STARS
Published:
October 12, 2019
Category:
Technology
Client:
STARS
Fleet Management & Student Tracking
Provide the ability to track students and school buses, provide navigation efficiencies as well as perform fleet management & Hero Image
The Challenge
Create a brand new product from scratch. In the United States, public transportation provides an estimated 10 billion student trips every year. Each school day, nearly a half million school buses transport 26 million children to and from schools, covering over 4.3 billion miles on the road. School buses have averaged 26,000 accidents annually, making school buses one of the least safe methods of transportation. With the ever-increasing volume of students using school buses as their means of transportation, STARS wanted to utilize the latest innovations in tracking, communications, and GIS technology to improve school bus safety and bring them into the 21st Century.
“After evaluating a few outsourcers, we decided to trust development of our new product to Enterprise64 because of their reputation and professional approach. Creating a new product is a journey, and Enterprise64’s Agile approach allowed us to learn, and makes changes as we went. In the beginning, we had to make a lot of adjustments to the tasks every week due to changing requirements. The team was very responsive to these changes and helped us make the right decisions. Without that, we would still been developing vs. getting product out to market. I am super satisfied with our engagement and would consider working together on future projects too. I appreciate their promptness, quality of work, expertise and would recommend their services.” – CPO, STARS
The Solution
Developed a robust Product leveraging the latest mobile, web and cloud technologies.
Keeping these goals in focus, Enterprise64, an Esri Partner, collaborated with the private and public sectors to create a custom, innovative and extensible platform enabling student & school bus GIS tracking and management – Student Tracking & Auto Relay System (STARS).
The solution consisted of a mobile app for parents, a tablet for the field and web management, communication, and reporting interface for Administrators. All of this was connected via a central cloud-based STARS Hub, which formed the nucleus of the STARS system enabling school administrators to monitor and manage all facets of the student tracking and relay process in real-time.
With features like RFID, Geo-fencing, Speed Monitoring, Real-time location tracking, online-offline capability, and customizable dashboard, STARS relays vital information through a secure GPRS connection to keep students safe.
Keeping these goals in focus, Enterprise64, an Esri Partner, collaborated with the private and public sectors to create a custom, innovative and extensible platform enabling student & school bus GIS tracking and management – Student Tracking & Auto Relay System (STARS).
The solution consisted of a mobile app for parents, a tablet for the field and web management, communication, and reporting interface for Administrators. All of this was connected via a central cloud-based STARS Hub, which formed the nucleus of the STARS system enabling school administrators to monitor and manage all facets of the student tracking and relay process in real-time.
With features like RFID, Geo-fencing, Speed Monitoring, Real-time location tracking, online-offline capability, and customizable dashboard, STARS relays vital information through a secure GPRS connection to keep students safe.
Technical solution & Technology stack
The solution was architected to be customizable and modular, providing a highly flexible and integrated platform that can be implemented on various IT platforms. Fully integrated with Esri’s ArcGIS platform to ensure the system used the latest geo-location data, the system allowed, parents, students and school administrators to have what they needed at their finger-tips.
To create immediate value, the team used ReactNative to leverage the same codebase for the iOS and Android apps, significantly cutting the speed to market. Both apps featured real-time access to location information and instant communication channels. The tablet app was SWIFT based native iOS app with working with RFIDs to identify and locate students. Hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS), the backend system was coded using Node.js, React.js, Lambda, RDS, S3, SQS and various other Amazon Web Services.
To create immediate value, the team used ReactNative to leverage the same codebase for the iOS and Android apps, significantly cutting the speed to market. Both apps featured real-time access to location information and instant communication channels. The tablet app was SWIFT based native iOS app with working with RFIDs to identify and locate students. Hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS), the backend system was coded using Node.js, React.js, Lambda, RDS, S3, SQS and various other Amazon Web Services.
