Your Guide to Xtrack Vehicle Tracking From Genesis Communications

xTrack is a comprehensive range of tracking solutions including designed specifically to meet the varied requirements of your organization.

These solutions are incredibly versatile, with the option of combining various different systems, to ensure that you have total and complete control over your company's assets.

The xTrack range includes the following:

Vehicle Tracking and Monitoring

* xTrack Professional Vehicle

* xTrack CanBUS

* xTrack Cold Chain Monitoring

* xTrack Trailer

* xTrack Sensors

Mobile Workforce Tracking

* xTrack PDA

* xTrack Express

* xTrack Mobile Workflow

xTrack Professional Vehicle

If your business operates a fleet of vehicles, you could benefit from xTrack Professional vehicle tracking systems.

xTrack Professional vehicle tracking caters for the wide and varied needs of the modern fleet of commercial and freight vehicles. It comes in several forms and is for businesses who want to monitor the driving activities of their work force in order to increase efficiency and productivity.

xTrack Vehicle

Vehicle tracking can streamline your business operations by making your vehicles more efficient, safe and cost effective.

More and more organizations are experiencing the benefits of vehicle tracking from Genesis communications comprehensive range of vehicle tracking devices. Investing in our vehicle tracking systems will enable your business to:

* Take control of assets

* Monitor the performance of your drivers and vehicles

* Analise driving behaviors

* Eliminate excessive driving practices

* Ensure increased driver safety

* Reduced accident risk

* Save money on fuel, maintenance and communication costs

* Save time on paperwork

* Comply with taxation and duty of care legislation

Take control of your company's assets

No we're not just talking about your vehicles! The greatest asset of any company is its employees and vehicle tracking allows you to take control by monitoring both driver and vehicle performance effectively.

Monitor performance

Vehicle tracking devices enable you to analyse, in detail, the driving behaviour of your employees. This ensures that you can eliminate excessive driving practices which can cost you money in fuel and vehicle maintenance charges. This can also be a way of ensuring that your employees are driving safely.

Driver safety

It is estimated that traffic accidents have cost the nation £32 billion in lost productivity and ill health of workers. By having vehicle tracking, you can make sure your fleet is driven safely and hence reduce the potential for accidents.

In the event of an accident, vehicle tracking data ensures that you have evidence in the form of vehicle data should any discrepancies arise.

Save Money on Fuel

By knowing exactly where your vehicles are, you can ensure that only the most suitable people are sent to the job. This will cut out on un-necessary journeys, overtime and hence lower fuel costs.

Save Money on Maintenance

By monitoring driving practices, you can ensure that vehicle wear and tear, and hence maintenance charges are reduced. With vehicle tracking, you can also ensure that you meet manufacturers recommended service intervals by monitoring mileage from a central point, this can help to identify when each vehicle is due for service

Save Money on Communication

With no need for 'where are you?' calls, communication costs are reduced.

Save Time

Vehicle tracking makes worksheets and vehicle mileage logs a thing of the past. Our automated systems eliminate the need for paperwork to be filled in by hand, leaving drivers free to concentrate on core duties.

Comply with Government legislation

Vehicle tracking will help your business to be compliant with Government Duty of Care legislation

Tax

Changes implemented in April 2007 state that the private use of commercial vehicles is taxable. vehicle tracking allows you to eliminate un-necessary and un-authorized journeys ensuring that you are not accountable for taxation.

Duty of Care

Employers have an obligation of Duty of Care under the following:

* The Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act (2007)

* The Road Traffic Acts (1998/1991)

* The Road Vehicle (Construction and Use) Act 1986

This legislation states that it is the employer's responsibility to ensure that vehicles are safe for your drivers. By having vehicle tracking, you can ensure that your company is in compliance with these guidelines.

xTrack CANbus Vehicle Monitoring

xTrack CANbus makes vehicle and fuel monitoring easy. CANbus (Controller Area Network communications bus) is a concept which was initially developed by Bosch for the car industry.

This advanced product has been designed specifically for driver monitoring, in order for organizations to track actual fuel consumption of vehicles alongside independent driving styles including braking/acceleration.

One of the key features of CANbus is that it can be combined with other xTrack products to create a complete vehicle tracking and monitoring solution.

Together with xTrack Mobile Workflow, you can create automatic job allocation, job status, service level performance monitoring and vehicle and driver league tables.

When implemented with xTrack Cold Chain, you can monitor the temperature in a refrigerated trailer using radio frequency (RF) technology.

xTrack Cold Chain Monitoring

xTrack Cold Chain management is designed primarily to monitor precise temperatures of refrigerated cargo. Using the latest wireless technology, cold chain monitoring allows businesses to constantly check the temperature of their cargo and react accordingly if temperature exceeds a required level.

In the past, whole loads could be ruined if the carrier was unaware of a change in temperature. Now, thanks to xTrack Cold Chain management, customers can monitor their cargo through a web-based interface which can be accessed online.

Under EU regulation EN 12830:1999, cold chain monitoring of the exact temperature of refrigerated goods is required throughout the delivery process. xTrack Cold Chain management has been developed specifically for this purpose.

