Tag: real time tracking

New Teen GPS Tracking Devices From Spy Centre Security

Spy Centre Security, a GPS tracking and “spy” device store has announced a new line of GPS tracking devices that they are marketing specifically for parents of teenagers.  According to their press release they have devices starting at $199 the “[make] it possible to get constant updates on your teenagers’ car.”  My initial thought was that if they have a real time teen GPS tracking device for that price then they are going to be pretty competitive in the tracking market.  The only other real time device that I am aware of is the Zoombak and that is retailing right now on Amazon for $125.  Most other real time trackers are going to cost from around $250 and up.

But upon further investigation, it appears that the claims made in the press release are a little misleading.  To those that don’t understand the distinction between a data logger (passive GPS) and a real time tracker (active GPS) could have been duped by the claim made by the following sentence:

At Spycentre.com we now sell GPS products starting at just $199 making it possible to get constant updates on your teenagers’ car.

(While this sentence does come from a site not associated with Spy Centre Security, it does contain their contact information and is very similar to a press release posted on the companies website on September 11, 2009. This leads me to believe that the message is legitimate.)

Consumers need to know the difference between a data logger and a real time tracker if they are to really understand how to best track their teen and to sift through clever marketing attempts of GPS manufacturers.

Teen GPS Tracking Data Loggers

A data logger is a GPS tracking device that simply records the position of the device at set intervals determined by the user or by the device itself.  In order to access the information that the device records, you must retrieve the device and download the contents onto your computer.  GPS tracking software then interacts with the data and plots it on an interactive Google Maps like interface.

Canmore USB GPS Tracking Stick

This type of tracking is great when you only need to know somethings trip after the fact.  For example, if you enjoy launching hobby rockets and you want to know how high and how fast your rocket travels then using a data logger is a great way to get that information.

One of the newest types of data loggers to hit the market are GPS tracking sticks.  These devices are as large as a USB stick and very similar in build and shape.  They even have a male USB connection built in for a simple downloading process.  Just plug the device in and watch the software take over and do the work of analyzing the data for you.

Certainly powerful stuff, but not what most parents think of when they want to know where there teen is. These devices can be great for getting a good understanding of your teen’s driving habits – but they are not good for knowing where your teen is when they are late in getting home. They are not good when a natural disaster strikes and you need to know where your teen is right now. For that, you would need a real time GPS tracker.

With that said, a data logger is what is currently being offered for $199 on the Spy Centre Security website. I wonder how their tracking stick compares with this $145 one from Amazon?

Teen Real Time GPS Tracking

A real time GPS tracking device is one that is able to send its position information from the device to a third party so that the position of the device can be seen in real time.  This is what most parents are going to think about when they are looking into GPS trackers for their teenager.  They are also fairly expensive devices that will end up costing you hundreds of dollars up front and a regular subscription fee for the data transfers between your tracking device and the company’s servers.

The real time trackers available through Spy Centre Security are certainly expensive.  The cheapest models that they offer run $450 and have a service plan of $30 a month according to the press release mentioned above.  The first year of use will run $810 – a steep price to pay for being able to track your teen’s car with GPS.

The Cell Phone Tracking Solution

The obvious solution to this issue is to find a cheaper, real time tracking solution for parents of teenagers.  The best solution that I have come across is to turn a teen’s cell phone into a GPS tracking device.  Many of today’s cell phones already have a GPS antenna inside the phone that allows them to pick up GPS signals from outer space, eliminating the most obvious hurdle off the get go.  And since most teenagers want the latest and greatest cell phone you know that they probably already have a GPS enabled cell phone on them right now.

All that you now need to do is download some GPS tracking software for cell phones and you have a fully functional GPS tracking system in the palm of your teen’s hand.  There are plenty of paid services out there for parents looking at a paid option.  Most cell phone carriers offer something that you can take a look at that will add a nominal monthly fee to your cell bill.

Another option open to parents is to go with free GPS tracking software for cell phones.  This might take a little more work on your part of monitoring and installing the system, but can you beat free?

