Design of Anti-Vehicle Theft System using GSM and GPS with Image Acquisition

This paper presents‘An Anti-Vehicle Theft System using GSM and GPS with Image Acquisition’. The aim is to design a system that can acquire the image of an unauthorized person and transmit it to a remote location. In order to achieve such a system, the major components used include a GSM modem with integrated GPS, a camera and a microcontroller (ATmega2560). The system makes use of a secret button for authentication of the driver. The secret button is connected and programmed in such a way that when the engine is started, a five minutes window is given to the driver to authenticate by pressing the secret button. If the driver does so, the security of the system is changed to tracking mode (implying that the vehicle coordinate is continually sent to an E-mail address) every fifty (50) minutes as the driver drives the vehicle. In a situation whereby the driver forgets to authenticate within five minutes, the system will shut down the engine but all the driver has to do is to authenticate by pressing the secret button and then switch on his engine. Assuming the vehicle is actually stolen (knowing that the thief is not aware of the security system because everything is hidden), the time window will elapse without authentication. At this point the system enters the alarm mode, implying the vehicle has been stolen. The camera then snaps the thief, the GPS picks the coordinate while the GSM modem transmit such data to the owner’s E-mail address which can be accessed from a smartphone. With this data at hand, the thief can be declared wanted and arrested later. The vehicle cannot be restarted until the secret button is pressed. A prototype of the security system was developed and it was seen that when the security button is not pressed after starting the engine, the vehicle is immobilized. The engine could not be started until the security button was pressed. The owner of the vehicle then received an E-mail containing the image of the unauthorized person and the co-ordinate of the vehicle, implying that his vehicle has been stolen.