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Talk to the global leaders in fleet management, vehicle tracking and personal safety
Now that MiX Telematics has officially released our latest mobile application, MiX Fleet Mobile, we chatted to a developer to dig a little bit deeper into the interesting facets of how this product came to be and what makes it so special.
Chris van Wyk, takes the time to share his thoughts on the development of MiX Fleet Mobile App…
“First of all, I’d like to give a big shout out to the FM-Web team, who completed the project as I had been moved off to another product during the later stages of the development on the project.
The MiX Fleet Mobile App is the mobile offering product based on features from the flagship product FM-Web, our premiere web-based service for commercial fleet operators that services fleets world-wide.
With this in mind it does not take a lot of imagination to realize that this codebase has reached a substantial level of maturity and as a result has collected its fare share of legacy code.
What you must keep in mind with legacy code though is however best your intentions are, there are always areas within the system, which may be adversely affected by code changes and or additions. Thus, the development team had to approach all changes with precision and support a great deal of testing.
In addition to this, trying to introduce new approaches in development and architecture comes at a cost not everyone is comfortable with and or potentially willing to sink effort into. The approach we wanted to take going forward in terms of supporting the mobile applications on FM-Web was to introduce the mobile API as RESTFul services.
The challenge we faced was which framework to use while taking into consideration that the application stack is Microsoft based and predominantly using C#. Together with this, all existing web services were soap base and implements security and logging features specific to the solution. So if we were to introduce new services, these services would need to fit into the existing constraints of at least the security and logging features.
Having worked on a proof of concept project, introducing Ruby into the organization, the search was on to find a framework that would give us the same or similar benefits of Sinatra and Rack.
Enter NancyFX. The best way to describe NancyFX must be the following description taken from the projects website: “Nancy is a lightweight, low-ceremony, framework for building HTTP based services on .Net and Mono. The goal of the framework is to stay out of the way as much as possible and provide a super-duper-happy-path to all interactions.”
The selling point for me was the amazing balance the guys on the project achieved between the static typed and dynamic object world that exists in both the Microsoft.NET Framework 4 and the latest releases of Mono. Coupled with the implementation of pipelining and pre or post-request hooks snapping the NancyFX framework on top of the FM-Web business logic was as they say, taking “super-duper-happy-path”.
There are a number of things, which I am really excited about in terms of the final outcome of this project. The first is that there are open source projects in existence like NancyFx, which proves that the “we-did-not-build-it”, or it is not from Microsoft, mindset of the average .Net developer to be not entirely accurate. The second is that it is possible to devise simple and elegant solutions hooking into and extending systems sometimes thought of as “legacy” without rebuilding or reinventing the wheel, i.e. reusing security and logging features.
Lastly, and I would venture to say the most important in my opinion, that now having been able to introduce a RESTFul architecture into the FM-Web world and modularly exposing data as required, the possibilities for future feature rich mobile and web development is limitless and we look forward to pushing the boundaries to achieve the best development solutions possible.”
For the full press release visit http://www.mixtelematics.com/news/MiXMobileFleet.
Chris Van Wyk is a Developer at MiX Telematics in Stellenbosch, South Africa. He is currently focused on mobile development (iOS, Android, Windows Phone 7), Hypermedia driven RESTful APIs, Micro Web Frameworks and having fun with code.
Steve Jobs not only pushed himself and his ventures to the limits of development potential, he tapped into a sphere of technological ingenuity that perhaps could not have been foreseen. He changed the way we think, the way we work, the way we live. Steve Jobs has left a legacy in many the general population’s lives via the mobile and computing devices we use, but he has also made an astounding impact on the fields of Design and Development that his legacy will forever live on in the dawn of the new Digital Age that his ‘Think Different’ mantra has given rise to.
As the co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple, co-founder of Pixar Animation studios, a member on the board of directors of the Walt Disney Company, and founder of NeXT, the late Steve Jobs paved many roads in design and development. He was an inspirational and creative powerhouse and with the introduction of everything ‘i’ or ‘mac,’ Developer, Trevor Langeveldt, notes that “Jobs ultimately revolutionised the way we see and interact with the world digitally as well as how we model our user interface and use design principles to better serve the needs of our end-users.”
Wednesday, 5 October 2011, the world lost Steve Jobs the man, but we will never lose his contributions to the way we interact with devices and technology. “MiX Telematics’ Developers and Designers have certainly been influenced by the strides in development innovation made by Apple with Jobs at the helm, especially in terms of User Experience, Mobile App Development, and even Design principles. It’s clear that we all strive more now than ever to Think Different,” notes Charl van Wyk, MiX Telematics UI specialist, who focuses on the fusion of Design and Development.
“Here at MiX Telematics, we care about User Experience and much like Steve Jobs, our developers take their work to heart. Being passionate about what you do is the key to success and we’re proud to say that passion most definitely plays a big part in how we work as a company,” says Product Manager, Tertius Wessels.
It also goes without saying that Steve Jobs’ innovations in the field have influenced all levels of a development team. Terry Buzer, Group Director responsible for Development, feels that “keeping developers motivated and inspired is a key performance objective that MiX Telematics strives to maintain and in so doing, we are able to bring the end user the very best in telematics technology design and quality.”
MiX Telematics Developer, Chris van Wyk, says, “Mobile development and for a large part, software development, are key creative outlets for me. For me to be creative, I truly need to believe in what I’m doing. I believe the natural progression from here forward will be seeing your users experience a ‘Wow, this is great’ moment when using your products.”
Thank you, Steve Jobs, for making us Think Different, reach further, and create with more confidence.