In the end, whatever you decide to do with your teen is really up to you.  Teen GPS tracking devices are relatively new, but that should not deter parents from taking advantage of this new and powerful technology to help them raise honest, law-abiding children who drive safely and come home on time.  While some might balk at tracking their teen with GPS, here at GPS For Today we feel like there are plenty of reasons why parents have every right to track a teen driver.  If you are interested in reading more about what we have to say on this topic here are some of the more important articles:

Government GPS Tracking Implants: The Good

The other day, we looked at all the bad that government GPS tracking implants could bring about if it were adopted by a government and used with ill intent.  But that is not the only side to the implantable GPS debate – there is also much good that these devices can do.  Today, let us consider just what good could come about.

We have already clearly established that implanted GPS tracking can be extremely evil if used will ill intent, but we have spent no time discussing all the good that can come of having a world where implantable GPS tracking is possible.  The amount of good might still not compare to the amount of evil, but it is still at least worth our consideration.  If we find that the amount of good exceed the amount of evil that can be done then we should at least consider developing this type of technology.

Some of the more interesting and useful applications of this type of tracking include:

1. Catching Criminals

One of the main functions of governments is to maintain justice and to see the that the wicked are punished for their crimes.  As things stand, there is a lot that can help criminals escape prosecution – but probably the most important element that prosecutors need to do is to link a criminal to the scene of the crime.  We have made great strides at this as a civilization through the discovery of finger printing and DNA evidence, but we have not filled up all the holes in our judicial system yet.  If we could leverage a nation wide GPS tracking system that involves implanted GPS we would have a nearly flawless crime analysis tool on our hands.

The first step would be being able to track down suspects that could have potentially been involved in a crime.  Any murder of theft is bound to leave a GPS trail for the police to follow.  If the murder was a close range shooting or stabbing then all the police would need to do is pull up all the people who where at such and such location around such and such a time.  They then could evaluate each person to see if they are likely to be a suspect.

Once they have determined some potential suspects they would just have to get the real time position of the suspect using the GPS tracking device implanted in their body.  Tracking them down would then be as easy as driving to their location.  No costly stake outs.  No mistaken identities.

Even though the cost of the system as a whole would be very great, the cost saving for the police would be pretty significant.  The amount of time that it would take to identify suspects, locate them, and bring them in for questioning could all be taken care of relatively quickly, saving thousands of man hours and millions of dollars.

The number of crimes are not limited to theft and murder.  Essentially any crime that involves a location could be tracked using this type of system.  Speeding, illegal dumping, stalking, rape, kidnapping, abduction, abuse, and a whole host of other crimes could be handled in a much more precise and useful manner with the administration of a little GPS technology.

2. Improving Emergency Responses

Another huge benefit would be the improved nature of emergency response personnel.  Imagine a 911 call coming in from a small child, named Tim.  It is coming from 401 North Cumberland Lane and Tim has indicated that his mommy is laying on the floor and won’t get up and that there is a lot of smoke in the house.  Immediately, fire fighters and paramedics can be dispatched to the scene.  As they go their computers light up with information that there are 2 people in at the house.  They get a Google Map-like  satellite image of the house with small indicators as to the GPS location of each of the people inside.  They also get an elevation reading that lets them know if the people are in a downstairs or upstairs area of the home.

Armed with this information they arrive on the scene and are able to quickly enter the home and target the areas where the GPS indicated there were people in house.  A rescue is quickly achieved and the fire fighting begins in earnest.  If there was no GPS tracking implant in each of the residents the fire fighters would have to have done a thorough room by room search to make sure that there was no one else in the home – putting them at risk and increasing the amount of time that it might take to put ou the fire.

Medical emergencies would also be much easier to respond to if the paramedics had the GPS coordinates of the patient.  This is especially true when the patient is in a remote area or where there are a lot of people that might impair the paramedics vision.  Also, in transit to the patient the paramedics would have laser like instructions on how to get there and would not loose any time to wrong directions.

3. Improving Military Operations

In a military setting, troops would always know where friends are at all times and could avoid the costly and demoralizing “friendly fire” that has plagued soldiers in all modern wars.  While making use of the implantable tracking devices would require an integration of personal combat computers for each and every soldier, it is not unreasonable to assume that by the time we develop the technology to implant GPS devices in our bodies we will also have the ability to give each soldier their own combat computer.

This could translate the GPS data into helpful instructions that would give each soldier the ability to make lightning quick choices about whether their target is a friend or a foe in the most tense of situations.  It would also allow military commander to know exactly where their soldiers are at any given moment.  Captured soldiers could also be easily tracked, revealing the source of enemy prisons and detention centers.  Rescue attempts would be much easier to pull off and no men would ever be left behind.

