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DiChokro: An Anti-Theft System for Two Wheelers

Conference Paper · December 2019

DOI: 10.1109/ICCIT48885.2019.9038610

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 2019 22nd International Conference on Computer and Information Technology (ICCIT), 18-20 December 2019

DiChokro: An Anti-Theft System for Two Wheelers

Md. Rabiul Ali Sarker
Department of Electrical and Computer
Engineering
North South University
Dhaka, Bangladesh
sarker.rabiul@northsouth.edu
Khondaker Tanzim Alam Tanzilur Rahman
Department of Electrical and Computer Department of Electrical and Computer
Engineering Engineering
North South University North South University
Dhaka, Bangladesh Dhaka, Bangladesh
tanzim.khondaker@northsouth.edu tanzilur.rahman@northsouth.edu

Abstract— Bicycle theft has increased in the developing
countries in the recent years. Being light and easy to hide, a
stolen bicycle is often difficult to search. It has, therefore,
become a pressing need to develop a low cost, easy to use solution
to track the bicycles. DiChokro, proposed in this work, is a
solution to that widespread problem of Bicycle theft and has two
major components: a device and an android application based
tracking facility that can be availed through any smart phone.
The device contains a GPS Module that sends the location of the
cycle to the cloud, highly sensitive vibration sensor and a
processor. Users can search for the secured parking locations,
track their parked bicycle through the android application that
is connected to the device through the cloud. The vibration
sensor installed in the device helps users to get informed if
someone attempts to steal the bicycle. The proposed solution is
very cheap (<$30) and will be able to address the issue of bicycle
theft.
Keywords— bicycle, protection, safety, cycle parking, cycle
locator
Advancement of embedded systems and IoT technology
and their availability at low cost mean we can now monitor
anything around us all the time. Here, we propose DiChokro
to solve the rampant security issues of the bicycles. Since
maintaining safety is the best way to prevent stealing,
DiChokro suggests the rider’s safe parking places or parking
racks near the areas where the riders are visiting. Once parked
in a place, DiChokro provides the users the ability to lock
their bicycle through mobile application. The user can
monitor their bicycle, get notified if it is touched or moved by
someone, and even can track it on their mobile if it is stolen.
This is done by establishing a constant communication
between the app and the device attached to the bicycle
through the cloud. All the information is stored in the cloud
and can be accessed via user app anytime. The proposed
system is the cheapest digital security system for the bicycle
as of our knowledge.

I. INTRODUCTION II. BACKGROUND

Bicycle is one of the most economic and eco-friendly
personal vehicles [1]. It saves time from outrageous traffic in
the road and riding on it is also a good exercise for the health-
conscious people. It is therefore very popular and widely used
all over the world. Bike-sharing system has recently been
encouraged in some cities to improve urban transportation
system [2, 3]. The use of Bicycle is no longer limited within
environment friendly transportation, as some believe this will
be a valuable means of monitoring air prolusion [4] in smart
city. Others used this green vehicle as an alternative way of
creating record system of ground conditions [5]. However,
there is little to no secured parking spaces allocated for
bicycles in the developing countries like Bangladesh.
Residential areas or big shopping malls does not pay any
special attention for the bicycle safety. With the community
of bicycle users growing, security of bicycle has now become
a big issue.
Since the early 19th century, there had been only two
systems to secure bicycle - the key based mechanical lock that
is easy to break and the digital lock which is less common due
to its high cost. However, none of these conventional systems
are as effective as it could be to secure a bicycle from being
stolen. According to International Crime Victim Survey [6]
about 56% of bicycle thefts are reported to the police across
17 countries annually. Other source like National Crime
Victimization Survey (NCVS) informs about 1.3 million
incidents of theft from bicycles all over the world. Bangladesh
the third-largest bicycle exporter of European Union (EU),
suffer from the same issue. Bicycle users particularly in urban
areas have increased significantly in recent times. A low cost
and easy to use anti-stealing system is therefore a crying need
for the bicycle users here.
Bicycle theft is a major problem as the owners of the
bicycles are three times as likely to have their bicycle stolen
than the car owners [7]. There are few expensive products
into the market for the security of bicycles, apart from the
traditional bike locks. Troja Bike [8] proposes a concept of a
bicycle security system where a device attached to the bicycle
notifies the user about the location to their mobile app. They
claimed that Troja Bike cannot be removed, destroyed or
disabled by the thief, the battery can last up to a season and
can then easily be recharged by induction. The position data
is transmitted via cellular networks. They also proposed to
use Global Positioning System (GPS), Glonass, Galileo and
Baidu for communication and a motion detector to protect the
bicycle. Sherlock Bike is anther commercial product that
costs 122.13 Euro, certainly not affordable for general people
[9]. This uses GPS/Glonass module, has a motion sensor,
long-lasting battery with no SIM required and Bluetooth
feature for short-range communications. 560G, costs 189
USD and has a compact design and light weight [10]. It has
been built with Titanium (Grade 5) and it does not have the
facility to communicate through smartphones.
III. SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE
DiChokro is an IoT (Internet of Things) based security
system for bicycles. It has the following features:
• Anti-theft alert system.
• Find and track through real-time geo location.
• Find a secure location.
• Find the cost of parking in a secure location
• Add secure location

