Bhubaneswar, Nov. 22: An end to those tense moments as you wait for your child to return from school is not far away.

A team of techies in the city has come up with an innovative device for school buses that will help anxious parents track the vehicles and ensure the safety of their wards.

The device, which has been christened “Fareye”, will also benefit the school authorities in controlling the driving speed of the vehicle and checking misuse of fuel.

It will also help them supervise the fleet of buses and manage their transport services for students better.

“Fareye is a small GPS tracking unit that remains hidden in the bus. All that is needed is setting up the initial routes and mapping the mobile numbers of the parents for the device to work,” said Gautam Kumar, one of the innovators.

Kumar, along with his friends Kushal Nahata and Gaurav Srivastava (all BTech graduates from a city engineering school), joined hands to develop this unique device in 2010.

“It took us almost two years to come up with the final product,” said Kumar.

He said around Rs 15 lakh had gone into the research and development of the product.

Launched in August, the device is already being used by a few schools in the city.

“The idea struck us after we saw anxious parents waiting for school buses at various stops. On many occasions, some of them would be making desperate calls to the school authorities to find out when the school bus had left and why it had not reached its destination yet,” said Nahata.

The team then got together to devise a parental alert system to help parents figure out if the school buses were running on time.

“Those connected to the device will get a notification through SMS when the bus is about to reach the designated stop. It will also send a notification in case of a breakdown or accident. Parents and school authorities can also visit the school website to see the live location of the bus and if it is moving at the right speed, thus ensuring better safety of the children,” said Srivastava.

City schools such as KIIT International, DAV Chandrashekharpur, Xavier International and the Ahlcon International School in New Delhi are using this gadget.

“At present, we are trying to market the product extensively within the state as well as in other parts of the country,” said Kumar.

He said they had reached out to the Delhi crowd by pitching a kiosk at the ongoing Tech Mart fair in the national capital.

The product is priced at Rs 10,500.