Suppose you have a long straight track, like a dragstrip or a runway. Put a speaker at each end of the track, a known distance apart. Simultaneously at regular intervals, each speaker generates a short tick. By comparing the arrival times of the ticks, you can find your position along the track.
If you hear the left speaker's tick two units before the right speaker, then you are one unit to the left of center. If you hear the right speaker's tick four units before the left speaker, you are two units to the right of center.
You can also determine the exact time the sounds were sent. If it takes ten units of time for sound to go from one speaker to the other, and you are two units to the right of center, there are three more units of time to the right speaker, so the sound was sent three units of time before you heard the right speaker tick.
This is the trivial one-dimensional case: with two speakers you can solve for one spatial dimension plus time. With three speakers (arranged in a triangle, for example) and more complex math, you can solve for two spatial dimensions plus time. And with four speakers, you can find your position in three-dimensional space.
In GPS, the "speakers" are satellites sending radio signals. All the satellites send on the same channel using spread-spectrum techniques, so one radio receiver can receive all the satellites in view, and a chip can sort out the signals. When you read about a "20-channel" GPS, like the A1035 used in the Tracker, it only has one radio. It has 20 decoder channels on the chip, so it can listen to 20 satellites at the same time. If at least four satellites are in view, the GPS receiver can solve for your position in three-dimensional space. With only three satellites, the receiver can get an approximate two-dimensional fix by essentially assuming you are close to the ground relative to the satellites.
In order to find your position, the receiver needs to know exactly where the satellites are. Each satellite transmits its position, called ephemeris, every 30 seconds in a continuous loop. The ephemeris is good for one hour. If the GPS has been off for an hour, it will take at least 30 seconds to get a fix. If the signal drops out, and a few bits are lost, you have to wait another 30 seconds for the data to repeat. So the first fix takes some multiple of 30 seconds. Additional fixes arrive one per second.
The A1035 receiver used in this project is one of the best GPS modules available, but it stil requires a substantial amount of battery power - around 50 ma at 3.3V. It has a microwave radio and a CPU faster than the AVR microcontroller. Leaving the module on would drain the battery in a few hours. The Tracker uses a PNP transistor to switch the module's power on and off. When off, the module retains its ephemeris data in static RAM, powered by the Vbak wire and the diode. The Tracker can switch the GPS on, get a fix within a few seconds, and switch it off again. After an hour, the ephemeris expires and there will be another 30-second or longer delay.
The A1035 outputs serial data at 4800 bps. This is similar to a PC's serial port but inverted and at a lower voltage. You can connect the A1035 to a PC using a MAX3232 chip as explained under Development below. The format, called NMEA, is a continuous stream of comma-delimited ASCII lines. The receiver starts outputting as soon as you apply power, although no position numbers appear until it obtains a valid fix.
Other GPSes should also work. I interfaced a Garmin ETrex Vista to the development board through a MAX3232 chip and it worked fine.
Vincotech A1035 short datasheet PDF
Vincotech A1035 long datasheet PDF
Vincotech A1035 firmware/NMEA PDF
SMS is designed to communicate between phones. To send email from SMS, you send to an email gateway, and prefix the email address before your message. Long email addresses limit the length of the message you can send. SMS coming in from email comes from a random-looking number, with no reliable way to reply to it. This requires the Tracker to have a preset reply address, rather than parsing each incoming message and figuring out the reply address.
Most mobile phones today have USB interfaces on proprietary connectors. GSM modules are available with serial interfaces, but they are expensive. The C168i is a welcome exception - a $20 phone with a serial interface on a standard 2.5mm headset jack. The serial interface is CMOS level like the A1035, and can be connected directly to a microcontroller. It can also be connected to a PC with a MAX3232 chip.
The C168i is perfect for microcontroller interfacing, but GoPhone service has a few downsides. One is that it sends a "balance remaining" message to the phone after every message. Some phones, like the Samsung A437, can be set to ignore this, but the C168i cannot. The messages accumulate but appear to cause no harm. To prevent this and other memory leaks, the microcontroller reboots the phone periodically using the AT*SWRESET command. This can be disabled with a #define directive in the program.
Another nuisance is the annoying voice response system I have to use to buy the monthly SMS plan. Hopefully it will be available on the website soon.
The C168i can, in theory, be switched on and off by a +CFUN command. In practice, the +CFUN=0 command does a fine job of switching the transceiver off, but the +CFUN=1 command does not turn it back on. Powersave mode currently uses the AT*SWRESET command to turn the phone back on. This can be changed to +CFUN=1 with a #define, for use with other phones.
Other phones should work as long as they support AT commands on a serial interface. GSM modules should also work, but I don't have any to test. (Update: now I do, and two of them are supported.)
