ISSN: 2277-3754

International Journal of Engineering and Innovative Technology (IJEIT)

Volume 1, Issue 3, March 2012

Fuel Monitoring and Vehicle Tracking

Sachin S. Aher, Kokate R. D.

Abstract— In today’s world, actual record of fuel filled and fuel II. SYSTEM STRUCTURE
consumption in vehicles is not maintained. It results in a financial
loss. To avoid this we are implementing a microcontroller based A. Basic Structure of System
fuel monitoring and vehicle tracking system. We have used the
Power
reed switch which works according to the principle of Hall Effect System
for sensing the amount of fuel filled in the vehicle and amount of
fuel consumed. Then this record is stored in the system memory.
This system stores the record for several logs. We have used the
MSP430F149 microcontroller for our system. It is a ultra low
power, 16 bit RISC architecture controller [7]. It contains inbuilt
12 bit ADC, serial communication interface [1]. Real Time Clock
(RTC) is also provided to keep the track of time. Also we have used
the GPS technology to track the vehicle. In this paper, the
implementation of embedded control system based on the
microcontroller is presented. The embedded control system can
achieve many tasks of the effective fleet management, such as fuel Communication Central Sensor
monitoring, vehicle tracking. Using GPS vehicle tracking System Control System
technology and viewing interactive maps enable us to see where it System
was losing money, time and wasting fuel (such as on duplicated
journeys).
Fig. 1: Basic Structure of system
Keywords: Fleet Management, GPS, Reed Switch, Basically the system is composed of central control
MSP430F149. system, communication system, sensor system and power
system. The system structure is shown in figure.
I. INTRODUCTION i) Communication System: system can communicate
The challenges of successful monitoring involve efficient with remote server through three ways. The first channel
and specific design, and a commitment to implementation of uses radio transceiver through RS232 interface; the
the monitoring project, from data collection to reporting and second one is the optical fiber communication system
using results. Fleet tracking is the use of GPS technology to which can transmit serial data signals by RS485 interface
identify, locate and maintain contact reports with one or more and cameras' video image at the same time. The last one
fleet vehicles. The location history of individual fleet uses wireless sensor net (WSN) to exchange information
vehicles allows precisely time-managed, current and forward while a WSN node is attached to the server. When WSN
journey planning, responsive to changing traveling is used, WSN's nodes should be deployed along with the
vehicle properly and communication distance can be
conditions.
extended greatly.
Applications of commercial vehicle tracking solutions in
the fields of transport, logistics, haulage and multi-drop ii) Sensor System: Sensors system is composed of fuel
delivery environments can include optimized fleet utilization, level sensors. i.e. reed switch
operational enhancements and dynamically remote-managed iii) Power System: The central control system is powered
fleets. Fleet tracking is scalable by design and interfaces with by DC power supply with proper specifications. The
the logistics industry’s leading back-office systems [3]. communication system i.e. GPS and sensor system are
Rising fuel costs constantly challenge fleet operators to also powered by this power supply.
maintain movement of vehicles and monitor driver behavior iv) Central Control System: This is the heart of the
to avoid delaying traffic conditions by either, combining monitoring system. It consists of microcontroller with
deliveries, reconfiguring routes or rescheduling timetables. appropriate interfacing with other devices. It performs
This aims to maximize the number of deliveries while all the control actions required for proper operation of all
minimizing time and distance. Escalating oil prices are the system.
increasing costs for many businesses, particularly those with
B. Structure of a unit
large vehicle fleets, adding a powerful financial impetus to
the search for fuel efficiencies. Implementing real-time The unit is placed inside the vehicle to sense the fuel level
vehicle tracking as part of a commercial company’s mobile at various time instances and it also tracks the vehicle with
resource management policy is essential for comprehensive help of GPS. To achieve these things the system is equipped
operational control, remote driver security and fuel savings. with reed switch sensors along with signal conditioning
circuits and microprocessor as main building blocks of our
system.

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 ISSN: 2277-3754
International Journal of Engineering and Innovative Technology (IJEIT)
Volume 1, Issue 3, March 2012
exactly calculate the amount of fuel present inside a tank.

III. SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION

A. Reed Switch Circuit

Fig. 3: Interfacing of Reed Switch to controller

A magnetic field (from an electromagnet or a permanent
magnet) will cause the reeds to come together, thus
completing an electrical circuit. The stiffness of the reeds
causes them to separate, and open the circuit, when the
magnetic field ceases. Another configuration contains a
non-ferrous normally-closed contact that opens when the
ferrous normally-open contact closes. Good electrical contact
is assured by plating a thin layer of non-ferrous precious
metal over the flat contact portions of the reeds;
low-resistivity silver is more suitable than corrosion-resistant
gold in the sealed envelope. There are also versions of reed
switches with mercury "wetted" contacts. Such switches must
be mounted in a particular orientation otherwise drops of
mercury may bridge the contacts even when not activated [2].
B. Interfacing Diagram
The interfacing circuit consist of Microcontroller
(MSP430F139), two fuel level sensors, RTC, memory
connections, 16×2 LCD, GPS module.

