Our system was implemented successfully and
showed interesting results. Figure 3 below shows a track
registered by a device. The red marker shows the starting
and finishing spots of the track. Information such as speed
can be obtained by clicking on the markers. The user can
also view past tracks from the web application.
Figure 1. Recorded Tracking
For the purpose of analysis, we tested our system
against the Instamapper application (lowest cost
application from our cost analysis) over the same track.
The difference in costs was then calculated. This
difference is based on one primary factor namely the
number of GPS positions the applications send to the
server. It has been noted that for the Instamapper
application, GPS positions were sent to its server and
from there that there was processing whether to store the
data or not.
With the new developed system, the concept is that
the calculation is done on the mobile phone itself and thus
fewer data is sent to the server, reducing costs. Also the
system has an automatic logging ability to log data to a
Recordstore whenever there is no internet (GPRS)
connection. For a track to be complete, the user needs to
stop it on the application. This stop button then checks
whether or not there is data in the recordstore. If yes, it
sends all those logged data to the server which can be
visualized in the recorded track part of the system.
The system was tested for a track of 50Km, Beau
Bassin to Reduit, and then to Mahebourg which took
around ninety minutes by bus. The number of tags that
were sent to the server was around 250 and it was less
than 200kb of data. The cost was around Rs 2 for such a
track, which is still cheaper. With Instamapper, the cost
was around Rs 4.50, from which it can be deduced that
around 450kb of data was sent to its server. In addition to
this, Geofence alerts were also sent via SMS and email
freely. One Geofence zone was set up at Reduit. When
approaching to around 500 meters to that point, a text
message was sent to a mobile number.