ENSC28 GPS Tracking System
Team Members: Susie Lira, Issac Trueblood,
Katie Morris, Andrew Petrucci
Faculty Advisor: Shane Pacini
Sponsor: Gonzaga University Center for Engineering Design & Entrepreneurship and Bloomsday
Liaison: Don Kardong
Project Overview: We are interested in tracking people in marathons, to allow spectators to have knowledge of runner's positions. Our project is scoped to specifically deal with tracking people who remain in a single, contiguous Wi-Fi hotspot. The engineers will develop a tracking chip integrating a microcontroller with a GPS receiver and Wi-Fi adapter. This chip will be worn by the athlete and send the athlete’s location to a server. An Android or iOS application will poll the server and thus remotely track the athlete’s position.
Summary Statement of Project Goal: Our goal is to develop a chip with a microcontroller that has a GPS receiver and Wi-Fi adapter.
Project Deliverables:
1. Establish our competitors and market
2. Lightweight and sweat resistant chip to be worn by athlete
3. Durable charge life
4. Be able to integrate chip with computer scientists for app development
5. Low-cost
Management & Communication Expectations: Once the semester starts we can hit the ground running. The engineering group will meet once a week and every three weeks with the computer scientists. If additional communication is necessary we shall communicate via e-mail. We also have a Facebook group message and text message system in place to optimize communication (which is crucial). We will have an outline of our semester after the first month of school. Notes will be taken on an Outlook Shared Document.
Research Expectations: This application is the closest existing product to what we are trying to accomplish http://www.racejoy.com/index.html. However, it utilizes cellular phone communications, whereas our approach shall use a Wi-Fi network. Additionally, our project is similar to the ankle monitors used by law enforcement, but those use radio signals, not Wi-Fi. We will hopefully be working in conjunction with Bloomsday to see their interest in the application of our system. We want to make sure we are addressing the specific needs of our client (cost per athlete, additional Wi-Fi spots, safety, athlete comfort, etc).