ENGINEERING HISTORY
TaPos: a tracking prototype from 1997–1998
A personal account of connecting radio, GPS/GSM and a web view.
The practical problem
In 1997–1998 I worked on TaPos, a partly autonomous position-recording system for truck swap bodies. The question was practical: how could equipment without its own continuously active connection report a useful location within a wider logistics system?
The system I explored
The design combined ISM radio beacons, a GPS/GSM master, depot receivers and a database with a web display. It also included a DTMF and voice-query route. My published account describes component prototypes and a three-week field test.
The lasting lesson
The interesting part is the combination: radio behaviour, power constraints, firmware, communications and an understandable view of the result. A useful system emerged from the interfaces between them.
Source material: my project proposal of 9 December 1997 (PDF) describes the prototypes and three-week trial. The original presentation (PDF) includes the September 1997 demonstration, hardware photographs and test results.