978-1-7281-5842-6/19/$31.00 ©2019 IEEE

The high-level architectural diagram of DiChokro has been
provided in Fig. 1. The system can be explained three major
parts: a mobile application, a cloud service, and a hardware
device. The hardware device has a processor, sensor and
communication module. The user needs to attach the device
to the bicycle. It fetches information from the bicycle and
updates the cloud in real-time. The user can receive that
information from the cloud via the DiChokro app installed in
the user’s mobile.
Fig. 1. High-level architecture design of DiChokro.
IV. HOW THE SYSTEM WORKS
The system is a combination of a device and an android
app. The device is small and can be attached under the bicycle
seat so that the thieves do not notice it. First of all, the user can
search for a secure parking slot using the DiChokro app. The
secure location can be added by the users, verified by authority
and rated by the users. If the app can find any secured parking
place in that particular area it will be suggested to the user.
After parking the bicycle, the user can lock the device using
the app. Here, the locking means activating the device. As the
device starts working, the NodeMCU checks the values of the
vibration sensor and the GPS module continuously. If the
NodeMCU gets any suspicious value from either the sensor or
the module, it instantly updates the value to the cloud storage.
The user can access these data or get notified of the status via
the app which readily collects information from the cloud all
the time. After the user gets notified of any suspicious
activities, he/she can rush into the place where the bicycle is
parked at and check whether the bicycle is safe or not. Even if
the user is late to find out of what had happened and the
bicycle is already stolen, he/she can track it by checking the
location of the bicycle via the app. This is possible because the
GPS module constantly sends the coordinates of the location
of the bicycle to the cloud. Figure 2 details the work flow of
the system. Users can also add a location as a suggestion if he
finds a place safer to park a bicycle. This will be useful for
other users to easily find a safer parking place.
Fig. 2. System diagram of DiChokro.
V. SYSTEM DETAILS
The development of this solution is done in two stages.
This includes hardware development and software
implementation.
A. Hardware Implementation
The hardware part consists of three modules (Fig.3). These
are a vibration sensor, a GPS sensor and a processor with Wi-
Fi module (NodeMCU). The vibration sensor constantly
checks whether the bicycle gets touched or vibrated or shaken
by anyone and these data goes to one of the analog pins of
NodeMCU. The location coordinates, from a GPS module are
read by another analog pin of the NodeMCU. The NodeMCU
communicates to the cloud - Firebase and all the data read by
the NodeMCU are sent or updated into the cloud. DiChokro
Fig. 3. Block diagram of the hardware implementation.
app reads or takes the data from the cloud and make them
available to the users.
a) Data Processing: DiChokro needed a processor for
processing the sensors data. NodeMCU has been chosen for
this purpose as the processor. There are several reasons for
this choice over Arduino Uno or Mega or raspberry pi as the
processor of our project. One reason is the dimensions which
makes it easily portable and hide able under any bicycle
saddle or even into some bicycle seat posts. Another reason
is, it has an inbuilt Wi-Fi interface with complete TCP: IP
stack that would already consume almost all capabilities of
the AT mega (one TCP/IP packet can exceed 1500 bytes
long). So, we did not need to add an extra Wi-Fi module to
send the data of other modules and sensors to the real-time
database system.
The only big caveat is that the ESP8266 has no analog
multiplexer, so only the A0 pin could be used for A/D
conversion. Since our system requires only one sensor, we
did not need any analog multiplexer, so, it did not effect
much. One more point is Arduino performs in the vicinity of
the instructions given to it provided that the device with
which Arduino is interfacing is located locally. NodeMCU
can be used to overcome this drawback as it can communicate
with devices globally. On the other hand, NodeMCU has
fewer GPIO, ADC and PWM options than the Uno, but
supports Serial Communication protocols well. But
DiChokro did not need any more GPIO (17), ADC (1, A0),
and PWM (4) pins than a NodeMCU has.
 NodeMCU is more powerful with up to clock speed, 4MB and 10hz of position update rate (which is twice the update
flash memory, and 128KB of SRAM and operates on 3V rate of Ublox Neo 6M). However, the price of AUB is nearly
compared to the operating voltage (5V) of Arduino. BDT 3300, which is more than 3 times the price of Ublox
Comparing with raspberry pi will not be a valid comparison Neo 6M. The other reason for not using this module was the
