DEVELOPMENT OF AUTO TRACKING AND AUTO LOOKING OF VEHICLE FOR SECURITY CONCERNS

Project Title

Project Area of Specialization

Electrical/Electronic Engineering

Project Summary

Nowadays, the number of vehicles is rapidly increasing in a lot of developing countries including Pakistan. At the same time, the vehicle theft has become a serious issue in the societies. According to the survey in 1st October 2015 in Myanmar Times News, the number of vehicles on roads has been nearly doubled since 2011. It is jumping from 2,363,947 to 5,077,699 due to the Ministry of Transportation, Myanmar [1]. Then, a Vehicle Anti-theft Tracking (VAT) system that can be installed into a vehicle with a low cost at any time, is strongly demanded, since a conventional VAT system is very expensive and is usually installed into a luxury car when it is produced.

On the one hand, the Internet of Things (IoT) has come out as a popular technology changing the concept of “connecting people” to “connecting things”. The IoT provides a network of sensors, actuators, machines, and home appliances. They are embedded with computing devices and software, which enable these things to be connected with each other and exchange data over Internet. A variety of low-cost devices and cloud platforms for the IoT have become available. In this project, we propose a very low-cost VAT system for authorities and personal use using the IoT cloud platform. This system allows people in developing countries to be easily installed into their vehicles at any time. This system has the following features: (1) the vehicle theft is detected using an Arduino-connected GPS module, (2) the alarm mail is sent to the email of the vehicle owner, (3) automatic door locking of vehicle is done if someone tries to remove GPS module, (4) the location data of the vehicle is periodically stored in the IoT cloud platform called ThingSpeak, (5) the web server is always showing exact location of the vehicle to the authorities for all kind of security and theft concerns.We implement this system and confirm the correctness of the designed functions through trial applications.

Project Objectives

Objectives

Recently, the vehicle theft has become the serious issue in developing countries, due to the rapid increase of vehicles. Then, a Vehicle Anti-theft Tracking system can play an important role to protect it. Unfortunately, a conventional VAT system is too expensive to be introduced for many people in such countries. On the one hand, the Internet of Things (IoT) has come out as a popular technology changing the concept of “connecting people” to “connecting things”, where low-cost IoT devices and cloud platforms have become available. In this project, we propose authorities level use VAT system using IoT platform that can be easily introduced due to the very low cost. This system has the following features: (1) the vehicle theft is detected using an Arduino-connected GPS module, (2) the alarm mail is sent to the email of the vehicle owner, (3) automatic door locking of vehicle is done if someone tries to remove GPS module, (4) the location data of the vehicle is periodically stored in the IoT cloud platform called ThingSpeak, (5) the web server is always showing exact location of the vehicle to the authorities for all kind of security and theft concerns. We implement this system and confirm the correctness of the implemented functions through trial applications.

Project Implementation Method

Methodology

The proposed system is composed of the vehicle tracking and auto door locking of vehicle if theft occur, the cloud IoT platform in the Internet, and the authorities web server. The theft detection device consists of a GPS module, and a microcontroller. For the microcontroller, Arduino Uno is adopted, where Arduino IDE and Android Studio are used in developing software for this device. They are available at very low costs. For the IoT platform, ThingSpeak Server is adopted where the basic function can be used free.

We will come up with the desired project using the following equipments and the following methodology:

Microcontroller

Arduino Mega 2560 is used as the microcontroller for this system. Arduino Mega 2560 is a microcontroller board based on the ATmega2560. It has 54 digital input/output pins (of which 15 can be used as PWM outputs), 16 analog inputs, 4 UARTs (hardware serial ports), a 16 MHz crystal oscillator, a USB connection, a power jack, an ICSP header, and a reset button. It contains everything needed to support the microcontroller; simply connects it to a computer with a USB cable or power it with a AC-to-DC adapter or battery to get started.

GPS module

Ublox Neo 7N-0-002 GPS module is used in this system. This module has an external antenna and built-in EEPROM. It requires a power supply of 3V to 5V and a default baud rate of 9600 bps. It works with NMEA sentences. Neo 7N has the data logging feature, which enables continuous storage of position, velocity and time information to an internal 16Mbit SQI FLASH memory. The GPS module receives data from the GPS satellites and calculates the module’s geographical location. Once the module is powered, National Marine Electronics Association (NMEA) sentence is sent out of a serial transmit pin at default baud rate (9600bps).

Software description

The details of the adopted software are described as follows.

Thingspeak server

ThingSpeak server is an open data pla

Benefits of the Project

By the end of the research results we will be able to implement it in the real life applications and make our vehicles more secure and connected to the authorities all the time to make the environment more secure. By the all time tracking mechanism the user and the authorities the users will stay more secure as there vehicle will be in the supervision of the authorities. Adding the all time tracking and IoT controlled door lock will help in catching the burglar acted the theft. So, This project presented the very low-cost personal, and authority level use vehicle tracking and anti theft system using the cloud IoT platform called ThingSpeak. The anti-theft device for a vehicle is implemented with the Arduino microcontroller and the GPS module. The all time vehicle tracking is represented on the webserver. The correctness of the implemented functions will be confirmed through trial applications. The future works include the extension of Android applications for vehicle owner services, the durability test of the device, and the evaluation through the long term use.

Technical Details of Final Deliverable

Basically, there are three types of VAT systems, namely, the cellular tracking system, the wireless passive tracking system, and the satellite- based tracking system [2]. A practical VAT system is developed based on either of them. The cellular tracking system uses cellular phones to transmit fleet location information. In the wireless passive tracking system, users have to pay one time upon purchase and installation of the device. The main disadvantage is accessibility where data can only be accessed when the vehicle is home. The satellite based tracking system can give detailed reporting and real-time updates on company fleets even in places where there is no cellular phone coverage, though it is very expensive with a monthly service fee.

In [3], the school bus tracking system is developed for the safety of school children, where it compares the current route with the predefined route. If they are different, an alarm is triggered. Unfortunately, this system cannot show the routes that the vehicle travelled over a given time interval.

In [4], the vehicle tracking system was proposed to track the vehicles in a city using RFID (Radio Frequency Identifier). However, the RFID tag needs to be assembled on the vehicle, and RFID readers must be installed on every junction of roads. Besides, the proper information of the vehicle cannot be received when the RFID range is over. Thus, this system is too costly.

In [5], a vehicle theft alarming system was developed. It triggers the alarm when the door lock is opened in the improper manner or the key is inserted without the authority of the owner. They are detected by attached sensors on the doors or key entry of the vehicle. However, it is reported that 96% of people are unaware of the alarm. Moreover, the sensors can notify only the information of the vehicle theft. Besides, attaching sensors in a vehicle costs a lot, and makes it difficult to use this system at an arbitrary time. In [6], a vehicle theft detecting and tracking system was proposed. The locking system is also installed in the vehicle to lock vehicle door. When the theft is identified, the responsible person sends sms to the microcontroller and then the engine motor is stopped. To restart the vehicle, the authorized person restarts the vehicle and opens the door. This system is more secured, reliable and low cost. However, it is needed to have a connection between the car engine system and the vehicle theft detecting and tracking system. Keeping in view all this work we are using IoT because the Internet of Things (IoT) has come out as a popular technology changing the concept of “connecting people” to “connecting things”, where low-cost IoT devices and cloud platforms have become available. Keeping in view all the above we are making it more latest by adding the concept IoT in the mechanism.