Hi,

I am willing to build a vehicular tracking system being able to track and control a vehicle from distance usibg GPRS. I thought of using a GM862 module (with sim board) and a Sirf-StarIII, a PIC- p28 development board with RS232 interface and a tranceiver antena, BUT, PIC-p28 is for low power applications and I think it wouldn't be able e.g to power off the engine of the vehicle. Instead I thought of using an AVR Arduino but it has no RS232 interface. Any ideas how I can interface them? Should I use CAN mode?

I 'd appreciate any help

Thanks You a lot

 

Is this remote controlled vehicle going to be a small Prius or a Mack truck? Will there be a safety driver on board?

John

 

Sorry ,my fault, when I said control I only meant turning on and off the engine by using my phone.
Let's assume I only want to start off the engine of the car.
It will probably be a small car, consider as a Ford Focus

Thanks You

 

Remote car starting is a well established add-on. It appears you want to do it from some distance, perhaps as anti-theft? Who knows. In any event, I would think that remote starting and stopping a car out of visual range using a cell phone raises all sort of safety, security, and environmental issues.

John

 

That is true but in my case it is only a project. Let's say instead that I only want to open and close the windows of the vehicle or turn on and off the air-con. How that sounds for all sort of safety, security and environmental issues?

Thank You again

 

So basically, you are asking how to use a cell phone to operate a switch at a significant distance, the location of which can or will be determined by two-way GPS?

That does bring up an image of remote detonation of a bomb, even though that may not be the intent. I am not quite sure how being just a "project" mitigates that.

The remote starting of a car is probably more challenging, as you will need to deal with a number of safety issues, such as is it in park or neutral, is it occupied, did any warning signals come from the central control unit, and so forth. There is currently another thread in which the poster as part of a school project must design an interlocked starting system for a car. You might want to check that thread out. Here's the link: http://forum.allaboutcircuits.com/showthread.php?t=44157

In any event, I don't believe either type of project (excluding the homework one) has gotten a very productive response on this forum. There are just too many safety and other issues to deal with that run contrary to the forum's stated policies.

John

 

Yes indeed that is my task. As I said before it's not necessary to be the engine of a car. Also, if that was for a bomb detonation I wouldn't post any threads here, these people know what they're doing. This is my final project report actually. Being able to wireless connect to an ODB and get real time data as spotting the position of the vehicle on google maps. BUT I want to do something more advanced in order to get better results as this project has been done previously by other students.

Thank You anyway

 

Sorry, my question simply is 'How can I interface an Arduino AVR with a GM862 and why use of an AVR is different from PIC-p28'?

Thank You

 

Hi,

I am willing to build a vehicular tracking system being able to track and control a vehicle from distance usibg GPRS. I thought of using a GM862 module (with sim board) and a Sirf-StarIII, a PIC- p28 development board with RS232 interface and a tranceiver antena, BUT, PIC-p28 is for low power applications and I think it wouldn't be able e.g to power off the engine of the vehicle. Instead I thought of using an AVR Arduino but it has no RS232 interface. Any ideas how I can interface them? Should I use CAN mode?

I 'd appreciate any help

Thanks You a lot

Low power applications means that the PIC consumes little power, but there is no problem using it to operate for example a relay that will turn off the ignition. That just needs one resistor, one transistor, a diode and the relay.

I designed a GPS data logger, so this project is pretty similar. I dont know what peripherals does the developement board have, but remember you need at least two serials, one for GPS and one for GPRS, because switching the is not so easy. Third one (or some USB port) isn't a bad idea either, because you can then easily debug your program using some terminal.
The project I did was controled by ATmega128 (128k flash, 4k RAM), but that was a bit more demanding than what you need, as it had to write blocks of data to SD card and display stuff on LCD.

 

Kubeek, Thanx for reply

ATmega128 is included on the development board of Arduino. You think I should stick with the PIC? My first intention is to be able to receive data info from the vehicle onto my phone by using SMS. It would be easier for me to find a micro controller compatible with C language or MPlab as I already am familiar with. Any ideas? Also, which software did you use?

Thank You a lot

 

What I used was the free developement tool AVR studio from Atmel, in which you can simulate and program the chip. It is definitely C compatible, you just need to download a C compiler for it, WinAVR. I don´t know the arduino environment and what tools and libraries are available, but in C i found many libraries for for example different kinds of encryption, FAT32, SD card...

If you are planning to do more things with microcontrollers, and after developement move this project to its own PCB, I would go with the Arduino, the Mega board looks ideal for any project. Again I don´t know how good the arduino software is, but I think it should be pretty useful and in any case you can simply overwrite the supplied bootloader and use the chip as a standard atmega.