Overview
No tracker has to be fitted. An ordinary Android phone on the bus, the driver's or the attendant's, opens a page that shares the bus's location while a trip runs. On the same page they mark each child on and off. Families on that route see the bus on a map with the minutes to their stop. The office sees every bus at once.
Setting it up
- Put each stop on the map. Under Routes, edit a stop and, under Where the bus stops, tap the map, search for the place, or press Where I am now while standing at the stop. Stops not yet placed say not on the map. Families get the minutes to their stop only once their stop is placed; until then, the timetable is used.
- Pair the phone on the bus. Under Vehicles, press Driver's phone on the bus, then Make a pairing link. Scan the QR with that phone, open the link, or send it on WhatsApp with the button. The link is shown once. Making a new one, or Unpair the phone, stops the old phone working; do that if the phone is lost or the driver changes.
- The vehicle must be set on its routes (Routes → Edit → Vehicle), since the phone offers the routes its vehicle runs.
On the bus
- Before each run, tap Start morning pickup or Start afternoon drop on the route. Allow location when the phone asks. Use Chrome on Android.
- Keep the page open with the screen on, on a holder and charging. A web page can't share location from a locked phone, so the page keeps the screen awake where the phone allows it.
- The stops are listed in the order the bus visits them: the route's order in the morning, and in the afternoon by drop time (the route backwards if not every stop has one). The next stop is outlined, and a stop shows reached when the bus has been within 120 metres of it.
- Mark each child: On bus or Not here in the morning, then in the afternoon On bus at school, and Got off or Not on bus. Undo clears a wrong tap without telling anyone. Scan an ID card reads the QR on the child's ID card instead; in the afternoon, a child already on the bus is marked as getting off.
- With no signal, taps and positions wait on the phone and go when the signal is back, each with the time it happened.
- End the trip at school in the morning: everyone on the bus is marked as off at school. In the afternoon, if anyone is still marked on the bus, the phone names them first and asks the driver to check every seat. It ends only when they are marked off or the driver confirms the bus is empty.
A bus runs one trip at a time. A trip ended by mistake can be started again and carries on where it was. One left running overnight is ended the next day.
What families see and are told
On the Campus page (a student) or the child's Campus tab (a parent, see the parent dashboard), while the bus is on its way:
- a map with the bus, their stop and the route's other stops, updated every 15 seconds;
- how far the bus is from their stop, in minutes and kilometres, or that it has reached or passed it;
- whether their child got on or off;
- the school's notice for the day, if there is one.
If the phone hasn't sent anything for 15 minutes, the map is replaced by "No signal from the bus since …". Once the trip ends, the map goes, and the card says when it ended.
| Message, in the app | When |
|---|---|
| The bus has started | When the driver starts the trip. In the morning the student is told too. |
| The bus is near their stop | Once a trip, when it is 5 minutes away (or within 800 metres). In the morning, only to those still waiting. In the afternoon, to those on the bus or not yet marked. |
| Got on the bus | When the child is marked on, with the stop and time. |
| Got off the bus | In the afternoon, when the child is marked off at their stop. Getting off at school in the morning isn't sent: the gate says they reached school. |
| The bus left without them / didn't take the bus home | When the child is marked not there. |
The office's live view
The Live tab shows today's trips. Buses on the road appear on one map (with their stops, when only one is out). Each trip shows its next stop and the minutes to it, when its position last came in, how many children are on and how many weren't there, and a button to call the driver. Open shows the path the bus took, each stop and when it was reached, and every child's mark. Routes with no trip yet are listed under Not started today, saying whether their bus has a paired phone. The tab refreshes itself every 15 seconds.
How the minutes are worked out
From where the bus is, along the stops still ahead to the family's stop. The straight-line distance is made 35% longer for roads. That is divided by the bus's speed over the last five minutes, counted as between 12 and 45 km/h so a red light doesn't make the stop an hour away, and 45 seconds is added for each stop on the way. Where a stop isn't on the map, the timetable is used instead, moved by how late the bus was at the last stop it reached. The card says when it's using the timetable.
A notice to a route
On a route, Notice to families: write it ("The bus is about 20 minutes late this morning") and send. Every rider's family is told in the app, and it shows on their bus card for the rest of the day. The cross takes it down.
Fuel, servicing and repairs
On a vehicle, Fuel & service. Log each fill (litres, amount, odometer reading, pump), each service (with when the next is due, by date or reading) and each repair.
- Service due shows on the vehicle: due soon within two weeks or 500 km of the next service, overdue past it. The Vehicles tab counts vehicles whose papers or service are due.
- Kilometres a litre comes from the recent fills that have a reading: the distance from the first reading to the last, divided by the litres put in after the first.
- With an amount, tick Also record it as an expense in Accounts and choose how it was paid. It goes into Accounts under Vehicle fuel and upkeep, for the bus's school, and from there into the books. Deleting the log leaves the expense; delete it in Accounts too if it was a mistake.
Settings
- Whether families are told in the app at all.
- How many minutes before the stop "the bus is near" goes (5 to start with).
- How close counts as at a stop (120 metres; wider for a big ground or a gate set back from the road).
- Which bus messages also go by WhatsApp or SMS to families the app can't reach. That is switched on, with the monthly limit, under Biometric; the limit covers gate and bus messages together, and the school pays for each. See WhatsApp & SMS.
Privacy
- The phone shares its location only while a trip is running and the page is open.
- A family sees only the bus their child rides, only during a trip, and never other children's names or marks.
- The path is kept at one position a minute once the trip ends, and deleted after 60 days.
Questions
Does it work on an iPhone? Sharing location does, in Safari. Scanning ID cards needs Chrome on Android; on an iPhone, tap the names.
The bus has a GPS tracker already. Not yet: tell us its make and we'll look at reading from it.
Two phones on one bus? One phone per vehicle; a new pairing link moves it to another phone.
A stop is marked reached too early or not at all. Check its place on the map, or change the distance in Settings.