The way we have automated the guidance system of suburban electric trains in Kazakhstan.

Hi everyone!

My name is Maxim, and I am the head of a development studio named Sailet.

Our studio mostly develops governmental and commercial systems such as corporate web portals, resource management systems, key indicator monitoring systems, internal mobile applications and more.

For the past few years, we have gained enough experience and created many systems so now we are ready to share our highlights with you. We hope that this article will be useful for you, and we could find new partners, clients or employees. The case is rather old now, so now we look backward considering earlier mistakes.

This case is related to the governmental organization JSC "Suburban Transportation", a subsidiary company of JSC “Kazakhstan Temir Zholy” which is the national railway company of Kazakhstan. It is a counterpart of the Russian Railways OJSC.

We were asked to set up a system for monitoring and controlling suburban trains.

The previous system was outdated, so we had to create a simple and user-friendly program.

The main issue was to connect sensors and organize the transmission of video streams, photos and other data directly from each train. That is the way we have designed the software and the hardware.

Key issues:

- A bad quality of communication between cities;

- A huge amount of traffic during the transmission of photo/video streams;

- All communications and approvals.

Team:

- PM;

- VueJS;

- Senior Engineer Laravel Developer

- Middle Engineer Laravel Developer

- Web designer

- A certified senior wirehead;

- And others involved in this project, such as an analyst, technical author, and a couple of juniors.

Deadlines

The actual development time took us 4 months. That's how long we have been working on the project, writing code, testing the system, setting up transfer protocols, etc. The actual implementation time took 6 months, including approvals and bureaucracy.

The technical support is 12 months from the date of the project completion.

Process

We started by collecting and processing data. The first challenge was poor communication, which is typical challenge for a state-owned company.

The Eisenhower matrix helped us make a mindmap of the project, which we transferred to the TOR. As a key point we specified the only person responsible for the project in the TOR, the head of the IT department, who made the decisions and worked directly with us.

This simple trick saved us a lot of time.

The work began and we encountered a poor quality of communication between the cities. There needed to be about 10 cameras in each carriage.

We decided to transmit data via 3G.

During the process, methods of video stream compression and optimization were used, and after lengthy calculations, the cheapest option was to install a mini-PC in each train.

Mini-PC became a router and controller at the same time. We ensured that all streams from all cameras were transmitted to the main server in the most optimized way. In case of a connection failure, the transfer was automatically restored.

If communication was broken, the manager received the following message: “Broadcasting from cameras is inaccessible. The train with cameras you request to view is out of range”. At the same time, the user was able to record until the connection was interrupted.

After reconnecting, transmitting, and stitching the recording (non-interrupted, stored on the mini-pc), the user received a notification: "The train is in the access area. You can start an online broadcast in the "Video/Photo" section".

Mini-PC also transmitted data from the sensors.

Sections

Review

In this section, we have the collection of information about the current state of the train, and its location with the ability to track it on the map. The train was tracked by Yandex maps.

If the train is late, the system sets an alarm and notifies the employee.

If everything is OK, it blinks green. The system updates automatically every 5 seconds. During this time, the system calculates:

• Coordinates;

• Speed;

• Current station;

• Number of open doors;

• Number of wagons;

• Data from the control panel of the electric train;

• Technical condition of the electric train.

Passengers

The system can count the passenger flow at a specific time in every train. It reads information from the sensors installed by Transtelesoft company and counts people who enter and leave the train for a certain period and compiles an automatic exported report.

Video/Photo

As described above.

Stations

In this section, passenger traffic is calculated for each specific station, as well as incoming and outgoing passengers for the period. An automatic export report is sent to the responsible user daily.

Database

As mentioned, KTZ is a state-owned company that employs about 150,000 people nationwide (almost 1% of the population). Fifteen thousand of them are employees of suburban passenger trains. The database contains personal and service data on all employees with up-to-date information. You can edit, add, fire, and play with the "career fate" of employees. An important function is the accounting and maintenance of information of locomotive and train crews of regional sections.

Settings

The system has a huge number of different settings: from getting directions and managing stations to managing employees and setting up reporting.

Result

As a result, after 6 months of the system development, we were able to organize the collection and processing of up-to-date transportation data for KTZ, which had no analogs at that time.

No offense to the Russian Railroad Company, but we made it there first!

CEO of the Passenger Transportation Michael Kortyum is personally acquainted with the system. We considered this project a huge breakthrough success.

If you have any questions after reading this article, please ask them in the comments and I will answer them ASAP!