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Simulated Vehicles⚓︎

When integrating the INVERS API or when experimenting with it, simulated vehicles are a great way to get you started. They behave very similarly to real vehicles, except they are purely virtual. They are also visible in FleetControl like every other vehicle and you can interact with them in the different views or via API.

Behavior⚓︎

You can work with simulated vehicles as if they were real vehicles. You can manage their master data, add tags and custom fields, execute commands, receive vehicle states, and so on. How to create a simulated vehicle is described below (see adding simulated vehicles to your fleet).

Stationary simulated vehicles⚓︎

The first kind of simulated vehicles are stationary. These vehicles can execute commands and produce vehicle states in regular intervals, but they do not simulate actual trips and constantly remain at the same position.

When executing a command on a simulated vehicle, the vehicle state reflects the change that is triggered by the command. For example, if you execute the “unlock central lock” command, the central_lock property will have the value UNLOCKED once the command is completed. The resulting vehicle state is also published as a VehicleStateRecorded event.

Stationary simulated vehicles produce a new vehicle state every 5 minutes. If you plan to use our Events API to consume real-time events for your fleet, you can use those events to debug and test your event consumer integration.

Moving simulated vehicles⚓︎

The second type of simulated vehicles are able to simulate entire trips in real time, during which they produce realistic vehicle states. On the other hand, those moving simulated vehicles are unable to execute commands (this would interfere with the trips they are driving). In addition, they will not produce vehicle states in regular intervals outside of trips, like stationary simulated vehicles do.

Moving simulated vehicles can be used to receive more realistic and diverse data from your simulated vehicles. Note that the vehicles will pause between trips for at least two hours during which no vehicle states are produced and the vehicle remains stationary. After the pause, a new trip will be started from the position the vehicle is currently idling.

Adding simulated vehicles to your fleet⚓︎

Depending on your use case and type of telematics unit you might want to use later on, the one or the other type of simulated vehicle may be better for you to properly plan and test your API integration. If you plan to use our CloudBoxx or other telematics brands which are capable of executing vehicle commands, stationary simulated vehicles are a good fit to test the integration of the Vehicle Commands API.

Moving simulated vehicles, on the other hand, behave more like vehicles that only provide vehicle state data and do not support commands. In that case, you will only receive vehicle states if the vehicle is driving and no updates can be received if the vehicle is parked.

Info

You can have up to ten simulated vehicles in your fleet.

You can add simulated vehicles to your fleet via FleetControl. To do so, go to the ‘Fleet Viewer’ of your fleet and click Add vehicles within the panel on the right hand side. Next, select Simulated Vehicles as the telematics brand and choose which type of simulated vehicle you would like to add. Stationary simulated vehicles use names starting with Simulated Stationary ..., and moving simulated vehicles go by names like Simulated Moving ... (data only). Read above to find out how these types of simulated vehicles behave.

Once you have selected the vehicle model, just follow the guided process in FleetControl to optionally add additional vehicle data and to add the simulated vehicle to your fleet. Alternatively, you can use the Vehicle Lifecycle API to add (simulated) vehicles to your fleet.