CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

1. Background of the study

Carrying passengers more the capacity of a public transportation has been a problem in many
countries, including the Philippines.

Republic Act No. 4136 clearly provides that vehicle overloading is illegal. Our country have
enacted a series of laws and regulation, local governments have also passed many files to control
overloading of passengers in public transportation, but the effect of any contingent is not obvious.
Based from practice, it proved that efforts that came only from policy to control overloading in public
transportation are not enough, which made the work of relevant departments seem rather passive. The
importance of controlling overloading in public transportation cannot be ignored as the findings show
that excessive passengers is one of the major causes of many deaths and casualties when accidents
occur.

The current system for controlling overloading in public transportation in the Philippines is
through manual checking done by stationing police officers at different locations. The manual check can
be demanding at times like at night or during poor weather. It is not accurate, as it is done randomly
hence they cannot check all the public transportations. It is also costs and requires vast manpower and it
can be dangerous for police officers and for those who are patrolling and conducting stops solo.

From the problem statement above, the researcher came up with the solution to develop an
overloading control and monitoring system for public transportation using microcontroller and GSM/PIR
based monitoring and controlling passenger system.

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2.Conceptual Framework

MICROCON-
GSM RS232 MAX 232 TROLLER

CONPIM
DATABASE GARAGE (Serial Port
SERVER COMPUTER Communicati
ng Device)

Figure 1. Bus Station Module

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BUS STATION

Bus station module is installed in every bus/PUJ terminals where the bus or van will depart. It contains
microcontroller, GSM module, administrator computer and database server. The used of GSM module is
to received public vehicles information when it is overloaded.

IN BUS STATION MODULE

The in bus station module will be mounted in every bus or van in which it will serve as the base module
for the entire process. It is composed of microcontroller interfaced with two PIR sensors (Piezoelectric
Infrared Sensor), one for IN detector and OFF detector. Also an LCD to display the number of passengers
and an alarm to indicate if the bus or van is overloaded, and a GSM modem that sends bus or van
information to bus terminals or nearby police stations or checkpoints.

BUS STOP MODULE

Bus stop module is installed at every bus stop terminals and also at police stations. This module consists
of GSM modem, microcontroller and LCD display. By using bus stop module, we will be able to know the
status of the bus or van before it passes to the bus station. The received information in this module is
from the In Bus Module. If the bus or van is overloaded, a message is transmitted to the Bus Stop
Module in which police officers will give penalty to the driver.

GSM NETWORK

The system’s implementation starts from the Bus Station Module. The Bus Station module has the bus
or van information like plate number, bus starting and destination place. All the bus or van details are
present in the station database, so this modules understand their information that has been received.
Through GSM Unit, everytime the bus or van passes bus stop module, a data is transmitted and received
between In Bus Module and Bus Stop Module. Then in the police station, there is an LCD that displays
information about the bus or van or it indicates if the bus or van is overloaded.

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