DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRONICS AND COMMUNICATIONS ENGINEERING

Bus Tracking System

Design Thinking Lab Report

(18EC47)
Submitted by,
Shubhika Verma 1RV20EC153
Suresh 1RV20EC165
Tabrez Ahmed 1RV20EC167
Yashvanth T S 1RV20EC190

Under the mentorship of

Dr. Srividya P Mr. Mahendra B M

Associate Professor Assistant Professor
Department of ECE Department of ECE
RV College of Engineering RV College of Engineering
In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Bachelor of Engineering
in
Electronics and Communication Engineering
2021-2022
 RV COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING®, BENGALURU-59
(Autonomous institution affiliated to VTU, Belagavi)
Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering

CERTIFICATE
Certified that the Design Thinking Lab project titled Bus Tracking System is carried out by
Shubhika Verma(1RV20EC153), Suresh (1RV20EC165),Tabrez Ahmed (1RV20EC167)
and Yashvantha T S (1RV20EC190) who are the bonafide students of RV College of
Engineering, Bengaluru, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor
of Engineering in Electronics and Communication Engineering of the Visvesvaraya
Technological University, Belagavi during the year 2021-2022. It is certified that all
corrections/suggestions indicated for the Internal Assessment have been incorporated in the
Design Thinking Lab report deposited in the departmental library. The Design Thinking Lab
report has been approved as it satisfies the academic requirements in respect of Design
Thinking Lab work prescribed by the institution for the said degree.

Signature of the Mentor Signature of the Mentor Signature of Head of the Department

Dr. Srividya P Mr. Mahendra B M Dr. H V Ravish Aradhya

External Viva

Name of Examiners Signature with Date

1.

2.
 DECLARATION

We, Shubhika Verma, Suresh, Tabrez Ahmed, Yashvanth, students of fourth semester B.E.,
Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, RV College of Engineering,
Bengaluru, hereby declare that the Design Thinking Lab project titled ‘Bus Tracking System’
has been carried out by us and submitted in partial fulfilment for the award of degree of
Bachelor of Engineering in Electronics and Communication Engineering during the year
2021-2022.

Further, we declare that the content of the report has not been submitted previously by anybody
for the award of any degree or diploma to any other university.

I also declare that any Intellectual Property Rights generated out of this Design Thinking Lab
carried out at RVCE will be the property of RV College of Engineering, Bengaluru and we will
be one of the authors of the same.

Place: Bengaluru

Date:

Name Signature

1. Shubhika Verma (1RV20EC153)

2. Suresh (1RV20EC165)
3. Tabrez Ahmed (1RV20EC167)
4. Yashvanth T S (1RV20EC190)
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

We are indebted to our group mentors, Dr. Srividya P, Associate professor, Dept of ECE, R.V.
College of Engineering, and Mr. Mahendra B M , Assistant professor , Dept of ECE, R.V. College
of Engineering for their whole hearted support, suggestions and invaluable advice throughout our
Design Thinking Lab work and also helped in the preparation of this thesis.

We also express our gratitude to our group Guides Dr. K S Shushrutha , Associate Professor, Dept of
ECE, R.V. College of Engineering, Dr Mahesh A, Associate Professor, Dept of ECE, R.V. College
of Engineering, Dr Shilpa D R, Associate Professor, Dept of ECE, R.V. College of Engineering
for their valuable comments and suggestions.

Our sincere thanks to Dr. H V Ravish Aradhya, Professor and Head, Department of Electronics and
Communication Engineering, RVCE for her support and encouragement.

We express sincere gratitude to our beloved Principal, Dr. K. N. Subramanya for his appreciation
towards this Design Thinking Lab.

We thank all the teaching staff and technical staff of Electronics and Communication Engineering
department, RVCE for their help.

Lastly, we take this opportunity to thank our family members and friends who provided all the back
up support throughout the technical seminar.
 ABSTRACT
The procedure of tracking a vehicle involves tracking its whereabouts using latitude and
longitude coordinates. The objectives we are targeting to fulfill through this project include
building a vehicle tracking system that can be managed by an embedded device, more
specifically a smartphone and to create and implement a reliable, affordable vehicle tracking
system that will help our students, working professionals and citizens who take the BMTC
bus. It will also cater to the people who can not use a smartphone, they can receive SMS
whenever the bus reaches a bus stop using the SMS service provided by Twilio API instead
of using an expensive GSM module to send SMS.

