In RPS Tracker, a location is a place in which events happen. Locations are organized into routes for the purposes of delivering instructions to operators. Routes will include predefined locations like Project Boundaries, Waste or Borrow Sites or Sections / Phases / Zones within Projects. They can also include maintenance yards, fueling locations, laydown yards, equipment parking areas. avoidance areas and wetland zones for example.
Tracker has the concept of Projects, however routes can include connections between projects and also between shared locations like borrow and waste sites etc. If you are a small to mid size contractor that is typically operating a number of projects within a city, you can set up a Project called City X Projects and Locations, and then define a single route that captures all of the “projects” and other key locations (waste, borrow, maintenance, fuel etc.). In this way your fleet of equipment in the city can freely move between projects on a single route. If you win another project simply create its location(s) and add it to your city route. If you complete a project you can simply hide it from the route.
Tracker also has the concept of locations within locations. This can be used to define sections, zones or phases of a project that you want to report separately or it can be used to segregate waste or borrow locations - each geofence on a route can become a source of a specific material so within a borrow site you may have areas or stockyards for Type 1, Type 2 and Type 3 materials. A truck entering the borrow site is recorded and then it enters the Type 2 Material area and loads that material through an Autoload event.
Locations are simply defined using a name and a boundary line. The boundary line should be large enough to capture the area in which events will occur but not so large that false events can be triggered. The GPS in the tablet is typically accurate to between 2 and 5m (6 to 15’), so adjacent locations should be separated by at least that amount so that “GPS error” does not trigger false events i.e. it is wise not to have two locations sharing a common line that divides them for the best and most accurate reporting. Also bear in mind that if you include a road that passes by the entrance to a location in the geofence boundary, that any fleet asset driving along that road could trigger an event just by driving by the location - so cut the boundary back to just the area that is needed and define it so that the event trigger process is clean.
Once locations have been defined, they are added to routes. Routes can be simple A - B or Cut to Fill or Site to Waste or Borrow to Site type hauls. A route can also be entirely freeform, i.e. the asset can go wherever it needs to go and manually trigger events like Load, Dump, Fuel, Maintenance etc. A route can also be a combination of freeform and location based direction. When a location is added to a route, it will be assigned the buttons that you wish the operator to see while inside the location. The standard buttons include the following
Manual Load Event
Manual Dump Event
Auto Load Event
Auto Dump Event
Fuel Event (Purchased Fuel)
Bulk Fuel Event (On Site Refueling)
Maintenance Event
Add Hours Event
The route will have default buttons that show up when outside of all defined location geofences. On entering a geofence the tracker mobile screen will change color to reflect the nature of the geofence (load / Dump, Stockpile / Project / Waste / Borrow etc.) and will display the location based buttons and Geofence Name information. If you have an Auto Load or Auto Dump button enabled, the timer for the event will start on entering the geofence and trigger when the prescribed time has elapsed e.g. 10 or 30 seconds for example. Note the asset has a status (Loaded or Empty) and the Auto Load / Auto Dump or Load / Dump event can only be triggered if the asset load status matches correctly - i.e. if the truck is loaded it can only dump and if empty it can only load etc.
The following video shows how to setup and define or edit Locations for a set of projects and locations within a county or city type operation.