4. Assist In Urban Planning

One of the key benefits of universal GPS tracking implants that are monitored and use by the government is that it would allow them to do a lot of civic planning and development.  They could analyze population densities and come up with plans to aid in the flow of individuals for work and for leisure.  An example of this might be a growing suburb of a massive metropolitan area.  After some analysis of the GPS data they find that the majority of people in this area use a major highway in order to head south into the city for work and for play.  They also realize that the other suburbs north also do the same thing, so there is a massive flight from the suburbs out into the city.  This causes a lot of traffic congestion and leads to a lot of pollution and stress.

The government could then step in and do one of a variety of things to solve the problem.  They could try and entice some business to relocate to a friendlier location for their employees.  A move north along the highway corridor would help reduce the overall south bound traffic and ease some of the congestion.  The government could increase the size of the highway corridor to improve speeds and accommodate more commuters.  They could improve the public transportation system to encourage more commuters to make use of this environmentally friendly, cheap, and efficient mode of transportation.

Information like this could also be used to make development decisions. If a particular region does not have the infrastructure to move ahead with a planned development project than the government can step in and intervene.  This will have a limiting affect on some types of growth, but overall I think that it would make cities better run, safer, and more “citizen friendly.”

Finally, governments could make better use of their land if they could know how it was being used by citizens.  If a park never was used or a library never frequented then governments could make the tough decisions to close these centers or to re-purpose them for a more efficient use.  In the end, I think that this would end up saving tax payers a lot of money and would make the government provide the services that the citizens need and want.

5. Increase Business and Governmental Accountability

Another important benefit of a nation-wide GPS tracking implant system is the increased accountability of business and government organizations.  For example, a government inspector is supposed to go around and inspect elevators on all the building in New York City.  Right now, there is very little accountability to make sure that they do that other than the people taking them at their word that such and such was done.  Another example might be a police officer who is tasked with patroling a particularly dangerous part of town, how are we to know he has been faithful to his duty and not just parked at a donut shop all evening?

If you introduce a GPS tracking system to the equation you come to see that there is little that these employees and government agencies can hide from the public (if the information is made publically available, which it would be under the Freedom of Information act).  They are held accountable for their actions.

Private corporations would be the same.  Imagine that some nasty industrial waste begins to show up in a natural preserve somewhere in the West.  How will the dumping party be held responsible?  Just go to the GPS tracking log and check out all the people that have gone to that area and find out what their speed was as they traveled there to tell who drove a car, who walked, etc.  Once you have that list you can interview each individual if there is more than one suspect or you could cross reference names on this list with others from a company payroll.  Either way, you will find out who did the dumping and the person they dumped for in no time at all.

How Will Our Future Look?

I don’t know about you, but I think that the future of GPS tracking implants is a little in the dark.  While this list of benefits is useful and good for society at large I just don’t think that it currently outweights the gross injustices that a government could perpetrate with this type of tracking system in place.  Citizens would have no privacy and absolutely no expectation that they would have any.  I could imagine a whole subclass of people that spurn the trackers and that are forced to live underground or in remote regions of the country in an attempt to evade the all seeing eyes of the government.

But this does not mean that all GPS implants should be avoided.  There might be a strong argument for personal GPS tracking implants, but perhaps we will visit that topic another day.

Government GPS Tracking Implants: The Bad and The Ugly

One of the most feared and most useful futures of GPS tracking technology is almost certainly implantable GPS tracking chips. We have all seen the bleak futures where citizens are under the constant supervision of some totalitarian government whose sole purpose seems to be to torment them.  It is a well established film genre that has deep roots in the cold war psyche of the Western world.  The world of Orwells’ 1984 would have been twice as bad if they could have had a GPS chip in each of the citizens in this dystopia.  One thing is clear, given just a few moments of reflection almost anyone can think of the mountains of evil that such a system could potentially generate.

But what about all the good that this system could accomplish, do we ever think about that?  We have been trained by our culture to overlook the potentially massive benefits that would also accompany such a system because of the possibility of abuse.  As a result, our fears could be causing us to throw the baby out with the bath water.

Is the development of GPS tracking implants something that we should consider doing?  Do the potential dangers out weight the potential benefits?