Cold chain monitoring sensors in the refrigerated trailer send precise temperature information to the xTrack Vehicle black box in the tractor unit every 5 minutes.

This device then sends back temperature data as well as the vehicles precise location to web based servers which customers can access through the web interface.

Drivers can then be notified if temperatures move beyond certain thresholds so immediate action can be taken, avoiding the potential spoilage of an entire load.

The web based interface enables customers to monitor and report on the information and can be accessed from the customer portal on the Genesis website.

xTrack Trailer

xTrack Trailer tracking allows trailers to be tracked in real time using a web based mapping system so that companies can independently track their trailers when they become detached from their vehicles

xTrack Sensors

In addition to our CANbus range, Genesis can provide sensors to detect many other types of activity. These including humidity sensors, heat sensors as well as pressure and gas composition sensors. xTrack sensors can have a number of applications including

* Driver recognition (Dallas Key)

* Bonnet and door

* Street cleansing sweeper

* Waste collection compactor and lift

* Tipper

* Gritting

* Grass cutting

* Wireless sensors to measure humidity, pressure and gas composition

These will enable your business to manage fleet efficiency and meet customer Service Level Agreements (SLA's)

Mobile Workforce Tracking

xTrack Mobile Workforce solutions are the best way to monitor your mobile workers. New Government Duty of Care guidelines state that as an employer, you are responsible for the safety and wellbeing of your employees at all times. Our mobile worker solutions will ensure that you conform to this lone worker safety legislation.

xTrack PDA

xTrack PDA tracking software is the perfect solution businesses who need to know where their remote workers are. With our PDA tracking, you can monitor work levels and also meet with the Governments Duty of Care guidelines for lone workers by ensuring that you know exactly where your staff are, at all times.

This proven technology has been used by organizations such as Royal Mail, Christian Salvesen and various City Councils. It is easy to use and install with no need for expensive IT equipment.

xTrack Express BlackBerry Tracking

xTrack Express Blackberry tracking, incorporates all of the above benefits of xTrack PDA, on your company's BlackBerry devices.

xTrack Mobile Workflow

Carrying large amounts of paperwork around is a thing of the past with xTrack Mobile Workflow. Now instead of having to spend time filling forms in by hand, the process is automated leaving your mobile workforce more time to concentrate on important business tasks. This also helps you to conform to new Government guidelines on lone worker security.

With xTrack mobile worker workflow, the following forms can be incorporated onto a PDA device:

* Invoices

* Delivery notes

* Start of and end of day health and safety lists

* Manual route sheets

* Collection notes

* Cash receipt notes

* Manual time and attendance sheets

* Job cards

* Statutory health and safety documentation

The benefits of Mobile Workflow:

* Better lone worker security

* Detailed analysis

* Increase efficiency

* Reduce costs

For more info contact us at http://www.genesis.co.uk or call 0845 184 8022

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LocateNTrack - Vehicle Tracking System

Basic technologies for vanilla VTS In vehicle device

A GPS and GSM / GPRS enabled embedded microcontroller withoptionalSD card / USB for storage capabilities is used for capturing the real-time location and transferring them to the server.
The device operates on vehicle battery with necessary protection from voltage / current surge. It also has battery backup.
In case of theft the vehicle can be immobilized remotely.
Support for external antennas for better range and accuracy.
Instant SMS and email alerts in case any undesired events or emergency situations.

Web application

Web application is sued for live monitoring of devices moving around.
Rich graphical user interface makes system usage a classic experience.
It presents you with current locations, route trace, andtravel history of the vehicle.
It also provides alerts in case of geo-fence violation (you can mark boundaries along a road or you can have a area-wise fencing) and overspending alerts.

VTS accessories

Only vehicle tracking is not enough in most of the cases. Enhanced versions of VTS also provides following value added services to cater to specific requirement of transport fleet owners.

RFID

Can be used be daily travelers (bus or cabs) for authentication of travelers. Each passenger is provided with a RFID card and the VTS is installed with RFID reader. This helps in getting real time location information of each passenger. Location details of where a passenger was picked up and dropped are provided. This is a favorite of the BPO companies to ensure safety of ladies staff being picked up and dropped at night.

Fuel level sensor

Helps in monitoring fuel usage. The web application provides fuel usage statistics for a given period of time. Typical fuel sensors are not very accurate and usually this feature fails to provide good accuracy. Some further experimentation is being done in this area but most of the current implementation only provide an indication of fuel usage and practically cannot be used to detect theft of few liters of fuel.

Temperature monitor

Monitoring cargo temperature is extremely important for maintaining the food quality during transport. This solution is especially used when carrying milk, ice creams, fresh fruits and vegetables, and any load from cold storages. If for some reason the drivers happen to turn off the ACCOUNT (typically to save petrol) and the temperature rises beyond acceptable level, immediate notification is sent to the fleet owner. Also minute-by-minute temperature history is recorded in the device (and on the web server) thus ensuring no conflicts between the carrier and the customer. This solution is very popular in the cold storage logistics companies.