The bus is equipped with a real-time ESP32-based vehicle tracking system with GPS to
allow the owner/user to track the location of the bus, sensors to monitor the parameters of
the bus like temperature of the engine. A Push Buttons switch is used to notify whether the
bus has reached a particular bus stop. For this purpose, a push button, GPS receiver and
temperature sensor is connected to an ESP32 board. The ESP32 wifi module will transmit
the bus position (latitude and longitude) and sensor data to thingspeak website. ThingSpeak
cloud is an IOT analytics platform service that allows us to visualize and analyze live data
streams in the cloud. A

Additionally, A website is generated using the IP address of the bus which has google maps
API that can be used to track the live location of the bus. This canbe used by people who
have internet connection in their smartphone.

The GPS Tracker and Twilio API was implemented and demonstrated and proved to be both
user friendly and cost effective.

The system was able to experimentally demonstrate its effective performance to track a bus
location, send an SMS and track live location of the bus anytime from anywhere. This is
easy to make and inexpensive compared to other methods as it does not use a GSM module
to send notifications. With proper implementation and user adherence, a high scale
deployment can be accomplished in the future.

Page i
 CONTENTS

Page No

Abstract i

List of Figures iii

Acronyms iv

1. Overview 1-2

2. Empathy 3-6

3. Point of View and Problem statement 6

4. Ideate 7

5. Pretotype/prototype 8

6. Test 8-10

7. Conclusion and Future scope 11

References 12

Page ii
 LIST OF FIGURES

Page
No

Fig 1) Basic Outline of the Project 1

Fig 2) Basic Methodology of Implementation 2

Fig 3) Survey Result of Q1 3

Fig 4) Survey Result of Q2 3

Fig 5) Survey Result of Q3 3

Fig 6) Survey Result of Q4 4

Fig 7) Survey Result of Q5 4

Fig 8) Survey Result of Q6 4

Fig 9) Survey Result of Q7 5

Fig 10) Talking with bus driver 5

Fig 11) Talk with student 5

Fig 12) Talk with kengeri Depot Manager 5

Fig 13) Design Methodology 7

Fig 14) Circuit Schematic 8

Fig 15) Hardware Model 8

Fig 16) Message sent by Twilio 9

Fig 17) Data received by thingspeak 9

Fig 18) Serial Monitor 9

Fig 19) Software Implementation 10

Page iii
 ACRONYMS
IOT: Internet Of Things
SMS: Short messaging Service
ESP32: Espressif Systems 32 bit
API: Application Programmable Interface
GPS: Global Positioning System
GSM: Global System for Mobile Communication

Page iv
 Bus Tracking System

Overview
A bus tracking system combines the installation of an electronic device in a bus, or fleet of buses, with
purpose-designed computer software to enable a third party to track the bus’s location, collecting data
in the process. Modern bus tracking systems commonly use Global Positioning System (GPS)
technology for locating the bus, but other types of automatic bus location technology can also be used.
Bus information can be viewed on electronic maps via the Internet or specialized software.

As part of our Empathy Phase, we conducted a survey on a few problems and possible implementation
ideas. The problem we identified with our target people, i.e., students, citizens, working professionals
and bus depot managers, is the difficulty in knowing the bus location, arrival time and condition of th
e bus. Often the issue arises due to time constraints. Based on the results, we have decided to
implement a GPS based Tracker System which notifies the user whenever the bus reaches a bus stop
through an SMS.

Fig 1) Basic Outline of the Project

GPS based vehicle location and tracking system will provide effective, real time vehicle location and
mapping. A GPS-based vehicle tracking system will inform where your vehicle is and where it has
been, how long it has been. The system uses geographic position and time information from the Global
Positioning Satellites. The system has an "On Board Module" which resides in the vehicle to be
tracked and a "Base Station"(Application) that monitors data from the various vehicles. The On-Board
module consists of GPS receiver.

Bus tracking system is becoming increasingly important in large cities and it is more secured than
other systems. This setup can be made more interactive by adding a display to show some basic
information about the vehicle. Upgrading this setup is very easy which makes it open to future
requirements without the need of rebuilding everything from scratch, which also makes it more
efficient.

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Fig 2) Basic Methodology of Implementation

In this project, a real time ESP32 based vehicle tracking system with GPS is attached to the moving
vehicle to enable the owner/user to track the location of that vehicle. This proposed system will
continuously monitor a moving vehicle and report the status of the vehicle and send an SMS to the
user whenever the bus reaches a bus stop. For doing so an ESP32 module with wifi connectivity will
connect to the cloud and send all sensor data and GPS location. Twilio API service will send SMS
whenever the Push button has been pressed, indicating the bus has reaches a bus stop.

