Open Source Geographic Tracking? 84
Walkingshark writes "I work for a company that needs to track people and equipment across the US as they move to, work on, and leave jobs. The boss has been looking at the typical mix of closed, proprietary software and has also considered building off our existing 10-year-old SQL database (with the kind of clunky interface you'd expect from a program built in the late '90s). I'd like to be able to bring him a good open source alternative, but so far I haven't been able to find anything that can do what we need. Ultimately, we need to be able to keep track of a few thousand separate people and pieces of equipment, and to move them in dynamically created groups to and from our locations and jobsites in a way that is sharable between workstations, with updates to location entered at one station being broadcast to all clients in real time. Ideally, this program needs to also give us access to road routing similar to the capability found on Google Maps. We'd doubtless need to be able to modify the source for customization, but I was hoping there was something we could find out there that had the core functionality we're looking for."
Re:How is the location data obtained? (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly, this isn't difficult.
PseudoSQL:
select name,longitude,latitude from location order time desc limit 1.
Google Maps API [google.com] and that should be it.
I didn't want to mess with the API and what I was plotting doesn't change quickly, so I just used PHP to create a KML file which I loaded through GoogleMaps/Earth.
Make it Ajaxy some 'inserts' of the data and ... that should be it. If the SQL database itself works, there is no reason that you need to replace it. It sounds like it's just the interface that is the problem.
Check out the Marble (Score:3, Interesting)
I think only thing what you can start of is take Marble (part of KDE SC Edu package) what supports openstreetmaps and other GPS locations. You can get GPS information from devices and place them to maps. You can also draw routes to map in the latest version. You can as well get satelite views and other kind as well. It supports OSD's and other templates what could be used. Right now they are used to show wikipedia, flicrk! and few other sites infos and thumbnails over map.
So at least there is no need to start from scratch.
My friend works on garden company and while he is the vice president, he wanted to arrage a GPS system with same ideas as you have. The results were that in the office there is a big 50" LCD screen what shows the map and on that map is continuesly realtime updates of the company vehicles (about 35) and every job what they get, is listed to side of the screen. There you can easily assign groups or specific workers to do them. They get them pushed to their mobile devices (If I remember correctly, all were iPhones) with contact and job informations, like camera photos of what is needed to move to where or what trees are needed to cut off or where the fountain is going to be placed, how the rock path is needed to get dicked etc etc.
That was about 2 years ago and I have no idea is it open source or not. But I only know such thing just made it so much easier to manage the company when almost all workers are all the time outside of the office in the field and there usually is one job for day or two on summertimes. Winter time the joblist is more standard when there is no outside works. But same thing applies then.
Especially they have liked very much the idea that if you need to pickup something from store, you can check what is the closest car and check what is the route to it next tasks. So you can just ask car B to go store, pick up the merchandines and meet car A between B's route to next tasks and swap them to car A what can continue to do their job. While saving time like 1-2 hourhs in that.
And what has improved their work quality almost totall error free is the integration to phones snapped photos. So when on last day the boss meets the client and discuss the plans, the photos works as orders and there is no mistakes what was needed to do and no need to call after on next day to ask what was the tasks and what tree to cut, what flowers to place in what order etc.
If possible, you could contact to Marble developers, ask what would be possible and work with them. In the end there should be nothing more needed than get the phones or other devices to send GPS data to servers where they get grepped and processed and then shown over marble.
And Marble only needs KDE Platform and KDE Edu package. So you can get it work with different OS's (Linux, XNU, NT, SunOS, FreeBSD). So all the software systems using those OS's can be used then.
A simple opensource database for geolocalized data (Score:3, Interesting)
While it won't help for onroad routing, Pincaster might help you to store 2d geographic data and to easily display it on a map : http://github.com/jedisct1/Pincaster/blob/master/README.markdown [github.com]
opendmtp (Score:1, Interesting)
http://www.opendmtp.org/
Anonymous Coward (Score:1, Interesting)
You may wish to keep your eye on the OpenTripPlanner project, which is a multi-modal trip planner that's LGPL. This might provide the routing algorithm you need. (http://opentripplanner.org)
Re:How is the location data obtained? (Score:3, Interesting)
To present the data SVG could be used and add reference points relevant to your location (city hall, main office, etc), so you can avoid Google or Bing APIs.
I agree with you that the tough problem is acquiring the GPS data and the means to transmit it to the central database.
Re:Dear Ask Slashdot, (Score:2, Interesting)
"We'd doubtless need to be able to modify the source for customization, but I was hoping there was something we could find out there that had the core functionality we're looking for."
You missed the part where they said they'd modify/develop. They just don't want to reinvent the wheel and want to support OSS.
SAAS solution (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know about open source solutions for you, but I'm working on a SAAS startup that offers some of what you're looking for: http://www.dedicatedmaps.com./ [www.dedicatedmaps.com] (u/p = demo/demo)
It's essentially a google map behind a log in showing only your assets with access control and roles for your users. We put things on the map that are automated real time (via cell phone app, SPOT unit, satellite-based VMS, or marine AIS), automated non-real time (e.g. we periodically pull or push locations and inventory details from an external database), and decidedly manual (user places a marker on the map).
Our current customers are oil spill response companies (who are quite busy at the moment!) They have to keep track of things that rarely move--like thousands of pieces of gear spread out in staging areas waiting months or years between spills, to things that move quickly--like personnel and ships responding to a spill on a river with ship traffic. We even have a satellite-based unit that can be thrown into the oil to show its movement, say, down a river.
I'd be happy to chat with you about how it works if you're going to roll your own or are interested in the service.
Re:How is the location data obtained? (Score:4, Interesting)