Software Development for Speed Trap Radar Control Unit

• Main Author: Abd Rahman, Zulkifli
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English; English
• Published: 2004
• Online Access: http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/567/2/549647_FK_2004_100.pdf; http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/567/
• Institution: Universiti Putra Malaysia

Nowadays, speed trap method has been used in most Malaysian states and overseas for reducing road accident rate. Measurement of vehicle speed for the purposes of law enforcement is currently achieved by radar based methods. Radar is one of devices being used by the police enforcer in Malaysia. It is also commonly used abroad where they are fitted in a patrol car. For the past few years, speed trap system in overseas using radar that can be fitted in either the patrol car or at certain fixed location has experienced an interesting development. However, the radar set and other devices that are available in the market today are too expensive. Furthermore, it needs the police enforcer to trap the speed and take picture of targeted speeding vehicle, and storing that information for law enforcement purpose manually. The main objective of this project is to develop a software system for radar control unit which works together with radar device that can be used by the police enforcer either in the patrol car or placing it at the specific location. The development of the software system in this thesis is focused which that to enable the police enforcer to use the radar device at operating frequencies of X-band (10.525 GHz), K-band (24.15 GHz), and Ka-band (35.5 GHz), and video camera, to set speed limit, measure and trap the speed, snap the speeding vehicle, and send the information to the base station or a certain destination to be checked automatically once the speed over limit vehicle is detected. Two main sets of hardware have been considered which are localised and centralised equipments. The localised equipments consist of Doppler radar device, radar control unit, camera and laptop PC as client for use in patrol car or at certain fixed location. The radar control unit for stationary mode operation is built by using 8-bit microcontroller. The centralised equipments consist of a computer as a server, a data display, and a printer machine. All information will be displayed and printed by a printer machine. The software for radar control unit is developed to act as a ‘brain’ where it is created by using assembly language programming to control the whole operation of that radar control unit. A version of application software is also built by using Visual Basic programming software to work together with the developed radar control unit, radar device and camera to enable the laptop PC linking with centre equipment, local and centre database for receiving and sending information processes over a transmission control protocol (TCP/IP) network or Internet. Several specific components of object model (COM/ActiveX) software to fulfil that purpose were used. This software system application is also built to enable laptop PC receiving information from radar control unit, checking the vehicle speed, capturing the speeding car image, and sending and saving it into the database automatically when vehicle’s speed is over the speed limit is detected. This software also covers data display and homepage update to display data. Data update is provided for any PC which is connected to the Internet. The software has been tested with the hardware. From the running test, it shows that the software system has trapped the speed and captured the image of speeding vehicle over the speed limit automatically. Thus, the test result has fulfilled this thesis objective and this software system is successfully built and developed.