Our development has been marked by regulations, standardizations, and mobility. In the development of our prototype system, we have worked with current platforms and products such as the Dearborn Protocol Adapter, the Windows .NET framework, and Cingular cellular devices. Integration of these systems into a totally new and innovative system, designed at CAVS, has been the corner stone of the Bully Bus project.

The Society for Automotive Engineers set standards that regulated the development of vehicle diagnostic systems. We have been required to meet each of these in our development. This has just been another stepping stone for the project.

The Dearborn Protocol Adapter (DPA) was developed in Indianapolis by Dearborn Group Technology. This product gathers information from our vehicle's engine such as RPMs, ignition voltage, coolant temperature, and GPS coordinates, filters this information, and sends it to the server in under 1 second. This critical technology meets SAE standards.

The Windows .NET compact framework has been an integral part in creating the units that travel on the buses. These units are small, and with this OS, we can keep the units as small as possible. More can be learned from our quarterly tutorials under what's new in the page heading.

To integrate our system into a cellular environment, we have enlisted the use of an experimental Cingular device. This user interface will be different from the normal internet Java interface in that it will be text-based and not require as long to download.

Three Generations of units will be developed by the end of this project. Our plan is to have the third and final unit complete by January the first, 2005. We will then begin integration of the completed units onto the entire Mississippi State bus network.

Check out our internet user interface at www.bullybus.msstate.edu!