Camera

A camera can be integrated with VTS to periodically transfer still images to the web server. This helps in identifying the driver and no one can cheat vehicle owners anymore. Typically driver's image is sent once a minute to the server thus ensuring that there is no proxy-driver. This solution is popular with the bus / taxi owners with large fleets which are in cities other than their home town.

Operational difficulties

Accuracy of GPS

Typical GPS receivers provide an accuracy of 10 to 15 meters vertically and about 20 meters horizontally. GPS receivers usually require locking of four satellites to get valid data. Accuracy increases with increase in the number of satellites locked. The quality of GPS signal depends on the state of atmosphere, both its upper (e.g. ionosphere) and the lower layer that influences the weather conditions. Sometimes, on cloudy and humid days the GPS receivers may have problems with calculating its position.

Start up time

When the device boots up after a power down cycle it usually takes a couple of minutes to acquire the coordinates. This is technically referred as 'Cold Start' where the GPS receiver does not have valid almanac and ephemeris. It usually takes time to acquire valid almanac and ephemeris data. Once the data is obtained it is stored in RAM and can be further used to acquire data quickly. If power management is implemented and device wakes up after periodic time interval to capture locations, the time required to acquire locations is in 10's of seconds. This is technically referred as 'Hot or Warm Start'; here the GPS receiver has valid almanac and ephemeris data stored in RAM and only communicates with the satellite to get coordinates.

No GPS connectivity in mountainous regions

If for some reasons the GPS receiver cannot lock required number of satellites, location data cannot be obtained, in such cases there is partial loss of data. There is no solution to this type of situations, as the source itself cannot provide required data; however, these are extremely rare.

No GSM / GPRS in remote locations

It is a well known fact that all the places on the planet do that have GSM / GPRS service available. In such case the acquired GPS location data are stored in the device and once GPRS network is available the stored data can be transferred to the server. This essentially means that the tracking device needs to have considerable storage capacity to store few 1000's of location details. Some solutions offer GSM (SMS) to transfer the data in absence of GPRS connectivity. This helps in getting real-time data at places with GSM connectivity but no or weak GPRS signal. A few solutions also offer dual SIM functionality to ensure that connectivity hampered only in situations where none of the two service providers can offer any service. This is very useful in India!

Frequency of data logging

Data logging frequency from GPS module can be as low as 5 seconds to few minutes. Usually 5 seconds is required in very few cases. Data sampling rates typically varies for each requirement. Tracking systems usually can set this duration easily using web interface or SMS.

Defining Geo-fences

Geo-fencing is an extremely critical feature that all tracking solutions 'HAVE TO' provide. Normal solutions offer circular geo-fencing that would raise alerts when the vehicle moves out of an area. However for containers or high value goods transport it is extremely necessary to have a boundary drawn across the road. This type of geo-fencing along with stoppage reports virtually eliminates any theft of good. Defining a geo-fence along a boundary can be a painstaking activity; no user interface can really offer an enjoyable experience to define a geo-fence adjoining to a road. In such cases, reference runs can be used for fencing the roads quickly and with minimum user efforts.

Environmental impacts

Heat, vibrations, dusty conditions loose connections and other open environment problems have an impact on tracking vehicles efficiently. It is extremely necessary to install a well tested / enclosed device, especially on India roads which are not only rough but also bumpy at times!

Cost of GSM / GPRS service

It is a myth that using GPRS for vehicle tracking applications is an extremely costly affair. However, various services providers in India provide with data plans specially meant for vehicle tracking applications with a monthly rent of as low as 50 RS (less than a dollar)!

Willful sabotage

GPS antenna wire cut or removed

When someone cuts a GPS antenna or removes it physically for bad intentions, the device can sense that quickly and notify the server via GPRS or GSM. The server application sends an instant notification to the concerned people in form of SMS. The device can easily distinguish between no satellites locked or no data at all, which nullifies the possibility of false alarms.

GSM antenna wire cut or removed

This is a very tricky situation where the device can do nothing but log the information along with date time stamp and whenever there is connectivity (antenna is connected again)sends it as an alarm. This type of sabotage cannot be detected in real-time, however the information sent later can be used for post-mortem analysis.

Power wire cut intentionally

When the power wire is cut the devices operate on battery. They send an immediate mains fail signal to the server which than propagates this information to concerned people. The modern day devices are intelligent enough to distinguish between power cut and engine off situations.

Temperature sensors tampered or wire cut

In temperature sensitive container monitoring if optimal or required temperatures are not maintained huge losses can incur. Drivers intend to turn off the engine to save on fuel costs. The temperature sensors can quickly sense that and send notifications to server. To avoid this, the drivers might cut off the temperature sensor wires. When something like this happens the device can sense the sabotage quickly and notify the server via GPRS or GSM. The server application sends an instant notification to the concerned people in form of SMS.

Dhananjay Kulkarni http://in.linkedin.com/in/dhananjaykulkarni, COO, Maven Systems Pvt. Ltd., Pune, India. Maven Systems is a technology product designing company with in-house expertise in electronics board design, embedded software, web software and mobile applications. Apart from selling it products, Maven also leases / sells its technology platforms on shared-IP basis to other companies.

For more information you can visit http://www.mavensystems.com/

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