The Evil of GPS Tracking Implants

The number of evils that could be accomplished with this type of information is obvious and extensive.  I would generally think of classifying the issues in terms of two main ways of abusing the information gathered from such a system: (1) dispatching of government opponents, and (2) using private information for profit.

1. Dispatching of Government Opponents

One of the most insidious methods that a government could use a universal GPS tracking system would be to kill their citizens that opposed their regime.  Since they would know the exact location of everyone of their citizens it would be simple enough for them to dispatch a death squad that would easily be able to locate anyone anywhere.  The only “safe” place for such dissidents would be underground somewhere where neither GPS nor cell phone signals could possibly find them.  This would mean that even if the government did not kill someone, they would effectively remove them from being a threat by forcing them to spend their whole life underground.

A little less insidious but just as dangerous would be the threat of constant arrest.  If you  were to voice some concern about the government they could find all sorts of ways to get you into jail by using the information gather from your implanted GPS tracking chip.  They might arrest you outright, picking you up on the street as you make your way to the supermarket to buy some milk.  They might even rig a trial to get you arrested for a crime you didn’t commit.  All they would need is to have you at the scene of some crime – like a murder – and use the GPS location information to tie them to the crime.

A third way that government might be able to use GPS tracking information to hurt their citizens is by making public information about their personal, private activities.  If an opponent frequents a church, or goes to a psychologist, or has met with the same woman who is not his wife for the past year and a half at a hotel the government could make this information known by leaking it to close friends, relatives, or the media.  Also, their ability to identify and exploit known vices would increase dramatically if they had a repository of all know position data on a individual.

These are just a few of the ways that governments equipped with widespread, cheap GPS tracking implants could use the information to hurt their opponents.  There are more, but for now let us turn our attention to another form of government evil, profiting from its citizens.

2.  Using Private Information For Profit

In this case of government abuse the basic sin that the government would be committing is making public private information about their citizens.  They could do this in any number of ways, but I think mentioning three would suffice to give us a feel for the wickedness that they could do.

The first is that they could sell GPS tracking information to corporations to “improve” advertising targeting.  This was the impetus behind the Palm Pre cell phone tracking software debacle and is a desire that I don’t think is going to go away anytime soon.  Just imagine how much money they could make if they could sell data to every single corporation in the world.  They could tell car companies who likes to drive fast while in the highways, who generally travels with more than one person in the car, where they go when the travel, and how often they travel.  If the government could then correlate this data with tax returns then companies would have a picture of their potential customers that would enable them to provide laser targeted advertising.

This ability would be even greater if companies could also get live position data on particular individuals that they have targeted for adverting campaigns.   They could feed you ads with the aid of real time GPS tracking.  Imagine this for a second: You are driving down a lonely stretch of highway when you come upon a billboard.  On it is the following message:

Bill, you have driving your 2074 Ford Apocalypse 209,987 miles since your last oil change – don’t you think its time to get one?

Satan’s Auto Store is off of exit 22 and charges $0.03 for an oil change when you mention this billboard!

Now that is laser targeted advertising, and it is really creepy!

Similarly, companies could also use this type of information to identify potential markets and products.  If  a coffee company called Starmonies wants to identify a new set of real estate for to put up a store they can analyze foot traffic in downtown Los Angelos to help identify the point where the most coffee drinkers walk during peek coffee consuming hours.  Or a company might take advantage of GPS tracking data to find out if they can market a certain service in an area.  Either way, the government is going to profiting for your private information.

The third way that the government could use GPS information would be to manipulate the population for means of perpetuating government.  One very common method of population manipulation that already goes on is the redrawing of district boundaries for elections.  This would become even easier as the data would be much better than census data and could potentially be correlated to voting information (hey, it could happen), tax returns, and criminal records.  In the end, no congressman or senator would ever get kicked out of office because they could always just redraw the boundary until they have a plurality of votes.

Now That Is Wicked!

There is no doubt that a lot of evil could be done with GPS tracking devices that are implanted inside each and every citizen in a country.  The government and private corporations would have access to insane amounts of information about people that would would make the whole system scary if it were to be misused and abused.  Dissidents, opponents, and even society’s unwanted stand to suffer countless crimes against humanity if the whims of public opinion or political power were to turn against them.

