Vehicle owners and fleet managers are always afraid of their vehicles being stolen or being used differently from those they intended for them. Due to this, they wish to monitor their vehicle and even control it remotely if it is stolen, on the wrong route, or used for the wrong reasons. This article will explain and help you understand how you can protect and control your vehicle remotely.
The basic concept
The underlying concept involves leaving Android mobile somewhere inside the car where a thief or someone else using the car cannot see it. Then, when the car starts moving, the mobile device uses its sensors to detect the movements, sending you a message to your phone wherever you are.
Upon receiving the alert, you can send a message to halt the vehicle instantly so that the thief will not turn it on again. Additionally, you can send another message to find out the vehicle’s location with the help of GPS, and you can find it.
A similar idea is employed by GPS track your car and other in-vehicle technology, like camera surveillance systems, available from Eyeride. They enable you to monitor your vehicle and get real-time information on its whereabouts, how it is being driven, and other things. The innovations send alerts to your mobile phone, and you can also monitor the vehicle and the crew from a screen in a centralized data convergence point.
The items and skills required.
For this project, you need the following items:
- Arduino
- Any Android smartphone
- 1Sheeld – This links the mobile and the Arduino through Bluetooth and utilizes the mobile app, doing away with the need for Android coding
- Car fuse
- Battery
- Relay – one 40A relay or four 10A relays
- Wires and solder
You can implement the project easily, even without coding skills.
How the project operates
When you remove the fuse in the car power section, which connects the car key and the engine, you can turn off the engine.
You need to add a relay at this node to regulate turning the engine on and off. Be cautious about getting the right relay, as the current through the fuse is about 40A, which is quite high. You can get a 40a relay or use four 10A relays parallel to one another to distribute the total current on all of them.
Get a car fuse and disconnect it to allow you to use two terminals to connect to the relay.
- Connect the relay board to the Arduino.
- Put 1Sheeld on top of Arduino.
If it is your first time using 1Sheeld, you will need to download the specific site’s mobile app and Arduino library.
The code is simple and easy. The idea behind it is to sense when the car moves with the help of the Accelerometer sensor for the smartphone. Then, when the vehicle moves, it alerts you through an SMS sent to your phone.
On receiving the SMS, you have two options: either send ‘GPS’ in the form of a text message to the phone in the car gets the car’s position, or send ‘STOP’ so that the phone in the car halts the car by turning the relay you put in the place of the fuse.
Conclusion
Who must hide your Android phone in the car to prevent the thief from seeing it? It is possible to add other features, like capturing an image with the camera on the phone and sending it to your email to see who is driving the car. Also, the phone can send a video stream via Skype or even control the audio system in the vehicle to issue an alarm to frighten the thief.
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However, there is a drawback in that you have to switch on the mobile data for your phone to send images and video through the Internet, which will drain the battery. However, some applications, like Tasker, can help to save battery.
