Transport and logistics industries have made it a common task to track the location of vehicles. It is not enough to track a vehicle, as the world is moving towards smart solutions in all aspects. Data is money, as I always say. This is true even for GPS data, which can open up a vast ocean of possibilities for building smart solutions for fleet management and logistics, vehicle remote monitoring / maintenance security, forecast, etc.
Microsoft Azure is the best Cloud Computing platform for IoT. Azure Stream Analytics, a PaaS service that can efficiently analyze live data, is available to perform real-time analysis. Microsoft Azure recently introduced a new set functions to analyze GPS-based data. This allows for the development of different types of advanced IoT apps. These functions are called Geo-spatial function. This blog is for people who want to process GPS data streamed through IoT devices. Learn about the processes, terms, and potential applications.
A Few Terms to Understand Before We Start:
Before we get into the details of how GPS data can be processed and the types of supported applications, I want to clarify some terms.
Geo-spatial: The term Geo-spatial relates to any technology or system which is used to acquire, process and store geographic information.Point (Geo-location): Point refers to a single geo-location on map that are co-ordinates of longitude and latitude format.LineString: LineString defines multiple points in a single object representation.Polygon (Geo-fencing): Polygon is a section of the entire map which defines the area or route of purpose basically known as Geo-fencing. This is the restriction of an object from entering or leaving a particular area or route. Imagine that you have a polygon that defines a small area of your home and you begin walking along the perimeter in a sequence of points. One hand would be within the polygon while the other would be outside. There are two types if a polygon’s ring orientation. Right-handed and left-handed. Microsoft Azure Geo-systems have Right-hand orientation. This means that the points must be arranged in a sequence so that the left hand is always within the polygon and the right hand can walk through the polygon from point 1 to 2.
Right Handed Ring Orientation
GeoJSON: GeoJSON can be described as a data format similar to JSON but is optimized to store and encode Geospatial and nonGeo-spatial information relating to Maps and other Geosystems.
Collecting and streaming of GPS data to Azure
The Global Positioning System is available in many ways in real-life. It could be a mobile phone enabled with GPS service, a dedicated-proprietary GPS device installed by a fleet owner or a custom-made IoT device embedded with microchips like GPS modules. The method used to collect this information will vary depending on the source. Researchers have been creating their own IoT devices to meet their specific needs. These devices can be created by interfacing GPS/GSM modules such as SIM808 with microcontrollers such as Arduino. These modules can be used with GSM sim card-based mobile networks and can provide accurate information about the current coordinates.
SIM808 – A GSM/GPS Module 1
These devices can also be registered with Cloud Ingestion Points like Azure IoT hub or Azure Event hub, so data can be streamed directly to the Cloud where we prefer setting up our Lambda Architecture. Azure IoT Hub and Azure Event Hub can be connected to Azure Stream Analytics. This well-defined channel allows you to integrate Azure Stream Analytics with Azure IoT Hub or Azure Event Hub.
