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Vehicle Monitoring System with Geofencing Capability

Article · December 2020

DOI: 10.30880/jeva.2020.01.02.001

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 JOURNAL OF ELECTRONICS VOLTAGE AND APPLICATION VOL. 1 NO. 2 (2020) 1-13

© Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia Publisher’s Office

Journal of
JEVA Electronics
Voltage and
Journal homepage: http://penerbit.uthm.edu.my/ojs/index.php/jeva Application
e-ISSN : 2716-6074

Vehicle Monitoring System with Geofencing Capability

Alendra Jospine1, Lukman Hanif Muhammad Audah1*, Abdulwahhab
Hamzah2, Hamzah Qasim3
1
Faculty of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia, 86400 Parit Raja, Batu Pahat, Johor, MALAYSIA
2
Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment,
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 Bangi, Selangor, MALAYSIA
3
Department of Communication Engineering,
Iraq University College, Basrah, IRAQ

*Corresponding Author

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30880/jeva.2020.01.02.001
Received 13 June 2020; Accepted 12 October 2020; Available online 28 December 2020

Abstract: Global Positioning System (GPS) is a technology used to determine the position of a specific object by
using the concept of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS). The concept of geofencing is known as the
technology that uses the GPS technology to design the boundary on a specific area where once the vehicle crosses the
geofence area, it will trigger the system and send notifications either via email or SMS. One of the main purposes of
GPS is to track the location of a device, object or vehicle and it can be displayed on the map. Currently, the technology
of monitoring the location of the vehicle has not been implemented to a certain company. Therefore, this project
presents the vehicle monitoring system with geofencing capability where the purpose of this project is to monitor the
location of the vehicle especially for Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia (UTHM). Furthermore, this system
provides a monitoring system on a real-time mode for the vehicle which also can be viewed on a smartphone. It also
gives a notification once the vehicle is out of the geofence area. The component required for this system is Arduino
Mega 2560 and FONA808 shield attached with GPS, GSM and Li-Po battery and the application needed to display
the current location of the vehicle is Blynk App. Blynk App, will display information such as latitude, longitude and
the map. The administrator of managing the vehicle is able to access the application via smartphone as long as there
is internet connection. Practically, this system has been tested once the vehicle exits and enters the geofence area and
the result shows the correct location of the vehicle together with email notifications.

Keywords: GPS, FONA808, GSM, geofencing, vehicle monitoring, Blynk App

1. Introduction
Many educational institutions in Malaysia have their vehicle to be used around campus. Most of the time, the vehicles
are used to transport students and staff to attend various events around campus. Apart from that, staff are also provided
with the university’s vehicle to take care of business off-campus. However, these facilities are only available for students
and staff of University Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia (UTHM). Therefore, this project aims to monitor the movement of
university’s vehicles by using the concept of geofencing. Geofencing is known as the boundary or the specific region in

*Corresponding author: [email protected] 1

2020 UTHM Publisher. All rights reserved.
penerbit.uthm.edu.my/ojs/index.php/jeva
A. Jospine et al., Journal of Electronic Voltage and Application Vol. 1 No. 2 (2020) p. 1-13

a geographical area [1]. The idea of this geofencing application is, once the vehicle enters or leaves the geofence
boundary, it will send a notification via e-mail and Short Message Service (SMS) to the person in charge who handles
the vehicles. Thus, the geographical boundaries are defined by using the Global Positioning System (GPS) [2]. This
vehicle monitoring system uses an Arduino Mega 2560 and FONA808 breakout board which includes the Global System
for Mobile Communication (GSM) and Global Positioning System (GPS) in the same board where it will monitor the
current and initial positions of the vehicles. Therefore, once the car leaves the geofence boundary it will give notification
through a mobile phone and will display the current location and position in real-time mode of the vehicle through a
mobile application which is known as the Blynk App [3]. Through the application, all information such as latitude and
longitude of the vehicle is stored in the Blynk App.