Any scientist who would develop such a system should take warning.  Human nature is deceitfully wicked and without some serious checks in place there is no telling what type of authoritarian regime would be created when GPS tracking becomes this extensive.  It is worth development if such terrible things could be done?

Next we will turn out attentio to the good GPS tracking implants could do, but until then, just sit and ponder the inexplicable wickedness of man!

GPS Car Tracking Device’s Effectiveness Highlighted By Musician And His Lost Violin

What would you do if you lost something worth approximate $500,000 (£300,000) in a taxi cab? Well, a GPS car tracking device helped reunite one musician who lost his concert violin in a taxi cab that brought him home late one night after a long day of practice for his New York city debut. Tired and barely awake from his strenuous day of practice, the young violinists careless left the cab without grabbing his violin. Shocked and in a panic about the loss, he quickly realized his mistake and immediately called the police. The police were then able to contact the taxi cab service that brought the musician home and access the GPS car tracking log of the taxi that that brought the musician home. Thank God for technology and honest taxi drivers!

Here is a quick video of the musician, Hahn-Bin, telling his story on the Early Show. GPS tracking isn’t mentioned in the video, but it helps you get the gist of what went down.

This little episode really helps us understand some of the overall benefits that we can experience when we begin using GPS car tracking in a much larger scale. These benefits include:

Better customer service from service fleets.  GPS fleet tracking is often seen solely as something that will help companies better manage their own fleets and be more efficient in their routing capabilities.  It is no doubt that taxi cabs benefit a great deal from this ability to route the closest taxi to a call on the fly – it ensures that the company saves the most money on gas and can make more service calls, both of which will end up increasing the company’s revenue.

But what is often overlooked by many who want to use  fleet tracking is that it will also help them be better at serving their customers.  Would this taxi company have been able to track down the violin in less than 12 hours if they had not had real time car tracking devices installed in their cabs?  I doubt it.  It would have taken them forever to find the taxi that drove Hahn-Bin to his apartment because they would have had to rely on traditional method of finding the cab rather than on GPS tracking technology.  Hahn-Bin would have had to go down to the local police precinct and looked through a bunch of taxi driver photos and even then he might not have recognized his driver.

With GPS tracking this was all taken care of because all the cab company had to do was plug the pick up coordinates and the drop of coordinates into their GPS tracking software and the would have had the cab ID number of the car in question. Then all they had to do was get a hold of the cabbie and get the violin back into the hands of Hahn-Bin. Now that is great customer service brought about by GPS fleet tracking.

More accurate and effective law enforcement assistance. Another thing that this episode highlights is how much more effective the police can be when they have GPS assistance. Sure, it can also be a little scary when you start giving a government entity information like your GPS coordinates, but it can also be extremely helpful if those people are actually seeking your good and not your harm.

In this case, the police were able to respond in a very timely manner thanks to the GPS tracking device for cars installed in the taxi cab. Just imagine what type of good they could do if they also had the GPS coordinates of every one in a given city? They would be able to find out all the people who were in a 1 mile radius of a murder or other violent crime, helping them track down witnesses and gather information on suspects in the case. While information like this could also be used for evil and it is probably decades before such technology would even be possible, it sure would be a great way to reduce crime or at the very least punish criminals faster.

Increased honesty.  If people know that you can be very certain whether or not they are lying they will generally be much more truthful with you. When you have a GPS tracking device for a car installed in your personal vehicle you are probably going to be much more honest with someone when they ask you where you have been driving. When there is a high level of verifiability there is also a high level of honesty.

This is one reason why covert GPS vehicle tracking can be a mixed bag. Sometime it is necessary to help us understand what someone (maybe a spouse or a rebellious teen) is doings, but other times we would just rather have them stop being self destructive and be honest with us. I foresee that as GPS tracking become more prevalent in GPS cell phones and other portable GPS devices we will also see an increase in the level of honest that we have with other people in our lives. This honest is will make the whole world a better place.

These are just a few of the types of benefits that we can see when GPS car tracking devices begin to become even more prevalent in society.  Sure, there is still a long way to go, but this example of the returned violin is a very promising story if we are to develop into a society where GPS tracking is used for the greater good rather than as a tool in the hands of evil. We still have a long way to go before we can say that GPS tracking is safe, but I think that one day soon we just might be there.

