Question : Your Recommendations

Hi all there,  may be this question asked for several times,
we want to build a truck tracking system, the points of the trucks will be shown on the map, there are 2 parts of this question. We have to get the coordinates from the trucks and display that info on the map.
I think we must use GPS+GSM modules. What do you recommend for this type of device(any name)
and secondly for the software part we will use raster images and the development tool will be Delphi, are there any free tools, libraries or complete project with source and compatible with delphi.

Best Regards,

Answer : Your Recommendations

Well the field of Vehicle Tracking involves three main steps......

1) The vehicle knowing its own position.....
2) The vehicle transmitting its position to some base station
3) A software that collects the data and manipulates it like Reporting/Monitoring/Management/Viewing etc.

Step 1:
The best and cheapest device for knowing one's postition is a GPS. SO in case of Vehicle tracking you will need a Microcontroller that will read GPS data serially and parse it. The programming of this microcontroller will be in C and you can use very cheap Microcontrollers like ATMEL 89C51 etc. with ROM and other necessary hardware..... You can use any cheap GPS device preferably a GPS chip (Easily integratable to your microcontroller circuit)Here is one that we have used.....
http://www.holux.com.tw/Temp%20web/GM-82.html   (Very cheap and reliable)

Step 2:
This is the most difficult part and you have to take decisions on the basis of budget/resources  availabale...You can go with any of the following options....
               a) Use the GSM Network to communicate between your Vehicles and Base Station...... In this case you will need GSM Modems to communicate and each
                   vehicle needs to have a SIM...... THe communication can be SMS based or Circuit Switched based (Data Calls)....
                b) Use GPRS network to communicate.....In this case you will need GPRS modems and GPRS enabled sims.....
                c) Use RF communication.....(Not recommended)
                d) Use wired communication i.e after the trip of  a certain vehicle is completed you simply eject its Tracking unit and attach it to the Base Station and
                    download the data using a wire......
Now my preferred method is (a) as it is the simplest..... Also you might look at the option (d) if it fulfills your needs.......

Step 3:
On the Base Station (Server) you will need a computer that will collect the data coming from the Vehicles in any of the ways discussed above.... Now comes the part to display this data. It depends upon the Maps that you have..... If you have Raster maps (liked scanned maps of cities) then you donot need any third party controls etc. You can simply manipulate these maps using Pictureboxes (In VB and VC)...... But if you have Raster Maps then you will either need to write down your own routine to read the Vector images or buy a third part solution like ESRI MapObjects..... But it will cost you lots of money....

as far as the devices that we have used are the Holux GM-82 GPS receivers and WaveCom GSM Modems.

I hope this will clear some points.... If you have any Query please do post it here.....

Imran Arshad