OTAPS an open source train accident prevention system for the Indian railways.

The goal of this project is to provide a cost-effective alternative to TCAS (Train Collision Avoidance System) also known as KAVACH used by the Indian Railways. The Indian Railway has experienced a lot of accidents in the past few months. One of the primary reason for many such accidents is the absence of TCAS, as the cost of installation per kilometer of track is 50 lakh INR and the cost of installation per locomotive is around 70 lakh INR.

OTAPS aims to solve this problem by providing a cost-effective and open source alternative to TCAS. OTAPS consist of two units, the Signal Node and the locomotive unit. Each unit costs around 4000 INR.

The locomotive unit will be installed on the locomotive to display the track information to the loco pilot, as well as automatically apply brakes in case of an incoming train or when the loco pilot reaches a red signal. The signal nodes will be placed at a distance of 500 meters, so 3 units per kilometer.

This results in a cost of 12000 INR per kilometer and just 4000 INR per locomotive in comparison to the 50 lakh INR per kilometer and 70 lakh INR per locomotive of TCAS.

The best part about OTAPS is that they can be installed on routes that do not have any signals, as it is capable of working independently. Since they consume so little power (< 2 watts), they can be easily powered by a solar panel and a battery. Furthermore, a web interface using platforms like Blynk will be implemented to display the status of the railway line to the station master. For this, I would require two Wi-Fi cable board like Arduino UNO R4 Wi-Fi, which would be placed at the first signal node from the station. The information from the signal node would be sent to the Arduino UNO R4 Wi-Fi over i2c, which it would then display to the station master with the help of the web interface. The system works by transmitting the state of the signals to the locomotive unit. The signal nodes and locomotive node communicate wirelessly with the help of RF transceiver module like NRF24. The signal node transmits its state, as well the state of the 8 signal nodes before and after it. So at any instance, the locomotive unit knows the state of the current signal node and the 7 nodes after it. So, if another train is heading towards the current locomotive, it would detect it at a distance of 2.5 kilometers and start applying the brakes. Furthermore, in case the signal ahead is red or yellow, then the locomotive unit either applies the break or limits the speed.