DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF A LOW-COST VEHICLE TRACKING SYSTEM

Abstract Location-based services have become very popular globally and with the increasing rate in car theft in Ghana, it is necessary that such services be implemented. Vehicle tracking is an application of the Internet of Things (IoT) proposed in aiding in the recovery of stolen vehicles. This thesis presents a detailed description of the development of a lowcost real-time GPS/GSM vehicle tracking system based on an Arduino Uno board. The system uses GPS services in determining the location of the vehicle and GSM services in transmitting received data to a web server. Data is pushed to a database to be stored and then displayed in a web application using Google Maps API. The system includes a location restriction feature with email alerts. Keywords: Internet of Things, GPS, GSM, Arduino, web server, database, web application, location restriction, email alerts