Case study

Building a real-time fleet telematics platform from the ground up

Mobile app and API gateway for Truck Assist, covering live vehicle tracking, multi-format video streaming, alerts, and emergency response for fleet operators across South Africa.

Client
Truck Assist (truckassist.co.za)
Role
Full-Stack Developer
Platforms
iOS, Android, PWA
Industry
Fleet Management & Telematics
3
Platforms shipped
15+
API modules
4
Video formats
<1s
Video latency
81
Android build versions

Fleet operators needed one mobile app that could handle tracking, live camera feeds, driver behaviour analytics, emergency response, and technical fault logging, usable in the field on any device.

The platform had to combine data from disparate telematics APIs, GPS providers, and Firebase real-time streams into a predictable experience with low latency and reliable workflows.

The solution also needed resilience: multi-format video playback, dual-server failover, and real-time alerting that still works under unstable connectivity.

The solution

Two systems: an Ionic/Angular mobile app and a Node.js API gateway that normalises upstream telematics data into mobile-friendly payloads.

Mobile app

Ionic + Angular

  • Angular 19
  • Ionic 8
  • Capacitor 5
  • PWA

API gateway (BFF)

Node.js + Express

  • Axios
  • Multer
  • Lodash

Upstream services

Telematics APIs

  • GPS API
  • Fleet API
  • Firebase
  • Video streams

Features built

From real-time maps to sub-second live video, each module was built for the specific demands of fleet operations.

Real-time vehicle tracking

Google Maps integration with live markers, clustering, overlap handling, trip replay, time-range selection, and custom per-vehicle info windows.

Multi-format live video streaming

Four player integrations (sub-1s latency, HLS, FLV, H5F) with keep-alive, multi-camera grid, adaptive selection, and fullscreen controls.

Analytics dashboard

Chart-driven insights for distance breakdowns, day/night patterns, risk ratings, sorted comparisons, and normalised scaling for usability.

Intelligent notifications

Realtime alerting with retention windows, client filtering, deduplication, seen-state tracking, and badge counts.

Emergency panic & theft workflows

GPS-based panic alerts with two-step confirmation, plus enhanced emergency suite for specific clients (panic/lock/theft).

Snapshots & investigations

Historical reporting with time ranges, driver matching, channel bucketing, video classification, and risk analysis.

Technical fault logging

Full job card workflow: dynamic forms, multipart uploads, signature capture, and lifecycle tracking for technicians.

Role-based experience

UI adapts per client type: technicians, emergency-focused clients, and full fleet dashboards, with multi-client switching.

Authentication & security

Firebase Auth + guards, encrypted credential storage, session management, password resets, and force-logout capability.

API gateway

A Node.js backend-for-frontend that aggregates and normalises upstream payloads into consistent app-ready data.

  1. 15+ RESTful endpoints

    Vehicle data, markers, snapshots, tracking history, investigations, playlists, panic/theft, job cards, notifications, and geocoding, all behind one API surface.

  2. Data transformation layer

    DTO mapping normalises inconsistent upstream responses; pipelines handle bucketing, filtering, driver matching, and classification.

  3. Dual-server resilience

    Primary + fallback base URLs with automatic failover and transparent retries to reduce downtime for operators.

  4. Multi-format video orchestration

    Dedicated endpoints extract and serve HLS/FLV/H5F URLs per device channel so the app can choose the optimal stream format.

  5. Multipart upload pipeline

    File and form submissions in one request for technical job cards, including photos and signatures.

Technology

The stack behind the mobile app, API gateway, and supporting services.

Frontend framework

  • Angular 19
  • Ionic 8
  • RxJS 7
  • TypeScript
  • SCSS
  • Nx 20

Native & PWA

  • Capacitor 5
  • Geolocation API
  • Service Workers
  • Splash screen
  • Status bar

Video streaming

  • Jessibuca
  • Video.js
  • HLS.js
  • FLV.js
  • WebCodecs

Maps & location

  • Google Maps JS API
  • @angular/google-maps
  • MarkerClusterer
  • OverlappingMarkerSpiderfier

Backend API

  • Node.js
  • Express 4
  • Axios
  • Multer
  • Lodash
  • Morgan

Firebase & data

  • Firebase Auth
  • Realtime Database
  • AngularFire
  • Chart.js
  • Moment.js

Security & UX

  • Crypto-JS (AES)
  • Route guards
  • Signature pad
  • Ionic Selectable
  • Nodemailer

Tooling & DevOps

  • Nx monorepo
  • Karma
  • ESLint
  • Nodemon
  • Winston

What I delivered

The platform ships one consistent experience across mobile, web, and high-urgency operational workflows.

Cross-platformdeployment

iOS, Android (81 builds), and PWA from one Angular codebase.

Sub-secondlive video

<1s latency streaming with format fallbacks and controls.

ResilientAPI architecture

BFF gateway with DTO normalisation and dual-server failover.

Operationalworkflows

Panic/theft response, investigations, notifications, job cards.

Interested in working together?

I build mobile platforms for real operational problems.

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