Covert GPS Vehicle Tracking: Tips And Tricks On Making It Work

Sometimes, there is a need for covert GPS vehicle tracking. There just is. You might not like the fact that at any point someone could be tracking your movements with a GPS tracking device, but I think we can all agree that there are some instances where it is appropriate and permissible for this type of device to be installed in a vehicle. While we might not appreciate it if it were us being tracked, we definitely understand its use in variety of different situations by a handful of people.

For example, I think most people are going to agree that having a policeman install a GPS vehicle tracking device on a suspects car is going to be okay. We might disagree on whether this can be done without a warrant or it requires a warrant, but I think we all agree that the police should be able to do this.

Another area that might be a little more of a gray area for most of us is the use of covert tracking on our children and teens. While I personally believe that such tracking is well within a parents rights and responsibilities as a parent, I certainly don’t think that it is a very wise parenting decision in most circumstances. It just seems to me that other types of GPS tracking for teens would have a much better outcome than secret, covert tracking – but there are certainly circumstances where it might be a good idea to secretly track a teen. It is just not the norm.

Still more gray is the notion of setting up a covert GPS vehicle tracking system for a spouse or lover who you suspect of cheating. Of the two, I think most people would be most on the fence about tracking someone who is just a boyfriend/girlfriend – but even here I would suspect that the majority of people would find that this type of tracking is permissible as long as there is good reason to suspect them of cheating. This is especially true if the couple is physically intimate (which, I would suggest, should really only be done in the confines of a monogamous marriage relationship). If there is cheating going on (or even a suspicion of infidelity) in this type of relationship then I strongly encourage the person who suspects the cheating to discover the truth.

We have just outlined several situations in which it might be feasible to employ a GPS vehicle tracker covertly, so now it is time to discuss some of the different ways that we can make the most of our tracking device and find out the information we are seeking undetected by our target:

  1. Install the device in an accessible, yet hidden, location.  This could be inside a wheel well, under the back bumper, or even inside an unused glove box or storage bin inside the cab of the vehicle.  You obviously don’t want to put it on the dash of the vehicle like a navigation GPS as this will be a curious sight to the person that you are wanting to track covertly.  With the placement of the device you want to avoid detection at all costs.
  2. Install the device when you will be undisturbed by your target or by others.  If your target is about to leave in five minutes and it is 1 PM it is probably not the time to be under the wheel well of their car installing a GPS vehicle tracking device.  They will probably end up seeing you down there or notice the schmutz on your back and ask what it is that you were just doing.  This is bad as most people are terrible liars.  If they suspect that you are tracking them then you will never get the data that you need.
  3. Choose the type of tracking system that is going to best fit your needs.  Sometimes it is better to forgo real time GPS vehicle tracking for a safer data logger.  Why is a data logger safer?  It boils down to two words: battery life.  A lot of the real time trackers on the market have a dismal battery life when it comes to gathering information on a target vehicle.  One particular tracker, the Zoombak, will only let you have the device on for 5 days before the battery dies, and that doesn’t include a single position call!  Data loggers can often last weeks, providing you with a complete picture of a vehicles activity for extended periods of time.  Also, you have to retrieve the device to replace its batteries less if you go with a logging GPS vehicle tracking system – making it less likely that you get caught in the retrieval stage of your tracking effort.
  4. When retrieving the device follow the same procedure in point #2.  Remember, you don’t want to get caught with the data even after the tracking has been completed.  You want to be able to decipher the coordinates and there meaning before you confront your spouse, or your teen, or a suspect in a criminal investigation.

If you follow these steps carefully, taking special care in point #2 and point #3, then you should have no problem installing a GPS vehicle tracker covertly.  While your own personal experience with this type of tracking may vary, the use of covert GPS vehicle tracking is certainly legitimate and useful in certain circumstances.

Understanding Real Time GPS Vehicle Tracking

We are living in an increasingly complex world where we are constantly bombarded with massive amounts of information every day.  Our world is not so simple as it once was, and while technology can be a great assistance to us in our endeavors to understand the world around us it can also be a hindrance.  Some technology is better left undiscovered by those that would seek to use it, the complexity that it takes to understand its function being too much for some people.  Luckily, real time GPS vehicle tracking is not this type of technology.

