Vehicle Track

The OGLAS Vehicle Track wires into the accessory rail of a vehicle — or any engine on the site — and logs every run. Trips, hours, fuel-time, GPS, battery state. Equally happy on a tractor, a ute, a forklift, a golf cart, a generator, or the irrigation pump’s diesel — a single asset or a whole fleet.

What it does

• Power up = new run — each start records a fresh log entry at zero minutes, with a GPS fix and the starting battery voltage.
• Counts minutes while running — re-persisted to flash every minute so a flat battery never costs more than 60 seconds of log.
• Records a path, not just a duration — periodic GPS waypoints during the run (configurable interval), so you have where it went, not just for how long.
• Captures battery voltage at start, periodically during the run, and at shutdown. Lets you spot a failing alternator before the day it doesn’t crank.
• Reads the engine via OBD-II (optional) — on vehicles with an OBD-II port: RPM, coolant temp, fuel level, speed, and fault codes (DTCs), logged with the run.
• Measures how it’s driven via an IMU (optional) — harsh use, idle vibration, and tip/roll angle for a rollover warning on a tractor, quad, or forklift.
• Back-walks unsent runs on each start — sends the most recent run first, waits for confirmation, then walks back to the next unconfirmed run until it hits one already recorded.
• Rolls over — fixed ring buffer of 500 records by default; newest id overwrites oldest slot.
• Shows alerts in the cab — sensor and site alerts appear on the on-board display while you’re in the vehicle. Low water, fence down, gate left open, engine service due — see alerts in the cab below.
• Identifies the operator (optional) — a short list of names selectable at start, so the run log records who drove, not just what drove.
• Triggers external devices — built-in button or configurable proximity rules can open a gate, ring a bell, or activate any other OGLAS device.

OBD-II and IMU

Two optional add-ons turn Vehicle Track from a run-logger into a condition-logger:

• OBD-II — on any vehicle with a standard OBD-II port, the node reads the engine bus directly: RPM, coolant and intake temperature, fuel level, speed, and stored fault codes (DTCs). A check-engine light becomes a logged, alertable event instead of something you only notice from the cab.
• IMU (motion sensing) — an on-board accelerometer and gyroscope measure how the machine is used, not just that it ran:
  • Quality of use — harsh starts, heavy vibration, rough running.
  • Tip / roll angle — the important one for tractors, quads, and forklifts: cross-slope and pitch, with an immediate alert if it passes a safe threshold. A rollover warning that rings the bell and shows in the cab.

Both log to the same run record, so “who drove it, for how long, how hard, and did it throw a fault” lives in one place — see maintenance and cost-per-hour reports.

Static engines (and why this matters)

Generators, water-pump engines, mowers in a fixed shed, plant in a yard — most of these never get logged. Then one fails and nobody can answer “when was it last serviced?” or “how many hours since the oil change?”.

Vehicle Track works for them too. Mount it inside the housing, wire it to the engine’s accessory output (or a vibration sensor / aux relay if there’s no key). It tracks the same hours-and-cycles data; the GPS just doesn’t move. You get:

• Hours since last service — feed the log into your maintenance schedule instead of guessing.
• Run frequency — is the backup generator actually being exercised, or has it been sitting idle for nine months?
• Battery health — for engines that fail to crank, the battery is usually the culprit. Trend the voltage and you’ll see it coming.

Vehicle and maintenance logging

Each run record carries a vehicle id (or engine id) so the hub can attribute it to the right machine. From there:

• Service intervals — by hours run since last service event, not by date.
• Fuel and consumables — log refills against engine hours.
• Cost per hour — total cost ÷ hours run gives a real number per asset.
• Cross-vehicle reports — which ute is doing the most work, which forklift sits idle, which generator is the most reliable.

The hub holds all of it on local storage — see Your data is your data.

On-board display

The SSD1306 OLED stays on while the engine is running:

vehicle  #42  ute1     /     <- node name, run id, vehicle id
─────────────────────────
T: 15 min   V: 12.7V         <- minutes + battery voltage
GPS: -38.51, 145.20          <- current fix (or "no GPS" for static)
─────────────────────────
! Trough 3: 80 mm  (low)     <- inbound alert from the hub
─────────────────────────
Last: sent #41               <- last publish status
Queue: #40...                <- next id queued for back-walk

Alerts in the cab

The on-board display is also a receiver for site alerts. While the engine is running, it pages between run-data screens and any active alerts the hub is publishing on the channel. An LED flashes when a new alert lands so you don’t miss it watching the road.

Three places this is useful:

• Out on the site — Trough 3: 80 mm (low), Fence-east: silent for 12 min, Tank: 15% remaining. Already on the move, so detour and fix it.
• Pulling in at the yard — Maingate: open, Backgate: open, Bell muted. Catch the things you’d otherwise drive past and forget about.
• About the engine itself — Hours since service: 287 (limit 250), Battery start voltage trending low. The vehicle reminds itself.

A button on the device acknowledges the active alert (clears the screen and tells the hub you’ve seen it).

Operator (optional)

If multiple people share a vehicle, an optional operator selection at start records who drove. A short list of names lives on the device; cycle and select with the rotary encoder, or pair an RFID/NFC reader for tap-to-identify.

The operator id is included in each run record:

{ id: 42, vehicle: "ute1", operator: "Scott", start_epoch: ..., minutes: 47, ... }

…so maintenance and cost-per-hour reports can break down by driver as well as by vehicle.

Triggering external devices

Vehicle Track can issue commands to other OGLAS devices on the mesh. Two trigger modes:

• Button — a configurable button on the device fires a chosen action. Common assignments:
  • Open the main gate as you pull up.
  • Ring a bell to announce arrival.
  • Acknowledge / silence the active alert.
• Proximity (optional, requires GPS) — a geofence rule on the device fires automatically when you cross a configured boundary. Examples:
  • Within 50 m of the main gate moving inward → opens the gate automatically.
  • Within 10 m of the homestead → rings the bell to announce arrival.

Proximity rules are stored on the device, not on the hub, so they keep working even when out of hub range. Any OGLAS device that responds to commands (gate, bell, smart switch) is a valid target.

Hardware

Powered off the accessory rail (12 V → 5 V converter required) plus a GPS module. No deep sleep — the device must stay listening long enough to send the last run and catch the confirmation.

For static engines, the only difference is the trigger signal — wire the “engine running” detection to whatever’s available (key-on relay, aux output, vibration sensor on the housing).

Pairs well with

• Gate — open the gate as you pull up, by button or proximity.
• Bell — chirp on arrival; alarm when a generator stops unexpectedly.
• Smart Switch — Vehicle Track flags low generator hours since service, Smart Switch refuses to auto-start it until you’ve serviced it.
• LoRa Hub — collects the run log and pushes alerts back to the cab display.

Building this into a larger site? That’s exactly what we do — start a custom build or email us.