Telematics applications have been changing over the last few years from a niche into one of the fastest growing markets. With tracking and tracing applications finding use in more and more areas the telematics service providers are focusing on the application rather than on the hardware of the remote units.

Vincotech addresses this development with the offering of ready-to-use hardware platforms that can be utilized in diverse applications. As a leading supplier of GPS receiver modules Vincotech has been serving the telematics market for several years. This market includes fleet management, vehicle diagnostics, security and surveillance as well as insurance applications.

In the early stages of these telematics activities most of the companies active in this area developed their own hardware providing the platform basis for their firmware, server side software and customer service offered. With the rapid development of the market in recent times, there is a significant trend on the side of the telematics service providers to move away from the hardware business, as hardware is seen less and less as a differentiating element of the total solution provided by the telematics services provider.

The company delivers an answer to this trend with the development of standard hardware platforms targeted at telematics applications.

A1074 telematics platform

The A1074 is the first in a series of telematics hardware platforms that can be used by telematics service providers to implement their firmware application. It has been developed to cover the majority of applications in the area of fleet management and security and surveillance; this is specifically addressed with it’s versatility in configurability, e.g. a Dallas 1-wire interface. A CANbus option also provides capability for remote diagnostics – reference 1.

Fig 1: The A1074 telematics hardware platform.

The A1074 is a complete solution including casing and is already type approved according to CE, E, FCC, PTCRB and A-Tick. The A1074 provides a GPS receiver, GPRS quad band modem, an automotive power supply unit and several interfaces such as serial port, IO ports, driver button and LED, Dallas 1-wire and CAN. While the A1074 holds a reasonable amount of memory to run the embedded application, an additional micro-SD card can be used to store logging or other data. As Vincotech does not offer the application firmware the A1074 has been designed to be easily programmed. The unit uses a fully modular approach with GSM and GPS working autonomously. The main microcontroller is only running the actual telematics application and has full control over the hardware. Almost all of the functionality can be addressed via software giving the programmer the maximum of control.

The main microcontroller of the A1074 is an industry standard STR71 from ST Microelectronics. The STR71 is based on the ARM7TDMI core and provides the best combination of available interfaces and low power modes.

The ARM7TDMI has been chosen since it is one of the most prevalent microcontroller cores used in embedded applications. Due to this widespread use of ARM microcontrollers there is a huge number of development tools available. 2 In addition there is a lot of support available from Vincotech, STM, ARM and the tool vendors as well as from the global ARM development community.