We built this prototype car locator system.
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The objective was to locate cars in the wholesale auction parking lot.
The customer had a team of 6 people that did nothing but run around
this parking lot to locate cars.
It took them a long time to find a given car.
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Dealers bring their cars to be sold. The auction house provides
services to the dealer. The dealer can call up and say "change
the brake pads" and the auction house has to find the car move it to the appropriate shop and perform the service.
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We designed the little blue puck which contains a radio and a GPS. The expectation was that the device would be put in a car when it arrived at the lot and removed when it left. When the car is moved the device turns on the GPS and collects the new position. The position is reported on the radio and logged in a database. The database can be queried to find the current and historical car location.
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In the demo application you see plots of where cars are located placed on an aerial photo of the actual lot.
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We worried about issues like "can GPS locate a car to a
particular parking space?", "how does the radio communication
work?"
"How do you minimize power use so batteries last a long time?" etc.
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