Simulating position tracking for any IoT thing

Question

I'm using the IoT platform 'Thingworx', and I wanted to simulate the position tracking for my 'IoT thing'. Let's say that my car is that IoT thing with two modes: moving & stopped. For my car's moving state, I must simulate its changing latitude and longitude to store the generated coordinates and have them displayed on the Google Map's customized widget. Similarly, the car's stopped state should display its last stopped location.

Now, the following are the questions are what I wanted to ask:

What are the best ways to do this? Like, is there a service or a subscription that I can create and use(the speed values can be the trigger)?

What kind of a code snippet can achieve such a functionality (Samples)?

Could there be disadvantages in using the Google api? Is there a better approach?

How to store changing latitude & longitude values in the variable with a 'Location' datatype?

Thanks In Advance!

Answer 1

A part of the logic to simulate movement is as simple as randomly adding movements to the Latitude/Longitude. So, use a Timer that triggers every second or so and subscribe to that "Timer" event, where you write the code that moves the car.

If you have a property on the Car that you can call "location" of baseType LOCATION with, then it must be set as "logged" on your simulator code for you to update the location property with the new location (in case of any movement since its last location). Also, do set the car Thing's ValueStream property to store the changes in location.

Trying using ThingWorx Marketplace Google Maps extension for showing Location and Paths on Google Maps from the recorded simulation by Setting a location property in Thingworx like this:

me.location = { latittude: latitude_value, longitude: longitude_value, elevation: elevation_value, units: "WGS84" }