Advantages of the System

1. As ESP32, GPS module and Twilio API is used instead of GSM module it reduces the cost
and complexity of the system.

2. It reduces the uncertainty of schedule of buses.

3. The user/owner will get the position of the vehicle through the tracking system and an SMS
whenever the bus reaches a bus stop.

The bus depot managers can monitor the health of each bus using the ThingSpeak cloud service and
makes maintaining buses easier. They can also monitor the scheduling of the bus.
The user will monitor the bus and get the updated information about the bus regularly.
The low-cost ESP32 based vehicle tracking system can be used widely in tracking Cabs/Taxis, stolen
vehicles, school/colleges buses etc. It can be used by food delivery and car rental companies also.

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Empathy

In this phase of DTL we have asked college students, citizens, working Professionals
and bus depot managers several relevant questions regarding the vast number of issues
faced by them to commute using public transport, asking about ways in which we can
help create a system to help them commute in and around the city effortlessly and also
review our ideas as helpful or not.

Fig 3) Survey Result of Q1

According to the survey of bus tracking system most of the people use public transport (81.9%),
very less percentage of people use private transport. Public transport helps reduce pollution and
is cheaper mode of transport.

Fig 4) Survey Result of Q2

In order to understand the needs of our participants we wanted to know which public
transport system they used the most so that we can provide an optimal solution to
according to their needs. It is observed that most people in this survey use BMTC Bus for
public transport.

Fig 5) Survey Result of Q3

This question allows us to understand the mode of transport used most by the participants.
Most of the people use BMTC Bus on a daily basis

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Fig 6) Survey Result of Q4

1 denotes that the buses are on time always and 5 denotes that the buses are not on time. This
indicates that the buses of BMTC are not as per schedule most of the times.

Fig 7) Survey Result of Q5

1 denotes that they don’t waste a lot of time and 5 denotes that they waste a lot of time. The
irregular scheduling of busses causes people to have long wait times and reduces their productive
time

Fig 8) Survey Result of Q6

It was inferred from this question that many people are troubled by the irregular scheduling of the
bus. Some people are finding it difficult to know which bus takes a particular route and few people
feel the travel time is very long.

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Fig 9) Survey Result of Q7

Majority of the people who took this survey say that current solutions are not accurate ,from this
we understand that a bus tracking system is required and would be helpful for many individuals to
reduce their wait times and uncertainty faced when they use bus a a public transportation system.

To further our scope of survey we conducted a few personal interviews to have a broader
understanding of the needs of people who take the bus as public transportation

Fig 10) Talking with bus Fig 11) Talk with student Fig 12) Talk with Kengeri Depot
driver Manager

Firstly we interviewed a student of RV college who travels daily to the college by bus from RR
nagar to the RV college of engineering , he get late to class Because of irregularity of schedule of
bus.He thinks that busses cause too much pollution, take the bus from their respective places
keeping enough time in hand. They feel that busses should be more efficient in timing and in
reducing pollution.If there was a way to know the bus location they could plan better.

Secondly, we interviewed a Flower selling lady who sells the flowers in Nagadevanahalli
and she travels from nagadevanahalli to nagarabhavi daily. According to her She gets
confused with bus numbers, has to ask each bus if it goes to her place, timing of buses
cause delay. She thinks that she cant be to places on time.She believes that looking for
the right bus to her location consumes a lot of time and energy. It also causes her to be
late.

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Thirdly, We visited the kengeri bus terminal to know about the problems faced by the bus
drivers and how does current tracking system working and interviewed them .They are not
able to keep track of busses efficiency and schedule of bus accurately. Concerned about the
safety of passengers, They think that they can improve their efficiency and timing using GPS
tracker, Currently Manual systems are used to keep track of bus schedule and efficiency of
bus which can be inaccurate. They feel that they can do better in terms of timing of bus and
monitoring the condition of the bus.

Point of View and Problem Statement

People who take the bus want to know the live location of the bus so that they can be efficient
with their time and reduce wait time at bus stops. Bus depot managers want to know the
condition of the buses they manage so that they can maintain buses better.

To make a travelling advisory system for working professionals, students and citizens who take
the BMTC bus which will assist them to locate accurate location of the bus, timings and bus
number for that particular route and to make a system to monitor bus condition for depot
managers.

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Ideation
After carefully reviewing and analyzing the responses for our questions to better understand the
commuting problems faced by people who take the bus, we had a few ideas some of them were to use
of an RFID module to track a bus when it crosses a bus stop. This system may not be as accurate as
it may detect any other vehicle other than a bus. To Use of QR code at every bus stop. This method
had a drawback that the user had to be physically present at the bus stop.

