Design Decisions
The purpose of this wiki page is to identify major design decisions that have been made for the V-Tracker project. Design decisions are broken down into Software and Hardware decisions as outlined on this page.
This is a living document that may be modified from time to time. Please refer to the Wiki History for detailed revision information.
Current version:
| Version | Date | Modified by | Details |
|---|---|---|---|
| v3.0.0 | XX-XX-2012 | Hadi Michael | Rev. A for final submission. |
It is a project requirement that the software be developed in a form that allows it to be deployed on multiple mobile operating systems, namely: iOS 5.0+ and Android 4.0+. As a result, there are can be no strict hardware requirements for this project. In future development, the project may incorporate additional hardware accessories that provide higher accuracy motion sensing and/or user interfacing hardware that can enhance the user experience.
An Apple iPhone 4 has been selected as a mobile device for use in prototype development. An Asus Nexus 7 and an HTC Desire have also been used to demonstrate the software's versatility across different devices.
It was decided that the application would attempt to collect and store information from both the device's motion sensors (accelerometer and gyroscope) and localisation sensors (compass and GPS). More information relating to these sensors can be found in the Hardware page.
The V-Tracker project outcome must include a mobile software application. The application, its encompassed algorithms and documentation therefore form the primary deliverable for this project. This section details the founding software decisions that were made for this project.
In order to ensure that sensor data was reliably acquired using web technologies and to facilitate the deployment of the application on multiple mobile devices, the Cordova (known as PhoneGap) framework was selected. According to their website:
PhoneGap is an HTML5 app platform that allows you to author native applications with web technologies and get access to APIs and app stores. PhoneGap leverages web technologies developers already know best... HTML and JavaScript.
Figure 1. Apache Cordova, the project behind PhoneGap
You can read more about PhoneGap at http://phonegap.com/about.
Credit is given to all the other different libraries and tools used in V-Tracker at Credits.