VehiclePing Form Application

Marcel Holder, La Salle University

Abstract

This project will develop a C# desktop application that will be used to test and monitor WI-FI connectivity to field vehicles within range of its designated network Access Point. Tests will be carried out by sending and monitoring ping responses to those vehicles.

The purpose of the application is two-fold:

(a) To provide a user friendly windows interface that will simplify the process and give more users the ability to quickly check on the status of the WLAN or a vehicle.

(b) Provide an integrated database to log vehicle ping activity. This will act as a preventative maintenance tool and also give the user the ability to look at a short term history of ping activities. History in this case, refers to saving the responses of each vehicle pinged. (Database filters will include but not limited to total ping responses by vehicle by week and by month). The functionality for this will require creating a windows schedule to open the application at predetermined times and have the application auto ping a range of vehicle numbers holding records for approximately 1 month.

All vehicles have a three or four digit fleet identifier number that is painted on the front of the vehicle. This number has a direct relationship to the IP address that is assigned to its vehicle. The interface will provide the functionality for the user to choose whether to convert a vehicle number (a 3 or 4 digit number) to an IP address (10.xx.xx.xx) or vice-verse, and also the ability to run a ping test from the remote onsite server to an identified vehicle or a range of vehicle numbers within the 300 ft. range of the Access Point. The conversion of a vehicle number to an IP address will be done by converting a vehicle ID to its binary equivalent and further converting that binary number to dotted decimal notation to get the IP address. The reverse process will convert an IP address to a vehicle number.