We concluded that a GPS based bus tracking system with SMS notification using the twilio API and
thingspeak cloud to collect and analyse data would be an optimal solution for this problem.
Thingspeak cloud service can be used to collect data from GPS module and temperature and humidity
sensor and can be used to analyse and visualize data. This module can be customized easily to include
more sensors that send data to cloud for monitoring bus condition. A push button is used to trigger
the SMS notification. When the bus stops at a particular bus stop the bus driver has to press this button
to send the SMS notification. Twilio API is used to send SMS instead of a GSM module because it is
more cost effective and can be implemented at large scale for less cost. We implemented google maps
API into our code such that it generates an IP address of the bus which can be used to locate the live
location of the bus using a web browser.

This way we were able to bring about a solution to our target groups which were citizens, students
and bus depot managers. This system can be further improved by using a more advanced GPS module,
better software and a way to automate SMS notification whenever the bus crosses a bus stop.

Fig 13) Design Methodology

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Prototype
According to the circuit schematic shown below, the connections are created. The ESP32 is
a low-powered, low-cost microcontroller (MCU) board, with both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth built
in, and is based on a dual-core processor mechanism. It can be connected with various
sensors like GPS module and sensors.

Components used: ESP32 board, Resistors, LED, GPS Module (Neo-6M GPS Module),
DHT11(Temperature and Humidity sensor) and Connecting wires

Fig 14) Circuit Schematic

The initialization message will appear on the serial monitor after the code has been
dumped onto the board. If the Wi-Fi connection has been established appropriate message
will be displayed on the serial monitor. If there is any failure it will be displayed on serial
monitor. If the GPS data is not up to date it will be notified through the serial monitor.

Test (Hardware)
The Vcc of the GPS module is connected to the 3.3V output voltage pin of ESP32 and the GND pin
is grounded. The other 2 pins are connected to TXD and RXD pins of the Arduino for serial
communication (baud rate=9600). The Push button is connected to pins 15, LED is connected to pin
22 of the board and DHT11 humidity and temperature sensor is connected to pin 13 of the board.

Fig 15) Hardware Model

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When the push button is pressed the notification of SMS is sent to the registered mobile number.

Fig 16) Messgae sent by Twilio

Fig 17) Data received by thingspeak

Fig 18) Serial Monitor

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Test (Software)

The given IP address can be shared to people who want the live location of the bus and can paste
the address in a web browser to get the live location of the bus.

Fig 19) Software implementation

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Conclusion

The suggested ESP32 based bus tracking and notification system was developed and tested to track
the precise location of a moving or still bus in real time and to send SMS when the button is pressed.
The system was made user-friendly by ESP32 and SMS system which was done by using the
Twilio API that reduces the cost and made this system to use easier by eliminating the need of
GSM module. A website was generated by using the IP address of the wifi of the bus and google
maps API was implemented in it. The DHT11 sensor sends raw live data to thingspeak recording
the temperature of the engine.The technology offers users improved service experience and a cost-
effective solution. The system's ability to track a Bus's whereabouts at any time and from any
location was successfully demonstrated and SMS was sent experimentally. Compared to other
ways, this is inexpensive and simple to create and cost effective.

Future Scope
Bus/Vehicle monitoring is becoming increasingly important in the modern world in order to
improve our quality of life. This system can be extended to other modes of transport. Through
tracking a car or identifying its actual location, vehicle tracking offers a futuristic way of living. It
also provides an effective use of technology. Proper partnership with companies like Twilio will
allow the use of SMS based service popular and an efficient application/website to provide all bus
related information to people and depot managers. The website can be further improved by
including estimated time of arrival and an indicator indicating the number of buses taking that
similar route. More sensors can be added to keep a track of other parameters of the bus condition
like pollution emitted, total distance travelled etc which will be helpful in maintaining the bus and
increasing their operating lifespan.

It is crucial to make it affordable and simple to configure; if this is done, people will be ready to
install it in their own cars, school buses, taxis, and other vehicles. A high scale deployment can be
achieved in the future with good implementation and user adherence.

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References

Implementation of Real-Time GPS Receiver System for Providing Navigation Based Services and
SMS Tracking©2015 IEEE.

J. B. Tsui, Fundamentals of Global Positioning System Receivers A Software Approach (Hoboken,

NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2000).

S. H. Alnabelsi, On GPS fault-tolerance for city-bus tracking system using wireless sensor networks,
International Journal of Networks and Communications, vol. 6, pp. 80–86, 2016.

A. soloview, J. Dickman, N. Grumman, Extending GPS Carrier Availability Indoors with a Deeply
Integrated Receiver Architecture, IEEE Wireless Communications, 18(2), 2011, 36-44.

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