Development of an IOT-Based Fuel Level and Geolocation Monitoring System

Abstract

Fuel theft and frequent vehicle abductions across many African regions inflict heavy economic losses on transportation providers, demanding reliable yet affordable monitoring solutions. Traditional ultrasonic sensors for fuel level detection fall short due to inaccuracies from fuel foaming and the need for invasive tank drilling during installation. This study addresses these challenges by introducing a low-cost, non-invasive telematics retrofit that leverages existing vehicle fuel sensors for real-time fuel level display and geo-location tracking, which are critical tools for fleet management in developing economies with meager resources. The proposed system intercepts the signal cable from the fuel tank sensor to the vehicle dashboard, integrating it with a microcontroller-based data acquisition system. This setup displays fuel levels and GPS coordinates on an LCD screen and streams data to Google Maps via a web application, requiring no tank modifications. The results showed GPS data from the device correlated strongly with mobile phone benchmarks, yielding coefficients of 0.911 for latitude and 0.941 for longitude, validating its precision. These findings demonstrate a practical, retrofit-friendly alternative to ultrasonic methods, enabling theft prevention and efficient fleet oversight without high costs or disruptions. Future work could integrate machine learning to predict fuel consumption, vehicle paths, and driver behaviour.