1.1 Problem Statement

Usually, the staff of Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia are able to utilize the university’s vehicle to attend to
work-related activities either in or off-campus. In other words, the person in charge has the authority to use the vehicle
to go to any destination for job purpose. However, the university may have difficulties in monitoring the movement of
the vehicle. Monitoring the vehicle should be done regularly to prevent staff from misusing the vehicle for their personal
purpose. Nowadays, it becomes more challenging to monitor the vehicle because some of the university’s vehicles still
do not have the technology to track the movement of the car. This project will provide a solution by designing hardware
where it can monitor the movement of the university’s vehicle through the Blynk App on a smartphone.

2. Hardware and Software Configuration

2.1 System Design
The proposed system design consists of a hardware and software implementation part. As for the hardware part, it
consists of components such as FONA808 shield attached with the GPS and GSM as well as Arduino Mega 2560.
Meanwhile, for the software part, it used an IoT platform or also known as a cloud where the selected platform was Blynk
App. In addition, this platform allows users to create and manages their own interfaces with widgets like button, displays,
graph, maps and many more. This application can be accessed easily by installing it to the smartphone of the person in
charge to monitor the vehicle’s location.

Fig. 1 - The project’s workflow

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Figure 1 shows the workflow of the project. First, the FONA808 MiniGSM and GPS is an all-in cellular module
which contains a GSM antenna and GPS antenna. This module is used in this project to add a location-tracking and
provide data and SMS for the system [4]. Secondly, the Arduino Mega 2560 microcontroller is used during the process
of designing the circuit for the system and it will store the programming code which is transferred from the Arduino IDE
software after the compilation of programming code is successful [5]. Thirdly, the vehicle is the main object that needs
to be monitored and the monitoring system was installed inside the vehicle. Fourth, the web mapping used for this project
is Google Maps [6] where its function is to display the current location including the latitude and longitude of the vehicle.
Fifth, once the vehicle leaves the geofence boundary, the system will send a notification to the office or the person in
charge through mobile phones. Finally, the Blynk App is used to display the current location including the latitude and
longitude of the vehicle in a real-time mode as long as there is internet connection on the smartphone [7]. So, the data
and information can be accessed by the admin from the office from time to time.

2.2 Circuit Design

In this project, there are only a few pins on the FONA808 shield that has been used. The selected pin was TX, RX,
KEY, 5V and GND while the pins used from the Arduino Mega 2560 is 5V, GND, RX1 19 and TX1 18 as shown in
Table 1. Besides, the GPS antenna, GSM antenna and Li-Po battery also attached to the FONA808 shield as shown in
Figure 2. Furthermore, the communication protocol for this system has a baud rate which was 115200 b/s. It is because,
the coding provided from the FONA808 library for GPS tracking was 115200 b/s. Overall, the system used 115200 b/s
as the main default baud rate.

Table 1 - The hardware connection between Arduino Mega 2560 and FONA808

ARDUINO MEGA 2560 FONA808 SHIELD

GND KEY
RX1 19 TX
TX1 18 RX
5V 5V
GND GND

Fig. 2 - Project hardware connection

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Fig. 3 - Project hardware connection

Moreover, the passive GPS antenna was used to provide detail location of the vehicle. This passive GPS antenna has
a 1dBi gain and it has a smaller size which only has a 15mm x 15mm x 6.8mm and the length of the GPS includes the
cable is 50mm. The design of the GPS antenna used a uFL connector on the cable makes it suitable for FONA808 shield
which has the same type of connector.

Table 2 - Passive GPS antenna specifications

SPECIFICATIONS DETAILS
Sensitivity
1. Tracking -165 dBm
2. Cold starts -147 dBm
Time-To-First-Fix
1. Cold starts 30s (typ.)
2. Hot starts 1s (typ.)
3. Warm starts 28s (typ.)
Accuracy approx. 2.5 meters

2.3 Software Configurations

In this project, the hardware used to run the system which is the Arduino Mega 2560 and FONA808 shield. This
module needs to be programmed via the Arduino Mega 2560 microcontroller to make it function and the additional
library needs to be installed in the Arduino IDE software. Besides that, to install the additional library, the first step is to
run the Arduino IDE software and from the software select Tools > Manage Libraries and the Library Manager will pop-
up. After that, there are few libraries as shown in Figure 4 and Figure 5 are needed such as Adafruit FONA Library,
Adafruit IO Arduino, Adafruit MQTT Library, Adafruit SleepyDog Library and Blynk. Thus, it is compulsory to install
all the libraries needed so that the module can be programmed properly.

