Design of asset tracking device with GPRS Interface

Abstract

IOT devices have the potential to improve asset lifecycle optimization because of their ability to provide relevant real time data to high level applications. This data with minimal latency can assist asset managers to control the behaviour of assets and asset users to optimize asset lifecycle cost. There are many environments that require asset tracking devices but this design focussed on motor vehicles with auxiliary functions and apparatus. This research work documented the design of an asset tracking device built and tested on a 32.bit microcontroller platform with built-in CAN peripheral. This design resolved handling multiple serial interfaces collating data simultaneously concatenating this data and transmitting the data via GPRS interface as a single UDP sentence. Apart from interfacing various serial interfaces to the Stm24f4 this design also implemented a Wireless module as well as a multichannel ADC Module. This design was accomplished by researching and implementing software techniques as well as researching the hardware/firmware in terms of DMA and Nested Vector Interrupt Controller of the STM32 devices. The solution that this design will accomplish is to provide the industry an asset-tracking device with data capturing functionality capable of delivering the above needs at reasonable data cost. The device designed in this thesis is the client device of asset tracking network. This design was accomplished on a proof of concept basis delivering built hardware in the form of various application modules interfaced to a 32 –bit microcontroller via uart, SPI and CAN.