when raspberry pi itself a micro-computer than a availability of this product.
microcontroller with 1GB of RAM and 1GHz of clock speed.
NodeMCU priced almost one-fourth of the raspberry pi and TABLE I. SHAKE SENSOR THRESHOLD VALUE
we cannot offer an expensive product for the security of a (Test Shake Sensor Predicti Actual Comme
bicycle. That is why, despite being a more powerful, we have Type) on Result nts
chosen NodeMCU because of the cheaper price and smaller Shake (ideal Found
size compared to the raspberry pi. The smaller the device, the result)
Shake Value Shake Shake Shake
better it fits for our project. DiChokro neither could afford times type status status
bigger and expensive device nor did it need the most powerful 0cm 0 20 All 0 0 No
processor. alarm
b) Vibration Sensing: We considered two vibration 3cm 5 31 Slow 0 0
5 34 High 0 0
sensors, 801S and SW-420 based on the availability into the 5cm 5 31 Slow 0 0
local market. Both of the sensors have the LM393 as their 5 34 High 0 0
main chip. The operating voltage of both of them is 3.3V to 7cm 5 31 Slow 0 0
5V and both having signal output instructions with analog 5 300 High 0 0
and TTL-level signal output and digital switching output (0 10cm 5 31 Slow 0 0
5 1024 High 1 1 Alarm
and 1). Both even have adjustable sensitivity (fine-tuning) played
and non-directional vibration detection range with mounting 15cm 5 31 Slow 0 0 No
holes. The first thing to concern about DiChokro device was alarm
the size of the device. SW-420 and the 801S have almost the 5 1024 High 1 1 Alarm
same dimensions. Since, SW-420 and 801S shares the same played
specification and they both are available in the market, we B. Software Implementation
have chosen the SW-420 as vibration sensor for DiChokro
The following block diagram (Fig. 4) depicts the details
based on the price. The price of 801S (BDT. 550) is five times
of the mobile application:
more expensive than the price of the SW-420 (BDT. 110).
To ensure the detection of motion of bicycle, our shake
sensor had been tested and analyzed by different types of
motions or shakes or vibrations. Table I briefs the analysis of
the vibration sensor. Based on the test data we have devised
for algorithm. To have proper justification, we had to displace
the bicycle and make it shake or vibrate on different scales of
vibration. We shook the bicycle 5 times per displacement
slowly and started to take shake value and gradually increase
the frequency of vibration. After the implementation of the
algorithm, we have neither got any alert notification nor any
alarm rung from the displacement of 0 cm to 7 cm. After the
bicycle was moved up to 10 cm and 15 cm with high Fig. 4. Block diagram of DiChokro Anfroid application.
frequency, the output value went straight up to the highest
and an alarm rang with a push notification accordingly via the After installing DiChokro app, the user will be asked to
DiChokro app. log in either via Facebook or Email. After successfully
c) Location Tracking: GPS based location tracking is an logging in, the user will be shown the location of the bicycle.
important feature of DiChokro. It shows the user the current The user will be given an option to lock the device. Here, note
location of the bicycle via the DiChokro app. GPS module that each device is preprogrammed with a password so that
can remain standby until an activation event occurs such as only respective user can connect to it. This can easily be done
the shaking or vibration of the bicycle or users can track the by the manufacturing or the distribution end.
bicycle always if they want. For this, DiChokro uses a GPS Figure 5 shows some screenshots of the designed end-
module to take the location coordinates. Ublox Neo 6M GPS user prototype of DiChokro mobile application. The
module has been used to do this job. Basically, Neo 6M takes application was developed using the Android Studio IDE
the GPS coordinates and gives to the processor (NodeMCU). (Integrated Development Environment) for Android devices
NEO-6M uses the latest technology from Ublox to give the running at least Android 5.0.
best possible positioning information and includes a larger a) Locking The Device: The user can lock DiChokro
built-in 25 x 25mm active GPS antenna with a UART TTL device by clicking a lock button available in the app. By
socket. A battery is also included so that one can obtain a GPS locking, the user can activate the device and connect the app
lock faster. The battery is to back up the power and EEPROM to the cloud. The device will then update the cloud and the
for storing configuration settings. app will also be updated by the change of the cloud data.
Adafruit Ultimate Breakout (AUB) is far way better than b) Locating The Bicycle: Whenever the user logs into
the Ublox Neo 6M, with the -165 dBm tracking sensitivity the app, the location of the bicycle is shown to the user on the
