PKTraffic specializes in deep public record search of traffic related data and events to provide expert analysis and support. Traffic related incidents is analyzed through an intelligent application which makes it easy to explore, evaluate and visualize data.
I am one of the owners and CTO (chief technology officer) of the company. I developed the front- and backend parts of the IT Solutions enabling the business model. The frontend part includes a program which can visualize data and sort through traffic crashes and the website pktraffic.com. The backend of the project includes managing a server which records and processes a large amount of data and camera footage. My main responsibility is to assure well working IT solutions and that the data is securely stored.
Technologies Used
- Website and admin panel is coded using the framework React and website authentication is made using Firebase
- YouTube DL and FFmpeg to manage and download camera streams
- MySQL database to manage data
- Lucid chart and Astha for system design
- API between website and database
- Desktop application to visualize and sort through camera footage which was developed using python library PyQt and QT designer.
- Managing the server, task scheduling, git workflow
- Plex media server
- Collecting data either using normal requests or the python library Selenium
Features
The main part of the project is the process of recording and collecting traffic related data. Currently the server is gathering data from thousands of cameras in Florida every hour. The footage is than analyzed for traffic incident cases which than is stored for long term usage. I also built a more advanced logger for different parts of the system such as the recorder. Because the system has a lot of real life variables (recording of 3rd party software) it can be hard to debug incase if something goes wrong.
Other parts of the main unit include collecting traffic associated data from government sites and Waze. This information is than stored in a MySql database which is stored in Bluehost. The database has a well thought out design to manage all the different relations and tables. Different aspects of the system like the database were initially designed in either Astha or Lucid chart to provide a better overview when building them.
The website was designed using react. The main purpose of the site is to provide our customers an unclouded vision of what we do. To provide a better experience I have also developed a pagination table for the customer to search for specific crashes that our system has captured. The table fetches the database through an API. The API is responsible for several parts of the project and therefore, it is required that the process for the API is securely built, for example by using prepare statements when making database calls.
The admin panel uses Firebase authentication to securely give access to specific users. The primary purpose of the admin panel is to quickly give us an overview of the system. Using different intervals, the system shows the user how many crashes have been captured, how many crashes has happened in Florida, system hard drive usage, CPU usage and much more. The admin panel also has a more detailed pagination table to more easily navigate through all the footage and data that has been collected.
I also have setup the server to run most of the backend functionalities of the system. This includes tasks such as setting up a git workflow between the repository and server, scheduling tasks, setting up Plex media server and much more.