The Tracker needs two serial ports, one for the phone and one for the GPS. The smallest AVR processor with two hardware UARTs is a 40-pin chip, so the Tracker uses software UARTs, setting programmable timers to clock bits in and out. This works fine as long as you only need to communicate with one device at a time.
The AVR can be put into a low-power stop mode and can wake itself up when a timer expires, or can be woken by external input from the phone receiving a SMS. The processor spends most of its time in this state, waking up only to process a message or take a GPS fix. The processor runs at 1MHz for 4800-baud communication. It could run at 8MHz, if you need faster serial I/O. All the timing values would have to be adjusted. There is a setting or "fuse" bit to select the speed.
ATTINY84 datasheet PDF
AVR instruction set PDF
The Tracker needs to switch the power to the module with a PNP transistor. The ZTX1151 is overkill, but I had some around and they have a low saturation voltage. There is also a two-color LED for status, another LED connected to the switched GPS power, and resistors for the LEDs and transistor base. That's all there is to the circuit.
AME8811 regulator datasheet PDF
ZTX1151 datasheet PDF
The main program calls GET_NEXT_CHAR after setting RECEIVE_TIMEOUT. GET_NEXT_CHAR returns a pending character, waits for a character, or returns with the T flag set if the receiver timed out. The Y pointer keeps track of the main program's position in the buffer. The program often saves the Y pointer, looks ahead, and then resets the Y pointer. Parsing of the buffer is done "live" while characters are coming in. This works fine as long as the main program stays ahead of the incoming data.
SERIAL_SEND_STRING_TO_PHONE is the string output function, and is analogous to printf() in C. It accepts a control string containing text and a series of special-function codes. The codes can insert SRAM or EEPROM fields, call substrings in program memory, or print numbers in decimal. All the special function codes are documented at the top of the function.
PARSE_NMEA_OR_COMMAND_LINE parses space or comma delimited fields into SRAM. The flag FLAG_PARSE_NMEA makes it handle the NMEA format with checksum, $ and * characters, and empty fields. With this flag clear, it parses command lines and phone responses. This function also accepts a control string to determine which fields to save and where in SRAM to save them. There is a 64-byte area in memory reused for all such parsing.
PARSE_DECIMAL reads a string containing a decimal number, and returns the 16-bit number. It is used to parse user input and NMEA values where these need to be processed numerically. There are options for integer or dot-one format.
The GPS provides speed in knots and altitude in meters. We need to convert to other units (KPH, MPH, feet) and this is done by UNITS_CONVERT. The function multiplies a 16-bit number by a 16-bit conversion constant, keeping only the high-order 16 bits of the product. This scales the input down, so there are prefix entry points that double or quadruple the input before applying the constant.
All strings in SRAM and EEPROM are null-terminated and have a maximum field length. An eight-character field can hold eight characters of text, or if the string is shorter, it will be null-terminated.
The function waits a preset number of lines after the first valid fix to allow the data to smooth out. It takes a second look if it gets a speed between 2 and 10 knots, or if it gets a position displaced more than MIN_DISPLACEMENT from the last good fix. Without this additional filtering, the tracker generated a lot of spurious MOVED and STARTED messages.
Repeat forever
If tracking mode,
Get a location fix.
Decide on the basis of fix status and tracking state whether to send
a tracking message.
Update tracking state if it has changed.
Poll the phone for incoming messages.
If messages found,
If not previous failures (CMGL_SAFETY_COUNT)
Get first message.
If password valid,
Call message-handling function based on command.
Delete first message.
Set FLAG_NEED_TO_POLL_MESSAGES.
else (no message found),
Clear FLAG_NEED_TO_POLL_MESSAGES.
If phone reset enabled and time to reset phone,
Reset phone.
Wait for it to come back online.
Clear PHONE_RESET_COUNT.
If callback command pending from message above,
Execute the callback command.
Clear the callback pointer.
Wait for blink codes to finish.
If FLAG_NEED_TO_POLL_MESSAGES set,
Go to top of main loop.
Sleep for POLL_INTERVAL or until interrupt wakes up.
If wakeup was an interrupt,
Set FLAG_NEED_TO_POLL_MESSAGES.
Go to top of main loop.
else (wakeup was timer expired)
If in powersave and phone was off,
Turn on the phone.
Set state to waking up.
Set the powersave waking up poll interval.
Go to top of main loop.
else if in powersave and phone was waking up,
Set state to power on.
Set the power on poll interval.
Go to top of main loop.
else if in powersave and phone was on,
Turn off the phone.
Set state to power off.
Go back to sleep.
else (not in powersave),
Go to top of main loop.