Abstract:
Bus transportation has become the major transportation mode in Sri Lanka due to ease of
access and cost-effectiveness. However, the passengers, mainly those who are in the
middle stations, face the difficulties of getting a bus because of the unavailability of a
solid mechanism to get the real-time bus location. After several field visits and interviews
with the respective bodies, the study has introduced a solution for the passenger time
wastage by developing an Arduino based device and a simplified user environment. This
device consists of UNO microcontroller, SIM800c GSM module, and NEO 6m GPS
which is capable of achieving the highest sensitivity of the industry by tracking up to
twenty-two satellites on fifty channels. The Tiny GPS++ library was included and some
conducive core sub-objects like the latest position fix, latest altitude fix, the number of
visible participating satellites, and horizontal diminution of precision adapted to succeed
in the process. After setting up the configuration of the GSM, checks the availability of
AT commands. AT commands are used for receiving an SMS sent by the user requesting
the current location. As the user environment, a Cross-Platform web application is
developed, including bus information in which the user can get bus journey/fare details,
bus ID which is provided by the system to uniquely identify a particular bus, and its realtime location. The user can receive the location just via an SMS as a google maps link,
using that bus ID. Moreover, to assess the functionalities and usability, the Arduino based
tracking device was placed in a bus and a potential user was provided with the web
application. The user could manage simple operations and get information about the
desired bus. Further, the study recommends the use of this web application to trivialize
the time wastage and irregularity of bus service and make people more attracted to public
bus transportation.
Keywords: Arduino-based device, GSM Module, GPS, Real-time bus tracking