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Fig. 4 - Libraries for the FONA808 shield

Fig. 5 - Library for Blynk

Figure 6 shows the flow on how to interface the Arduino Mega 2560 and FONA808 shield to the Blynk App. Firstly,
the code for the Blynk App is typed by using the Arduino IDE software along with the token ID and the APN. After that,
the code must be compiled to make sure to code does not contain any errors. Once the code successful, the code is
uploaded to the microcontroller and the serial monitor is used to display the result of the code performance. Furthermore,
when the serial monitor displays the microcontroller has been connected to the Blynk App, the user can open the Blynk
App to make sure it is connected to the microcontroller. Meanwhile, if the microcontroller is not connected to the Blynk
App, it is compulsory to check the program code and compile the code once again.

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A. Jospine et al., Journal of Electronic Voltage and Application Vol. 1 No. 2 (2020) p. 1-13

Start

Type coding for Blynk

connection

Insert Token ID & APN

Compile coding

NO
Is the code
successful?

Transfer the code to Arduino

Mega 2560

Open the serial monitor

on Arduino IDE

NO
Is it connected
to Blynk?

YES

Open Blynk App

End

Fig. 6 - Flowchart of Blynk source code

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2.4 Project Workflow

Start

Design the system by using the

FONA808

Attach the GPS antenna and GSM

antenna to add the location tracking
and data for mobile

No
Simulation
troubleshoots

Yes

Real-time testing

No
Does the system
detect the location
accurately?

Yes

Does the system able No

to send notification
from remote place?

Yes

Display the location in real-

time using Blynk App

End

Fig. 7 - The flowchart for design the project

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A. Jospine et al., Journal of Electronic Voltage and Application Vol. 1 No. 2 (2020) p. 1-13

Figure 7 shows the flowchart for the system design. Firstly, the system is designed by using the FONA808 shield
with the GPS antenna and GSM antenna were attached to it. Next, if the simulation troubleshoots is not successful, it will
return to the design system and if the simulation succeeds, it will direct to the real-time testing. After that, if the system
is not able to detect the location and sends a notification for a remote place, it will go back to real-time testing and if it
detects location accurately and sends a notification, the information is stored in the Blynk App. Thus, the Blynk App is
an application on the smartphone where it has its own ability to develop a graphic interface for this project by using the
widgets provided.

3. Result and Discussion

3.1 System Performance
The circuit designed between Arduino Mega 2560 and FONA808 shield is been tested by using the serial monitor on
Arduino IDE to check either the system is able to obtain the data of latitude and longitude for the system. The purpose
of this circuit design testing is to check the functionality of the system either it has a proper connection or not and it is
also compulsory to compare the result obtained from serial monitor and real-time testing. Thus, during the testing, the
software part which Arduino IDE must be included.

Fig. 8 - The prototype overview

Figure 8 shows the connection part between Arduino Mega 2560 and FONA808 shield. Besides, from the FONA808
shield, the yellow LED indicator shows the shield was turned on and running a program, meanwhile the blue LED
indicator shows the network status where it has three different conditions as listed below:

Table 3 - FONA808 shield LED conditions

LED timing LED conditions

64ms ON, The shield is currently running but has not made any connection
800ms OFF to the network cellular.
64ms ON The shield has made a connection to the network cellular so it can
3second OFF send and receive SMS and voice call.
64ms ON The GPRS data connection is activated.
300ms OFF

Additionally, after the FONA808 has made a communication with the satellite, the network indicator will blink for
300ms and the GPS will receive a signal and the data will be transferred to the Arduino Mega 2560 microcontroller.
Finally, the data of latitude and longitude will appear on the serial monitor as shown in Figure 9.

