Development of an Android App for monitoring PMS in Gas Stations

Abstract

The use of mobile phones (smart phones) have gone beyond just making phone calls and sending text messages to specialized applications such as object recognition, patient health monitoring, security and navigation, amongst others. In this paper, BRAZ named after the authors is an android App for monitoring fuel situation in gas stations. This research was particularly motivated by the uncertainty faced by consumers of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) in locating the closest gas station. PMS is an essential commodity in the daily life of almost every individual. Consumers have been complaining about the high petrol prices and everyone wanting to access the cheapest and closest station available in order to save expenses. Therefore, with a single click on BRAZ, the list of gas stations with the product is provided to the user in real-time. Also included are the price/litre, car density, and a GPS location of the station which can lead user to the location via Google map. This is particularly of advantage to visitors who are not familiar with the road network of the town. A validation test carried out on a random sample of 60 users gave 80% of users’ acceptability.