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Web Based Fuel Tracking System for Diesel Locomotive - A Prototype


  • A quick Proof-of-concept was needed to demonstrate web based Locomotive Fuel monitoring capability .
  • Diesel based fuel sensor was a SICK sensor and hardware interface to it was built by third party.
  • There was a need to build an internet gateway device to upload and display the fuel readings along with the GPS coordinates, speed, etc and the associated book keeping, etc.
  • As this was a PoC, an Off-the-Shelf SBC with a 2G modem was chosen and quickly integrated to provide internet communication, reading from fuel sensor hardware, interfacing with GPS device and web server integration service to push all the relevant data.
  • An nginx php web server was run on an AWS instance after the DNS procurement etc.
  •  Openstreet maps was used as it is free and simpler to use than others.
  • An access token to access the OSM tiles/etc was obtained and Leaflet was used to customise and show the maps/tiles, customize markers, etc.
  • As this was installed on only one locomotive, the picture above shows the track on the html page generated with the marker showing different colors for speed and on hover, displaying the fuel as measured by the fuel sensor interface hardware.

  • The above picture shows the data that was read by the Internet Gateway device and sent to the server. The data is as shown in the table: time, fuel level, the co-ordinates and the speed. No effort was made to optimise the hardware: fuel sensor readings, etc
  • A sample location on Google maps of where the loco was, is as shown in the image below.



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