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Fig. 9 - Data obtained in serial monitor

3.2 Location detection

The circuit connection for the system between Arduino Mega 2560 and FONA808 shield which is attached to the
GPS and GSM antenna were tested to make sure that the circuit connection is able to work efficiently. The serial monitor
on the Arduino IDE shows current location of the devices is displayed. Based on Figure 10, it shows the latitude and the
longitude location of the device. Hence, the signal on the serial monitor is displayed continuously when it has an active
GPS receiver.

Fig. 10 - The location of the device on the serial monitor

The result obtained for the longitude and latitude of the system device from the serial monitor by using the GPS
antenna. Apart from that, to make sure the longitude and latitude of the location are correct, it can be proven by using the
web mapping services which is Google Maps.

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A. Jospine et al., Journal of Electronic Voltage and Application Vol. 1 No. 2 (2020) p. 1-13

Fig. 11 - The location of the system device via mobile phone

Hence, the other method used to check the location of the system device is by using the application of GPS
Coordinates via mobile phone. Figure 11 shows the location of the system device on the map of the GPS Coordinate
application by running the application at the same time and besides the FONA808 shield. Thus, from both figures, it
shows that the location of the system device in terms of latitude and longitude is almost the same which was (1.86304,
103.09921) respectively.

3.3 On-Site Results

The system was tested to examine the performance of the system in a real-time mode. Besides, during the testing,
the system was connected to the USB adapter which connected to the cigarette lighter socket in the vehicle. Next, the
hardware part especially the Arduino Mega 2560 and FONA808 shield were placed on the car dashboard to make sure
the GPS antenna in the right position to get precise time synchronization with the satellite. The first point started near to
Dewan Tunku Mahkota Ismail (DTMI), UTHM which has latitude (1.85473) and longitude (103.08625) which this
location is in the geofence area as shown in Figure 12. Thus, from the first point, the vehicle will move around the
geofence and proceed to the next location which is outside of the geofence area.

Fig. 12 - Initial location for the geofencing

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For the conditions, the vehicle moved out from the geofence area and headed towards Sri Gading for about 8.6km
from the initial point. Once the vehicle is out of the geofence area, the system is triggered and the Blynk App send an
email notification directly as shown in Figure 13. Furthermore, when the person-in-charge received the email notification,
they can directly check the location of the vehicle on the Blynk App where the application displayed the current location
of the vehicle as shown in Figure 14.

Fig. 13 - Email notification when the vehicle exits from UTHM area

Fig. 14 - The location of the system on the Blynk App

Next, the vehicle from Sri Gading moves towards the geofence area which is in UTHM area. Once the vehicle enters
the geofence boundary, the system was triggered and the Blynk App sent an email notification directly as shown in Figure
15. Hence, when the person-in-charge received the email notification, they can directly check the location of the vehicle
on the Blynk App where the application displayed the current location of the vehicle as shown in Figure 16.

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A. Jospine et al., Journal of Electronic Voltage and Application Vol. 1 No. 2 (2020) p. 1-13

Fig. 15 - Email notification when the vehicle enters from UTHM area

Fig. 16 - The location of the system on the Blynk App

4. Conclusion
As the project title stated, this project is focused on the Vehicle Monitoring System with Geofencing Capability. The
Arduino IDE software was used to simulate the programming code and test the performance of the system by using the
serial monitor provided in the Arduino IDE. Hence, the idea of making this project of the monitoring system is to monitor
the movement of the vehicle especially in UTHM and the vehicle activities during working hour. Next, this monitoring
system provides an accurate latitude and longitude location of the vehicle in the Blynk App where it is able to display the
current location of the vehicle on the map widget in the Blynk App. Moreover, this system has been tested for months
and the performance of this system produces an excellent result. The concept of geofencing has been implemented to this
system where once the vehicle enters or exits the specific geofence area, a notification will be sent and it would be easier
for the person-in-charge to check the current location of the vehicle by using the application of Blynk App which also
part of the IoT platform that can be installed on the smartphone. Thus, the Vehicle Monitoring System with Geofencing
Capability was built successfully.

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[5] Therngineeringprojects.com, 'Introduction to Arduino Mega 2560', 2018.
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