It is relatively easy to understand, and can be reduced to overly simplistic terms extremely well.  Even thought it makes use of some the most complex and powerful technology that the 21st century has to offer, the actual function of the technology itself is easily intelligible and intuitive. You can understand real time tracking without having to have the smallest bit of technical understanding. It may appear to work “magically” to some people, but it can be relied upon in its “magic.” The information it provides is easily translatable, meaning that people of all positions and stations can understand what the GPS tracking system is communicating.

Real Time Vehicle Tracking Basics

Even though you don’t need to understand much about how a real time GPS vehicle tracking system works in order to get some benefit from it, it is still a good idea to try and understand the way this technology works so that we can better ascertain its limitations and costs. We need to be thoughtful consumers if the things we buy are to have the maximum amount of positive impact on our lives or our business.

With all things GPS, we should start with the Global Positioning Satellites that orbit the earth. There are over 20 of these satellites continuously transmitting data on a specific radiowave frequency that can be read by specialized receivers. The information contained in these transmissions is critical for how portable GPS devices are able to calculate their position. The data contained is the position of the satellite and the time that the transmission was sent.

Once a GPS device has received enough of these signals (3 signals from 3 different satellites) it is then able to calculate its position using a process called trilateration. What it does is it takes the know location of three or more objects, in this case the GPS satellites, and uses the known distance from these locations, which is calculated by taking the amount of time between when the GPS signal was transmitted and when it was “heard” by the GPS tracking device and then multiplying that time by the speed of the radiowave, to find out exactly where the GPS device you are holding is.  It is a little complicated when talked about this way, but it is actually quiet easy to understand when properly explained.

This video does a great job of communicating the basic principles of how a GPS device figures out its position (it is made for kids, but the information is great):

The acting in this film is, in a word, terrible, but the information contained within it is pretty informative if you ask me.

Now that we understand how a GPS device calculates its position we now need to understand what give real time GPS vehicle tracking its real time component. After all, such things as GPS navigation, golf GPS, and data logging GPS do not have a real time component to their GPS capabilities. So what makes real time GPS tracking real time?

The answer to this question is found in cell phone technology.  Once a GPS tracking device has figured out its location it needs to be able to communicate that data to a third party so that tracking can occur in real time.  Otherwise the device is just a simple GPS data logger.  While some GPS tracking systems also employ radio signals to transmit the data to a tracking unit (such as the Garmin Astro GPS pet tracking system), this is not the norm and is not really feasible for vehicle tracking applications.  GPS vehicle tracking depends on cell phone technology to transmit the data from unit to server where it can then be processed by GPS tracking software.

Because real time vehicle tracking depends on both GPS signals from above and on cell phone signals from below there are some limitations to its ability to track a vehicle.  One of them is that if they are obstructed from receiving a signal from the GPS satellite then they cannot be tracked.  While GPS receivers have grown considerably in strength over the last several decades, there are still some issues with being able to receive a signal in some conditions.  Extremely inclement weather, traveling under ground in a tunnel, or even navigating amidst tower sky scrapers can affect your GPS’s ability to get a lock on your location. A-GPS (Assisted GPS) tries to mitigate these problems by getting help from cell phone signals and has proven to be more accurate than simple GPS, but even that is not fool proof.

The second limitation for a real time GPS tracker is the need for a constant connection to the cell phone grid. If a device looses cell phone reception is no longer is effective at being a real time tracker. There are several things that could result in a signal being lost, but the most common are that the area is remote and has not access to cell phone towers or that the terrain interferes with the signal, like in a gully or ravine.

Another thing about relying on a cell phone grid is that you generally have to pay extra fees for using it. Most real time tracking systems are going to come with a monthly subscription fee that can run you anywhere from $9.99 to $50 depending on how many location requests you make or the capabilities of your providers GPS tracking software. This can be a real back breaker for those that have barely enough to fork out the considerable up front device purchase price.

But if you can stomach the expense and have a need for GPS vehicle tracking then adding a real time tracker to your repertoire is going to be very nice. They are very powerful at what they do, and if you plan on tracking a vehicle that mainly uses the urban landscape for its activities you should have no problem getting a real time, 24/7 picture of the vehicles activities. If you can hardwire the real time GPS vehicle tracking device to the car or truck then you should continuous tracking capabilities. This set up is particularly useful for fleet tracking, car tracking, and teen tracking.