The role of telematics APIs is to collect, process and analyze Telematics data. Consider the case of a simple safe driving app. In this case, the following events are handled by the Telematics APIs;
As a developer, you have the choice to decide for which functions you would want to write custom code and functions for which the data would be available from the Telematics API.
Eventually, your product needs to reside on the user’s smart-phone. To ensure that happens, you need to create and promote an app built on top of your data layer. The app will provide insights to the end user.
So to sum it all up, there are two major stages in the development process of smartphone based telematics apps:
The toughest way to get this done is to custom code a solution from scratch. The easiest and fastest way to build your own Telematics app is to use Telematics APIs for the Data Layer and Open Source SDKs for the user app.
The first step in getting started with Telematics APIs is to choose an API partner. Factors you may want to consider for the selection process could be as follows:
Most of the leading Telematics API makers (like Damoov) come armed with detailed Documentation. This documentation should provide you with adequate information and context to get started.
In the case of Damoov, we have API services for the following:
As an example, let’s look at the Scoring & Statistics API Services.
This set of services include the following APIs:
The statistics API is used for the following:
The safety score API, computes driver safety scores and is useful for safe driving and insurance apps.
The Eco score API, computes the economy of vehicle operation (e.g. Fuel Usage, Wear & tear). It’s useful for the fleet management industry.
Open Source Telematics SDKs are useful for getting your user app to market in real quick time. Since the SDKs are open-source, there is no cost involved. The SDK works as a Behavior tracker as well as a real-time GPS tracker.
In the case of Damoov, the data-layer resides on the cloud. The role of SDK is to feed the GPS data to the Damoov platform for analysis & collect the analyzed Data from Damoov to show it to the end user. Damoov provides SDK for iOS, Android, React-Native & Flutter.
The following are the advantages of of building your Telematics App using APIs & SDKs:
The following are the disadvantages of of building your Telematics App using APIs & SDKs: