If your school district employs Navigation on your mobile data terminals (MDTs) to guide your drivers from bus stop to stop, you can improve your waypoints within the CalAmp K-12 software to make the instructions and path the drivers are directed to take more accurate.
Note: For more information about Navigation, see An Introduction to Navigation.
A waypoint is one spot on the route — that is, one point along the way. Multiple connected waypoints determine the path your bus will take. The goal is to have the waypoints imported from your routing system match 80% or more of the waypoints in the route that Navigation has mapped.
To generate new waypoints for a route, follow these steps:
- Before you turn to CalAmp K-12, you'll need to make sure that you have a precise dry run performed for each route you want to improve.
Note: A dry run in this instance means a practice drive of the route, in which the bus driver follows the exact path prescribed by your route planning system, street by street and turn by turn, and stops for several seconds at each bus stop.
Make sure to take note of the date the dry run was done.
- In CalAmp K-12, click
>> Planned vs. Actual by Stop.
The PvA by Stop launch screen will appear.
- In the row of the vehicle's itinerary whose waypoints you want to improve, click
. (You can scroll to the route you want in the list or search for it by using the column filter, as shown in Sorting and Filtering Column Data.)
The Navigation screen for that vehicle/itinerary will appear.
- Click the Routes drop-down arrow.
The Routes panel will appear.
- Expand the route containing the tier you want to generate new waypoints for.
Note: Currently, new waypoints can be generated only for a single tier, so to create new ones for a full itinerary (one day's entire route for a bus, including morning, noon, and afternoon), you must perform this procedure tier by tier, one tier at a time.
A future feature is planned that will enable you to generate waypoints for multiple tiers at once. - Select the check box of the tier.
- Click Show Navigation.
Path lines will appear on the map; the blue line is the route as it was planned by your route planning system, and the green one is the path on the MDT (the directions to the stops your driver follows on the bus).
Note: CalAmp K-12 refers to these as polylines, which simply means a line that consists of two or more connected line segments.
The stops will be numbered sequentially on both the map and grid. On the map, the blue icons represent the planned stops.
- In the toolbar at the top of the map, click Show Vehicle History.
The Show Vehicle History dialog box will appear.
- Click the Start Date calendar picker and select the date the driver did the dry run referred to in step 1.
- Select the text in the Stop Radius (Feet) field and type 1000.
Note: This technically can be any value between 250 and 1000, but 1000 is recommended because that means the software will find the stop's GPS event ping even if it occurred outside the bus stop's radius (which is often 250 itself). - Leave Every selected for the Show X GPS Event option to pull in as many GPS events from the dry run as possible.
- Click OK.
The waypoints generated during the dry run will appear on the map.
Note: If there are any issues with the history results, a Warning dialog box will appear that will explain why they can't be loaded and offer suggestions on how to fix the problem. Try one of the tips and then repeat the preceding steps.
- Look over the path to verify that is the route you want the bus to take for the tier.
- If the path is accurate, click Generate Waypoints in the toolbar at the top of the screen.
A dialog box will appear, warning you that any previously imported waypoints will be replaced with the new ones if you proceed.
- Click Yes to use the newly generated waypoints.
A success message will be displayed briefly at the top right of the screen, and the new route will be shown in a purple line.
- Repeat steps 4 to 15 for all the tiers in the itinerary.
When the driver running the route next syncs their MDT, they will get the new path/directions.