Fig. 2: Block Diagram

The Microprocessor is the heart of our system.
Microprocessor is the electronic device which contains
processing Power, memory and IO ports to interact with
different connected devices. In this system microprocessor is
the brain of system which stores the status of fuel level in a
fuel tank and position of vehicle. The system is powered by
DC power supply with proper specifications. This supply can
be provided from batteries. Fuel Sensors 1 and 2 i.e. reed
switches will be used to sense the quantity of fuel filled and
quantity of fuel consumed and notify microcontroller about
the level of fuel in the fuel tank. Fuel sensor 1 is placed at the
inlet of fuel tank, as the disk of flow meter rotates, due to the
magnet present on the disk it will make and break the reed
switch. So square pulses will be available as an input to the
microcontroller. By counting these pulses and multiplying it
by a flow factor we will get exact amount of fuel filled.
Fuel sensor 2 is placed at the outlet of fuel tank, as the Fig. 4: Interfacing Diagram
disk of flow meter rotates, due to the magnet present on the The proposed system is of two communicating processes,
disk it will make and break the reed switch. So square pulses p1 and p2, along with a shared memory. In addition to the
will be available as an input to the microcontroller. By controller-based system, the GPS antenna play significant
counting these pulses and multiplying it by a flow factor we role. The memory block of the microcontroller-based design
will get exact amount of fuel consumed. From this we can is replaced by hardware entity controlled by the I2C.

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 ISSN: 2277-3754
International Journal of Engineering and Innovative Technology (IJEIT)
Volume 1, Issue 3, March 2012
i) Process I The sequential behavior of the system appears in the flow
This process has to deal with the message received from chart of Figure 5. Initially, a flag C is cleared to indicate that
the GPS. The default communication parameters for NMEA there’s no yet correct reception of data. The first state is
(the used protocol) output are 9600 bps baud rate, 8 data bits, “Wait for GPS Parameters”, as mentioned in the flow chart,
stop bit, and no parity. The message includes information there’s a continuous reception until consecutive appearance
messages as shown in Table 1. of the ASCII codes of “R, M, C” or “GGA” comes in the
sequence. For a correct reception of data, C is set (i.e. C=
$GPGGA,161229.487,3723.2475,N,12158.3416,W,1,07,1. “1”), indicating a correct reception of data, and consequently
0,9.0,M, , , ,0000*18 make the corresponding selection of parameters and saves
them in memory. When data storing ends, there is a wait state
$GPGLL…$GPGSA…$GPGSV…$GPGSV…
for the I2C interrupt to stop P1 and start P2, P2 download the
$GPRMC,161229.487,A,3723.2475,N,12158.3416,W,0.13 saved data to the base station (BS). It is noted that a large
309.62, 120598,*10, GPVTG…$GPMSS…$GPZDA… number of vehicles might be in the area of coverage, and all
From these GPS commands, only necessary information is could ask for reserving the channel with the base station;
selected (i.e. longitude, latitude, date, and time). The data however, there are some predefined priorities that are
needed are found within the commands RMC and GGA; distributed among the vehicles and therefore assures an
others are of minor importance to the Controller. The position organized way of communication. This is simply achieved by
of the needed information is located as follows: adjusting the time after which the unit sends its ID when it
just receives the word “free” [3].
$GPRMC: <time>, <validity>, <latitude>, latitude
hemisphere, <longitude>, longitude hemisphere, <speed>, TABLE I: The parameters sent by the GPS.
<course over ground>, <date>, magnetic variation, checksum NAME Description
[5], [6]. HPGGA Global Positioning system fixed data

$GPGGA, <date>, latitude, latitude hemisphere, GPGLL Geographic position-latitude/longitude

longitude, longitude hemisphere, <GPS quality>, <# of GPGSA GNSS DOP and active satellites
GPGSV GNSS satellites in view
satellites>, horizontal dilution, <altitude>, Geoidal height,
GPRMC Recommended minimum specific GNSS data
DGPS data age, Differential reference, station Identity (ID), GPVTG Course over ground and ground speed
and check sum. This information is stored in memory for GPMSS Radio-beacon Signal-to-noise ratio, signal
every position traversed. Finally and when the vehicle strength
reaches its base station (BS), a large number of positions is GPZDA fPPS timing message (synchronized to PPS)
downloaded to indicate the route covered by the vehicle
during a time period and with a certain download speed.

Fig. 5: flow chart governing the main part of the system

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 ISSN: 2277-3754
International Journal of Engineering and Innovative Technology (IJEIT)
Volume 1, Issue 3, March 2012
and tracking the vehicle accurately and continuously. Many
ii) Process II
factors of transportation system are considered. It can work
As mentioned earlier, the Base station is continuously into various environments. The data can be read at the central
sending the word “free”, and all units within the range are server by using RS232 protocol.
waiting to receive it and acquire communication with the
transceiver. If the unit received the word “free”, it sends its REFERENCES
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IV. CONCLUSION
The advancements in low power designs in Electronics
have allowed us to undertake this work which involved the AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
use of Texas Instruments ultra low powered MSP430 series
microcontroller. Instead of using the conventional methods 1) Mr. Aher S. S.
like use of popular 8051 series microcontroller and having a ME Electronics, JNEC, Aurangabad.
Email Id:- Sachin.aher371@gmail.com
complex application we went for a simple application but
with a modern technology involving the usage of MSP430
microcontroller. The software was written by keeping in 2) Prof. Kokate R. D.
M E. Instrumentation,
mind standard software engineering practices like Head, Dept. of Instrumentation, JNEC, Aurangabad.
modularity, code reuse and portability. Most of the C Email Id:- rd_kokate@yahoo.co.in
language functions, especially written for LCD interface are
fully portable and can be reused for any other microcontroller
platform with little or no change at all. The MSP430 specific
code is also optimized for efficient execution.
Our project is a growing application in transportation field.
Many new features are being added to enhance the
monitoring and tracking operations using recent
technologies. Our attempt is to design the best prototype for
the same. The system will help the owner of vehicle who is at
remote location to perform the tasks of detecting the fuel theft

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