Download Refined Use Case Model - Electrical and Computer Engineering

1. Introduction
The work was based on a simple idea, to help people find their cars in the
concrete jungle that are today parking lots. It has become a common problem of our
present society, and the purpose of the project was to create a device such that would help
to solve it. Even though the problem was becoming more and more common, no one had
thought of doing an electronic solution to this problem. However, we saw that it was time
for such a device to be developed.
The device would have to be portable, low power, and capable of location
detection through wireless methods. The system couldn’t also be too complicated since it
is supposed to attract a general market of users of all types and social classes. In that way,
the system can’t be too technologically oriented. In the same manner, it couldn’t be
sensitive to signal interference, since it has to work on different types of environments
and not in a single, specified and controlled location. The project was later proposed to
Dr. Manuel Jimenez which understood the uses which the device will have in present day
society, and approved it. He also suggested the implementation of the Global Positioning
System (GPS) technology as the method to provide location awareness to the device.
The main idea for the development and functionality of the device was then
conceived. The system will work by obtaining the current position coordinates by means
of the standard latitude and longitude measurements through a GPS signal receiver chip.
Then the device will provide the user a mean to store this coordinates into memory and
later be able to compare the current position with the one in memory, providing the user
with analysis feedback, including distance between the two points and direction. By
implementing the system in this way, the device would have a wide range of different
uses, some including expeditions and surveying applications.
The GPS chip selected was the Sony GXB5210, distributed and provided by
Synergy, which was interfaced using an Atmel AT89C51RC2 which is based in the Intel
8051 microcontroller architecture and technology.
GPS µTracker Final Report
4