4 4 1 Suction Cup The first solution is a suction cup This device can easily be removed from the car once applied as well as mounted on any other car just as soon Furthermore the M6 thread provides a solid way to combine the device with the suction cup The downside of this solution is that the surface has to be clean and even when mounting the device Also the suction could decrease over a longer time period which could lead into a loss of the box Figure 18 Suction cup 4 4 2 Magnetic System The second and most promising solution is a magnetic system The magnet it equipped with a safety rubber around it to ensure no scratching on the vehicles surface In addition to that it also contains a M6 thread to provide a solid connection to the box Even though this solution is slightly more expensive than the suction cup it provides a safer and cleaner way of mounting and demounting the device Figure 19 Magnetic system www saugnaepf
98. veillance technology for tracking aircrafts as part of the Next Generation Air Transportation System NextGen In addition to that some airports also provide their ground vehicles with this system to keep track on all the activity on their landings fields terminals and the wider airport area The ADS B system is used in the airports of Frankfurt Helsinki and other big airports This solution uses ADS B Out Transponders which will need to be installed in every modern airplane at least in the US It can track airplanes or vehicles faster and much better than the radar system and it also functions in any weather condition It sends data to the ADS B In Station at the airport towers This information which is broadcasted every second or even faster includes altitude heading speed and distance to other airplanes or vehicles However this system is relatively new and the needed technology is not that wide spread The United States try to have the system completely running by 2020 Nonetheless this solution would also only have material and installation costs but no service fees or additional costs It is definitely a system which will gain popularity in the future and is as cost efficient as any system can be AA UNVERETAT POUMONCA DE CATALUNYA AONA Es Automatic Asset Tracking System 2 3 GPS GPRS GSM The GPS device in combination with the GPRS function is quite similar to our new found solution The GPRS would take the place of our

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