Project Title: GPS Based Anti-Kidnapping System

This is one of the lastest final year project done by Mr. Pui.

1.0 Project Description:

Figure 1.0 Block Diagram of Overall System.

A portable GPS based anti-kidnapping system coupled with remote Google Earth location identification system is proposed in this project. The Project deals with the development of a portable hardware device which is able to extract GPS data and re-transmit it to a remote computer.

The main components of the hardware part are the microcontroller, GPS receiver module and a GSM compatible mobile phone. Upon triggering the distress button, the anti-kidnapping system will identify the current location of the device bearer by sending the GPS data through text message via GSM network. Subsequently, a remote PC with a mobile phone connected through Bluetooth will receive the incoming GPS data and activate the decoding process automatically in order to generate the Keyhole Markup Language (KML) files which are used to map the current location of the device bearer on the Google Earth program. Having identified the location, an operator at the remote PC will dispatch help through the built-in text message to the rescuer. The overall system is shown in Figure 1.0.

2.0 Hardware Realization

The development of the overall system involves the design of a hardware prototype that is capable of extracting the GPS data known as National Marine Electronics Association, (NMEA) sentence from the GPS receiver module and a microcontroller programme that is able to convert these data into a form suitable for text message sending. Encoding technique known as the octet encoding is done on the data and fitted into a sentence known as Protocol Data Unit (PDU) sentence. This sentence is used widely in GSM devices to send text messages. A Google Earth mapping program designed in Visual Basic 6.0 is developed to map the receiving data on Google Earth. This programme includes a short message sending function in which the operator of the computer can send the location of the victim to his/her family member of any contacts that have been pre-stored in the system. The overall hardware prototype is shown in Figure 2.0 and the Graphical User Interface (GUI) of the Google Earth mapping program is shown in Figure 3.0.

Figure 2.0 Overall hardware prototypes.

Figure 3.0 GUI of Google Earth mapping program

The final testing of the system is done successfully and it is recorded on video. Figure 4.0 show the result of the Google Earth mapping system that is able to identify the location based on the GPS coordinate received via SMS.

Figure 4.0 Google Earth mapping.

• 3.0 Conclusion / Project Results
  
  The results of this project are summarised as follows:-
• A hardware prototype is developed and fully operated as expected.
• Communication between the mobile phone and microcontroller to enable the sending of extracted GPS data text messages is achieved.
• The Google Earth mapping programme developed for the remote PC is able to receive the incoming text messages and map the GPS data on Google Earth automatically.
• The text message sending function on the developed Google Earth mapping programme performed efficiently.

The overall system is fully tested and worked as expected.

The innovation of this system originates from the transformation of raw GPS data to location on Google Earth. This student project serves as a low-cost solution (about RM400 excluding handset) to help in the fight against kidnapping. It can be further enhanced for commercial use.