app interface. The location of the device is continuously
being calculated and checked by the processor and GPS
module. If someone takes or steals the bicycle, the
geographical position of the bicycle will be shown to the user
along with the alert that the bicycle is stolen by someone.
c) Add a suggestion for parking bicycle safely: The user
can suggest other users to safely park the bicycles in a
particular area. The suggested location will be verified by the
admin before adding it to the cloud so that the next time it is
automatically be suggested by the app to the other DiChokro
users visiting nearby that.
d) Contact The Developers: The user can contact the
developers or admin by clicking a contact button to suggest
improvements and fixing of bugs or appreciate the work.
Fig. 5. The prototype of DiChokro Android application.
C. Cloud System
The network part on the other hand establishes the
communication between the hardware hidden into the bike
and cloud storage with the help of an API (Application
Programming Interface). The cloud can be accessed by the
end user through website and mobile app for getting
information about the location of the two-wheeler, sensitivity
message alert, the battery life, the lock status etc. A diagram
of the data retrieval system is provided in the Fig. 6. Here,
Firebase is used as a middleware which maintain the
communication between the device and the user. Firebase
authenticate the user and the device. User needs to add the
unique key of the device to activate the device. We also
ensure that the security messages are being sent to the specific
user - owner of the device.
VI. COST ANALYSIS
To make it cheap and affordable, the device was built in a
simple and smart way. The following list (Table II) gives the
development cost of the single module. Table III provides a
simple comparison of the basic features among some
commercial products made for the same purpose and our
project, DiChokro. Reducing the cost was the first objective
of our project. Apart from the cost issue, DiChokro was also
made to overcome some of the challenges that other products
had and is evdident from the sane table. DiChokro
successfully overcame all the challenges along with the cost
issue, it won’t take more than $30 for DiChokro to become a
Fig. 6. Data retrieving from cloud to DiChokro Android application.
TABLE II. TOTAL COSTING BREAKDOWN
No. Devices Price (tk.)
1 1 x NodeMCU V2 (ESP8266) 450
2 1 x GPS module (Neo 6M) 850
3 1 x Vibration sensor (SW 420) 50
4 Voltage regulator 200
5 2 x battery 300
6 PCB 300
Tk. 2150
Total cost
(~25.61$)
market product, which makes it the cheapest bicycle
protection device available. 560G is a typical bicycle lock and
prevents bicycle from getting stolen, which is why it is being
compared herewith the other digital bicycle safety systems.
Troja bike is just a concept and has not been developed yet.
Sherlock and DiChokro are almost the same except the range
are shorter with Sherlock due to using Bluetooth as their
medium of communication and it shows a red sign on the map
of the Android application to alert the user. On the other hand,
DiChokro uses Wi-Fi as the medium of communication to
have a larger range and it alerts the user via an alarm along
with a push notification.
 TABLE III. COMPARISION WITH OTHER PRODUCTS [9] Sherlock. (2017). Sherlock — The ultimate anti-theft device for your
bike. [online] Available at: https://www.sherlock.bike/en/ (accessed
Type 560 G Sherlock Troja DiChokr Dec, 2018).
bike Bike [9] Bike o [10] “Altorlocks”.Altorlocks.com.https://altorlocks.com/products/the-560g
lock [10] (Just a (propose (accessed Dec, 2018).
concept) d)
[8]
cost 189$ 166.86$ Not ~25.61$
(USD) released
mobile Can’t Can Can Can
application
connectivity
sim need Required Embedded Not Not
sim card Required Required
motion No Has Has Shake
detection sensor sensor
tracking Not Available Available Available
device available
range No range Short Long rang Anywher
range e
average No 7days a full Almost 7
lasting of battery biking days
battery season
theft No No Warned Warned.
detection warning warning
user No way Show on push- push
notification map with notification notificati
red alert. on, play
an alert

VII. CONCLUSION
Here, we have proposed DiChokro, an anti-stealing system
for the bicycle user community that has been built using some
low-cost sensors and mobile application. DiChokro not only
can locate or track the bicycles for the users, but also can
prevent it from getting stolen. It comes with a small device
that is able to send the data to the cloud and an app that reads
the data from the cloud and shows it to the user in real-time.
The proposed device is low cost, can easily be hidden in a
bicycle, and the app is easy to use. We believe such a system
will be beneficial for the users in tracking their bicycles and
protecting them from getting stolen.
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