TrackVerse BMS (Bus Management System)

Authors: C. Sudhakar, K. SaiKrishna, J. Aakhash

Abstract: College bus tracking is a practical problem that students and parents deal with every day you never quite know when the bus will arrive, and that uncertainty adds unnecessary stress. This paper describes a low-cost tracking system we built to solve exactly that. The system uses a Seeed XIAO ESP32S3 microcontroller paired with a u-blox NEO-6M GPS module and a SIM800L GSM module to continuously track a college bus and send location data over the BSNL 2G cellular network. Unlike approaches that rely on Wi-Fi, our system works anywhere there is cellular coverage. Location data including coordinates, speed, altitude, and satellite count is collected every two seconds and sent to a Node.js server hosted on the Railway cloud platform. The server runs a stoppage detection algorithm that flags bus halts when the speed drops below 5 km/h for more than 60 consecutive seconds. A web dashboard built with Leaflet.js shows the live route and highlights each detected stop with timing details. We tested the system on a real campus route over three days and found 100% stoppage detection accuracy with no false positives. The entire hardware cost is under INR 1,500, making this a practical alternative to commercial tracking solutions.