Using Galaxy SmartTags or an open source air tag system (each sensor is about $10) – each rider and rickshaw (holds 2-3) would have an “air tag”
Then the dispatcher would be online all day, and they can see everyone’s location on their laptop. Everyone would need satellite to communicate.
It would allow a person with a laptop to find the nearest rickshaw driver to the rider who needs a lift.
The camp buys the tags, registers them all to one Samsung account, and can see every single one on SmartThings Find. The crowd mesh refreshes locations.
So the architecture is actually clean:
- Camp buys ~70 tags (50 riders + 20 rickshaws)
- All registered to one BRC Rickshaw Program Samsung account
- One dispatcher logs into SmartThings Find on their laptop
- They can see all 70 tags labeled however they want — “RS01”, “Linda K.”, etc.
- Starlink provides the internet connection to sync locations
Map (center) — the playa is rendered as the familiar radial grid. Orange squares are available rickshaws, blue squares are en route, green circles are riders waiting, gray circles are riders who’ve used their daily quota. Dashed blue lines show active routes. Teal rings are sensor nodes spread across the playa. Click anything on the map to select it.
Left sidebar — toggle between the rickshaw fleet and rider roster. Each entry shows live status. Clicking an item selects it and highlights it on the map.
Right panel — shows details for whatever you’ve selected, plus the live ride request queue with timestamps. When you select an available rickshaw and there are queued riders, the “Assign ride” button activates. Click it and the dispatch happens — rickshaw status flips to en route, the rider’s daily count ticks down, and the queue updates.
A few things worth thinking through as you develop this further:
The 2-rides-per-day cap is tracked per rider with a color-coded badge (green = 2 left, amber = 1 left, red = none). The operator can see this at a glance without having to look it up.
Closest rickshaw logic — in a real version, the assignment button would auto-suggest the nearest available rickshaw based on AirTag coordinates, rather than relying on the operator to eyeball it. That’s probably the most valuable automation in the system.
The queue panel lets the operator select a specific request before dispatching, so they can prioritize (medical need, long wait time, etc.) rather than always going FIFO.
Dispatch app:
The address system — every location is a clock position × ring letter: “4:30 & C” means the intersection of the 4:30 radial street with C Street. The clock runs from 2:00 to 10:00 (the city is a horseshoe open toward 12:00/the deep playa). Half-hours are real streets too, so you get 2:00, 2:30, 3:00, 3:30, etc. Rings go: Esplanade (innermost, most active), then A through K outward — K is the outer city edge.
For your rickshaw dispatcher, the key landmarks are:
- The Man is the center reference point for everything
- Plazas are at 3:00, 4:30, 6:00, 7:30, and 9:00 on B Street — natural pickup hubs
- Center Camp (Esplanade & ~6:00) is the busiest single node
- The Temple is in deep playa past 12:00 — a very common destination