Shawn Graaff is the Online Content & Social Media Manager for MiX Telematics International. Based in South Africa, Shawn is an American dreaming in digital with a special interest in Mobile for Africa and sustainable living. Follow her tweets about Social Media Marketing, SEO, Content Strategy, and Online Community Management @ShawnGraaff.
Cyclists who stay close to the leading male and female runners, as well as the leading veteran runner will be equipped with tracking devices, enabling us to track the positions of those in the lead. Positions will be tracked using GPRS and displayed on a live map for monitoring. In addition, tracking of fleet vehicles, which include ambulances, emergency response and sweeper vehicles, will enable quicker response times and better vehicle management in emergency situations.
Our involvement at the Argus Cycle Tour and now the Two Oceans Marathon, are strong examples that demonstrate how our systems continue to link people to information, in a reliable and innovative way!
Whilst this is by no means the most powerful use of the latest innovation on MiX Mobile, our Camera View feature does allow you to find your vehicle in parking lots. In fact there are many other applications for this visually-rich positioning information also known as Augmented Reality (AR) such as Wikitude World Browser or Layar Reality Browser.
Augmented Reality essentially allows you to superimpose data such as location and status from your vehicle l via your camera view. This gives you a 3D view of where your vehicle is located as well as its current position in relation to you. You can simply follow your phone to lead you to your car.
Augmented Reality demo
Augmented Reality options
Since I’ve started at MiX Telematics I have become a self-confessed Apple fan boy. It all started with an iPhone and progressed to a MacBook. Nothing up to know has beaten the “unpacking” experience of each of these devices. The attention to user detail is really amazing. This post however, is not to convert people to Apple, but rather to show what can be done with some C# coding for the iPhone. Yes, it’s not a typo, C# code was used to write a basic iPhone application.
Objective-C, however much touted as user friendly by Apple, I have up to now found a cumbersome language to get into. Based on this and having followed the progress of Mono, the open source implementation of .NET languages such as C# and Visual Basic, I decided to invest some time in MonoTouch.
MonoTouch as described on the Mono website: “Create C# and .NET apps for iPhone and iPod Touch, while taking advantage of iPhone APIs, and reusing existing .NET code, libraries, and skills.” And I must admit, the last part of the above ”…reusing existing .NET code, libraries, and skill.” so far has proved to 100% on the mark.
Tomi Ahonen wrote an article on his blog in January 2007; “Putting 2.7 billion in context: Mobile phone users”. If you like statistics and history – it is a must read! In the article he pointed out that the even though the car is a 100 year old invention, there is only 800 million registered automobiles in the world, but in 2007 there were 2.7 Billion mobile phones in active use, a subscription for 40% of the planet’s population.
Although the Smartphone (a mobile phone with computing power and an operating system) is still a relatively new player in this market place, market penetration is steadily growing at an average of about 12% per quarter. This means that in a few years time every single person on the planet will have more processing power in his pocket, than the Apollo 11 that took Neil Armstrong to the moon.
Figure 1: Worldwide Smartphone Sales to end users in Q309 (Thousands of Units). Source: Gartner
Refer to Figure 1 for worldwide Smartphone sales to end-users in Q3 2009. From this figure it can be seen that 41 million Smartphones were shipped with Nokia having 39% of market share, RIM 20% and Apple 17% as the three biggest players.
The answer is pretty simple…it is a bus that we simply cannot miss. The same way that mobile phones has invaded the space of Personal Navigation Devices (e.g. Garmin), Cameras and Music Players (e.g. IPod), it will eventually invade the space of dedicated OBC devices like the FM3316 and the Mix1000.
The invasion of the smartphone is however is not doom and gloom for the telematics market. There will always be a market for dedicated and professional Fleet Management Systems; it only means that the consumer telematics market will grow exponentially. The availability of mobile phone applications will educate the consumer market about the possibilities and functionality usually only found in the telematics space. So we can see it as free marketing. Smartphones are the vehicle that will carry the telematics marketing message to the corners of the world.
What is the incentive today to buy a dedicated Personal Navigation Device (e.g.Garmin) if you can get the same functionality for free with your next mobile phone upgrade?
What is the incentive today to buy a dedicated music player (e.g. iPod) if you can get a “Comes with Music” phone? It has enough memory, free music and you can navigate, make calls and take videos and pictures!
Most of the manufacturers and operating systems like RIM (Blackberry), Google (Android), Apple (IPhone) and Nokia (Symbian) already have personal tracking applications. Nokia Sports Tracker won the Best Mobile Internet Service award in GSMA Global Mobile Awards 2009. With the Nokia Sports Tracker application you can track your workouts live on the web via your Smartphone.
To any FM-Web and XDrive users this must look eerily familiar – the only difference is that the unit is a person on a bicycle and not a vehicle on the highway!
Vodacom has a “Look4Me” service where you can track your family and phones for security. It has the ability to send panic signals via SMS and you can also define dangerous or no-go zones based on location.
Imagine an application that can monitor you blood pressure/ heart rate and count your steps and then automatically update your Discovery Vitality points. It is a lot more accurate and easier to perform a Body-IQ test in a Gym.
I imagine it won’t be long before we also have Smartphone applications that can interact with the CAN bus or your car via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi to show diagnostics or to record trip details.
And the best of it all is that when you get out of your vehicle, you can use the same device to SMS, Skype, Twitter, Facebook, email, browse the web, take pictures, find the nearest pub or make a business call.
MiX Telematics were one of the first players in the world to respond to the threads and opportunities offered by Smartphones by releasing Mix Mobile. MiX Telematics are on top of their game and they know how to swim in shark infested soup – so watch out! The game has just begun…
