Custom SBC GPS Tracking and Geocaching Carputer Software Development and Implementation

This thesis argues that hardware-integrated capstone projects develop software engineering skills that traditional coursework cannot replicate. A team of eight developers built a GPS tracking system on a Raspberry Pi 4 over two academic terms, integrating real-time position streaming, the APRS amateur radio protocol for network-independent location sharing, and PostGIS spatial queries for "new road" detection. The system implements SmartBeaconing for adaptive GPS data reduction, achieving approx