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  • Author Author: abhijitnathwani
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Avoid the Bump! #1: Introduction

abhijitnathwani

Hello!

 

This will be the series of the blog post I write as I discuss my progress with the IoT on Wheels Design Challenge. Thank you, element14 team, for selecting, me as one of the official challengers.

This will be my first design challenge with the Element14 community! Looking forward to a great deal of learning and fun through this design challenge.

 

As the name suggests, through Avoid the Bump!, I plan to develop a pothole locator, so that all those nasty potholes on the roads are easily traceable and the authorities can fix them up with ease, knowing the actual location of the pothole. My detailed application for the design challenge can be found here.

 

Just for a quick recap:

 

image

The idea is to detect potholes through the accelerometer and mark that geo-location on Google Maps so that tracking them is easy. As the theme is focused on "IoT on Wheels", I intend to communicate the device to the cloud server, through the driver's mobile phone. As WiFi connectivity is not readily available in cars, I plan to stick to the following chain:

 

image

 

The main elements of my Design challenge would be broken down into the following parts:

 

  • Algorithm for detecting the potholes
  • communication from the Nucleo board to the mobile phone via BLE
  • developing a Mobile App to receive the BLE data from device to the mobile phone and using the mobile phone's cellular data to push the geo-location on the internet. ( Currently would be focusing only on the Android platform, so as to make the project scope limited and realizable in the short amount of time.)
  • developing a Web interface to store the geo-location in a DB and creating visualizations with Google Maps
  • developing a suitable and stable power source for the device.

 

There is a lot of learning involved in this Design Challenge as I plan to include Mobile App and a web interface as well. I'll be glad to share my updates with the community.

 

Abhijit.

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  • I am curious as to why you wait for the accelerometer to  detect the pothole?

    Why not just click a button when you visually spot one and avoid putting yourself and your bike through the unpleasant bump?

     

    DAB

  • in reply to DAB

    I think this is for a car and not a bicycle.

     

    Quite often there are so many potholes on the road that you can't avoid them all, especially whilst looking out for other road users. In addition some potholes turn out to be a lot worse than they look.

     

    I think you perhaps need both inputs though - a button for the ones you spot and can avoid, then the accelerometer for the ones you hit.

     

    With an accelerometer you could perhaps sort the data on severity and try and prioritise repairs.

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  • in reply to DAB

    I think this is for a car and not a bicycle.

     

    Quite often there are so many potholes on the road that you can't avoid them all, especially whilst looking out for other road users. In addition some potholes turn out to be a lot worse than they look.

     

    I think you perhaps need both inputs though - a button for the ones you spot and can avoid, then the accelerometer for the ones you hit.

     

    With an accelerometer you could perhaps sort the data on severity and try and prioritise repairs.

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