Geofence

Owned by Joseph Quinn
Last updated: May 22, 2016
6 min read

If assets need to tracked so that you are notified on them leaving/entering an area then you can use the geofence functionality in RuBAN.

Step-by-step guide

The following are the steps to manually create a Geofence in RuBAN and assign it to an asset.

  1. In the admin section of RuBAN there is a top level section called "Geofence Settings". Click in this box to go into administration for Geofences.



  2. You are brought to the list of previously created Geofences. Select the "Create New" button to go in and create a new geofence.



  3. This brings you to the Geofence form. There are three types of Geofences by default, Security, Journey and Tracker. Security Geofences are the most common and are used to detect that an asset has left a Geofence. Journey Geofences are used to set the location where a Journey for a vehicle can start or end. This is improtant in some environments. For example if a vehicle goes out on a route but has multiple stops and even turns the vehicle off then that will create many smaller journeys but if you set a journey geofence at the depot then that vehicles multiple smaller routes will be joined up into one logical route for reporting purposes. A Tracker geofence creates an alert when an asset enters an area as supposed to the Security geofence which creates an alert when an asset leaves an area.



  4. In this case we select a Security geofence and proceed to fill out the form. The form defines what the incident report will look like if this geofence event is triggered. The "Incident Name" is the top level incident name. In this case we select Geofence purpose to be Security. The incident description allows you to give more details on the incident that has occurred. The instructions allows you to give the steps to the operator who would be dealing with this incident that they are to perform if this incident is triggered. It is a text box but there is  also a rich-text editor controls if you wish to create a richer document for the user. When the form has been filled in then proceed by selecting the next button in the bottom right of the form window.



  5. You are then brought to the draw-tool page. This is where you define the shape of the geofence. Pan and zoom the map until the area the geofence will cover is in focus. When you are ready to start drawing the geofence shape select the "Enable Drawtool" checkbox in the top left of the map.



  6. To draw the shape simply click around the area on the map with your mouse. Every click will leave a blue dot on the map. These blue dots outline the area for the geofence. When the geofence is fully outlined un-check the "Finish Drawing" checkbox in the top left of the window.



  7. The area of the geofence will then be shaded in showing you the shape you have created. You can select the Enable Drawtool again to clear it and start again if you need to or if the shape is correct select Next to go to the next step.



  8. The next step is the actions you wish to trigger based off the geofence. Default actions are Email, SMS, MQTT and automated Troubleshooting. Note that other more custom actions can be created using the IDE in RuBAN. Select the tab of each action and check the Enable checkbox to enable the action. Fill in the fields for the actions you have enabled. When the desired actions have been configured select the next button. Note by default the action of creating an event in RuBAN will occur. These actions are in addition to that default action.



  9. The final step in creating a geofence is to select the devices that you are to apply to it. The devices you have access to are available for selection in a list. Check the box beside each one you wish to configure this geofence for. Select Register policy when you have all the assets you wish to selected.



  10. Then you are brought to a screen which lists all the successfully configured Geofences in the system. Your newly created Geofence should now appear in this list.



  11. To see your newly created Geofence in action select the "RuBAN IoE Portal" link in the top nav bar. Find an asset that you applied the geofence to on the map and hover over the asset. A shaded area the same shape as the geofence will show up on the map.



  12. If your asset ever moves out of the geofence it will create an alert in RuBAN. This will cause the geofence area to show up highlighted in red on the map to draw your attention to it. Also the asset will light up depending on the severity to assigned to a geofence breach. In this case a warning (yellow) status is given to the asset.



Advanced Geofences

This guide has walked through the process of creating a standard geofence using the admin section. In some cases drawing a geofence on the map as described here will suffice however it may not be a feasible approach in some environments for example where routes are dynamic and change often. In this case Davra can integrate with a third party system for example a dispatch system which assigns routes to drivers. Davra can pull the route definition file in and automatically create a geofence around it. This means the user does not need to draw the geofence by hand. 

It is fully customisable as to what logic to execute once a geofence alert has been triggered. The built in actions in the UI are mostly for notification purposes but Davra can also add more advanced actions through the IDE. For example to kick off an action. Record Video, bulk offload data etc. Any logic you would want to run based on a vehicle entering/leaving or staying too long in a geofence can be added.