Wialon and BusOkay – with concern for Indian students

Alba Smart, a partner of Gurtam in India, has been installing security systems in private and governmental institutions for 30 years. When working with schools, the company noted how students were transported and was completely dissatisfied with the situation. As an integrator and developer, the Alba Smart decided to rectify the situation. That’s how BusOkay appeared.

Problem

Indian schools do not own buses to transport students. Such vehicles work only half a day, stay idle during the holidays, and the administration doesn’t want to pay for it. Therefore, they hire contractors each having its own idea of quality, and for years the situation is steadily worsening. Due to traffic congestion School buses often get delayed and parents are worried in absence of any real time information. To ensure safety and security of School children, Indian government has issued several guidelines. But while transport operators lack standard operating practices, school authorities find it difficult to comply and manage transport operations.  

Average school bus in Delhi, where Alba Smart operates

Alba Smart started attending schools to study the problem in more detail. Based on the data, they developed BusOkay solution and integrated it with Wialon.

Solution: the hardware part

Alba Smart approaches each carrier separately. If the buses are already equipped with GPS trackers, the company connects those to Wialon. Whenever new devices are needed, Alba Smart leaves the choice to a vehicle owner. The only criteria is compatibility with Wialon – and so far all trackers have met this condition. The rest depends on the additional equipment. In other words, if you need to connect MDVRs or RFID readers, choose a tracker with the corresponding functionality. 

Wialon and BusOkay integration

Wialon sources the monitoring data. The system receives information from trackers and additional equipment, processes it, and sends to BusOkay via API. It is usually data on movements, driving quality, RFID-tags, video. BusOkay becomes a basis for route planning, building, and optimization. 

Before you read ahead to learn about the real-life projects, check out Rajeev Bajaj, the Managing Director, elaborating on the app at Telematics 2018 in Minsk. 

BusOkay profile

The solution consists of three components: a web application for school administration and mobile apps for drivers and parents. Let’s see how it works in terms of real projects in India. 

Campus Admin App for transport management and tracking

The web app is the control center for school administration. Here, the dispatcher sees everything he needs to manage logistics in an educational institution:

• Currently available buses and drivers. 
• Active routes and schedules.
• Children to pick up and parents to be notified about it.

Now let’s see how it works with Wialon. 

Alba Smart connected 100 buses that only send data on locations, movements, and driving quality. With the help of NimBus, dispatchers create routes and schedules that later are exported in the web application for school administration where they see the area distribution of the buses, route performance in real time, driving style per driver, and notifications on events.

350 buses are additionally equipped with 3 cameras each:   

1. Above the front doors: controls pick-ups and drop-offs. 
2. Facing the driver: tracks driver performance. 
3. In the interior: watches children during transportation.

MDVR transmits video to BusOkay through Wialon and records it to the hard drive for further storage on the server. 

Mobile app for parents

The app notifies parents of children movements and emergency situations – route and schedule were changed, the bus is delayed, etc.    

As soon as the child is registered in the system, the parents receive a registration link and one-time password (OTP). They are registered in conjunction with their child. That’s how the app learns what bus to display in their app and what messages should be delivered to the parents. Let’s see how BusOkay knows that the child boarded the bus. 

Alba Smart equipped 150 buses with RFID readers to identify which students boarded the bus and notify parents in a mobile application. It works like this:

• a student applies a name tag;

• information is transmitted to Wialon and interpreted;

• Wialon sends the data to BusOkay;

• BusOkay sends the message “Boarded” to parents. 

If no RFID reader is  installed in the bus , the driver can read high frequency tags via enabled NFC feature or manually registers the child boarding or de-boarding the school bus.

As soon as the child gets on the bus, you can track his movement online (the display of the bus movement in real time is performed due to the use of NimBus API), see the route on the map and the driver to perform it. That way, you may “intercept” the child somewhere (he forgot breakfast!). Here, parents also receive notifications if a bus is approaching or arrived at the point. 

Driver assistance app 

When the driver gets behind the wheel, the application notifies him of the route to drive, the children to pick up, and the addresses to follow. Here, he manually enrolls students if the school gave up RFID solutions, registers the end of the trip, and sends SOS messages to the school dispatcher. 

Result

BusOkay is actively conquering Indian schools and increasing traffic safety.

• The solution is employed by 20 schools to manage 450 buses around India. 
• 3500 parents track their children through BusOkay app. 
• The specialized solution is completely integrated with Wialon and several school ERP systems.  

Each component of BusOkay is a notification center, a database, and a monitoring tool. And this solution can be used in any country and not only for school bus management. Alba Smart developed the software for any transport that follows a fixed route.

Contact us at marketing@gurtam.com and we will introduce you to the developer. Or tell us about how you develop on SDK. We are waiting for your success story. 

Photo source: dpsjodhpur.org