EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
- Low Power Pet and Vehicle Tracker board based on GPS and GSM Modules.
- This modules will be fitted to different pets and different vehicles to track their locations and send the corresponding alerts to respective users.
REQUIREMENTS
- Complete hardware and firmware development for pet and vehicle tracker.
- GPS acquisition of Gps Co-ordinates bases on GPS Tellit Module.
- Tellit GSM will be used to send GPS Co-ordinates to cloud based server.
- Circular and Rectangular Geofence algorithms ported on tracker is used to identify tracker for a particular location.
- Tracker motion and movement detection using Accelerometer.
- SOS Alarm support capability to send SOS message to registered users via GSM.
- Tracker to act like a proximity device using Bluetooth chip.
- Firmware Upgrade feature to support remote firmware upgrade.
- USB Based charging for low power tracker device.
- Different alert support including following :_
- Low battery.
- Geo-in and Geo-out.
- SOS support.
- Tracker configuration via SMS.
- Complete cloud based solution to track different tracker devices running in the field.
CHALLENGES
- Board size was very big challenge. The board size requirement was 50mm*25 mm size. This size is to ensure that the tracker properly fits in the pet s collar device.
- Power management was a huge challenge. The requirement was 500mAH Battery should be able to run the tracker device for at least 2 weeks.
- Having 3 radios including GPS Radio, GSM Radio and Bluetooth Radio was a huge challenge in terms of board layout so that there is minimum interference and also high signal to noise ratio.
- Fitting the all the firmware code in existing flash and ram was a huge challenge.
- Geofence algorithm porting was a challenge as it was consuming lot of memory
SOLUTION
- For hardware layout and design we did lot of reviews with different vendors to ensure that there was no EMI impact.
- Kinetics KL27 was used as the controller as it has excellent power management capabilities.
- The hardware design included sleep and wake-up feature for major peripherals so that when it is not in use it can save lot of power.
- The module which were selected for GPS and GSM had the capabilities to run in low power modes.
- Modular Firmware development approach was used and it had multiple reviews with clients to ensure that the functionality is as per the expectations.
- For RAM and flash usage, the firmware development was done such that there is lot of re-use of existing used memory.
- Customization of Geo-fence algorithm was done to fit in existing memory footprint.
