Category: GPS Tracking

Car Tracking, Google, Cell Phones, And Real Time Traffic Updates

The folks over at Google are turning car tracking into a public service, using the data in an impressive effort to provide traffic information for free to users of their popular Google Maps for Mobile cell phone application. This is a great leap forward in providing useful and reliable information to users all over the globe, but especially in the United States. Being able to get traffic information for free on your GPS enabled cell phone is just another reason to begin ditching those cumbersome and increasingly obsolete GPS navigation devices.

Many traditional GPS navigation devices end up charging you for a traffic service – $50 for a year of MSN direct on one device or $90 for a lifetime subscription on one device (Some devices give you traffic updates for free, like the Garmin Nuvi 265WT). If you turn this into a monthly charge, most people are going to end up spending an additional $4 a month to get traffic. This is no comparison when it comes to the free, real time traffic updates provided by Google.

Another advantage to the Google data is that it is crowdsourced. Crowdsourcing is when a task is given to a large crowd of individuals to perform. Generally speaking, crowdsourcing is a great way to gather information. Google is able to do this because they have thousands of customers who currently run their free cell phone tracking application Google Maps for Mobile. All a current user has to do to make their information available for Google to use is turn on the GPS location sharing feature on their phone. This will add your phone’s speed and location to the massive amounts of data already being sent to Google by users all over the roadways. The more information they have, the more reliable their traffic data is going to become.  GPS tracking for cars is now becoming useful for everyone.

Now why is Google doing this? Is it just out of the kindness of their own heart that they are making this car tracking information  available to anyone who wants to use it, free of charge?

Google Maps Real Time Traffic DataWell, there are a couple different things that this Internet giant could by trying to accomplish by using cell phones to track cars and get accurate traffic information. The first is the most obvious: they want to improve their current product and services. Google Maps is a wildly popular web application and is becoming just as popular on mobile phones. If they can increase this application’s usefulness they can solidify their user base and create lots of Google Maps evangelists. This could cut into the market share of other online map providers like MapQuest and MSN.

Since cell phone make great car tracking devices it is pretty obvious why they chose to leverage their existing cell phone user base instead of creating a brand new Google GPS navigation unit.  That just wouldn’t make any sense for the long term since car navigation units are on the decline (or at least so say I).

This strategy also has a long term objective as well, creating Google brand loyalty. That way, when they produce something new – like the Android cell phone – they already have a customer base that will become interested in their new product offering. In fact, the Android cell phone is probably going to receive a marked boost from Google having a strong presence in the world of mobile applications. While it is my understanding that this GPS enabled cell phone is not doing that great in terms of market share, I’m sure that Google is in this one for the long haul.

So it would appear that in addition to wanting to help out there users they are also are interested in making some money. This is obviously going to the be goals of a corporation so users should not be too concerned about this fact.

There are, however, a few things that you will want to look out for if you are going to be letting Google take a peak at your GPS coordinates and your speed information. The first is you will want to make sure that Google is going to watch out for your privacy. If you want to find our more information about how they plan on keeping your private data safe I recommend that you read their official announcement made here: The bright side of sitting in traffic: Crowdsourcing road congestion data

For those that don’t feel like jumping to another page I will sum up their privacy measure. They are as follows:

  • Google makes all phones anonymous, so no one using the data will know for certain that your phone is the one providing the traffic information
  • They also will delete your starting point and your destination point from their database, essentially crippling someone wishing to use the info to know exactly where you came from and where you are going – even Google
  • Another layer of privacy protection is expected in the sheer volume of traffic data they plan on collecting, if you are one of a hundred motorists handing over your personal information to Google then it stands to reason you will be harder to find

This is all important information given the fact that some companies (*cough*Palm*cough*) like hijack your personal information, including your phones unique identifier, and send it back to Palm HQ with their unwanted cell phone tracking software.  Companies need to take privacy concerns seriously if they want user to entrust their data to them.

The second key consideration is how sending all this data is going to affect your data plan.  This is probably the more important of the two considerations since this is mainly going to be about money for a lot of people.  I have not extensively tested this, so take it with a grain of salt, but I am assuming that if you are already using Google Maps for Mobile extensively and you are fine with your current data plan then you won’t have anything to worry about.  But if you push your data plan to its max with your current use then adding the load of sending your GPS coordinates to Google will probably push you over the edge.

For some people, this can mean hundreds of dollars depending on what your cell phone provider’s policy is with account overages.  This will turn your free real time traffic updates into fairly expensive traffic update.  But this is the problem with free GPS cell phone tracking.  If you can’t cover the expense of sending your data over the network then it isn’t going to be free.

In the final analysis I think that most people are going to benefit a lot from this type of data.  According to one recent report released by Navteq, a major supplier of GPS maps, people spend 18% less time when they have access to real time traffic updates.  If you extrapolate that data over the course of an entire year that will turn into 4 whole days of time saved.  Now that is car GPS tracking that I can live with.

But is Google going to succeed with this car tracking system they have created or will it fail?  Are cell phones really the tracking device for cars that everyone thinks they are or will the data provided by the modern marvels fail to live up to expectations?  Only time will tell for certain, but I for one am extremely optimistic.

GPS Tracking Is Not All Good

Perhaps I should have named this article Why Crazy People Should NOT Use GPS Tracking because I think that that statement is just as true as the one I ended up picking as the title for this post.  There are some crazy people in this world who will do all sorts of evil with things that are normally very useful and good for society at large.  This seems to be an unavoidable fact of existence.

But when you read (very sad, very disturbing – consider yourself warned) stories like this, where you have a person use the power of GPS to do terrible things it just makes you sick.

For those of you who didn’t click through and read the post the story goes something like this (very sad, very disturbing – skip past the indented paragraphs if you don’t want to read it):

There is a man – a controlling, small little man – who tries to make himself big by pushing around his wife.  She eventually gets fed up and decides the ditch the dude.  There is another man involved.  The small man is upset that his wife isn’t home to cook him dinner or something and enlists the help of his teenage daughter to use the GPS in his wife’s cell phone to track her location.  When he finds her his wife tells him that she is leaving him and that she isn’t going home with him.  The small man leaves angry.

But it gets worse … much, much worse.  The small man, in a total act of cowardice takes out his anger against his wife on his own children.  While they sleep, one by one, he walks through his home with  loaded gun and proceeds to fire round after round into his own children.  Four lie dead in their beds where they slept.  The fifth child is found shot dead in the bathroom where there were signs of a struggle.  Sickening.

The small man then goes to the spot where he last saw his wife, presumably to find here and kill her as well.  When he doesn’t find her, he is apparently overcome with guilt over the horrendous thing that he has just done and he takes his own life.

Now this story is one of the saddest that I have heard in a long, long time.  What would posses a father to do such a thing?  How could he even think of doing any willful harm to his children?  It makes me sick to think that such a thing can happen.

But the purpose of this site is not to discuss what it means to be a man, or to show how a husband should lay down his life for his wife and children – not steal their lives as they sleep, or to how one ought to treat his wife with love and respect.  We are here to talk about GPS tracking and its application in society.

So was the GPS in the cell phone responsible for this tragedy?  Was it a cause?  Are the children dead because of it?

I certainly don’t think so.  Sure, the cell phone GPS did lead to the discovery of the infidelity.  It did contribute to the spark of hate and violence that would eventually lead to such a terrible tragedy, but it was by no means responsible for it.  The situation was already terrible – the man had been abusive to his wife since she was a 13 year old girl.  There relationship was one built on violence, fear, and control.  You had to know that the end of it was not going to be good – but no one could have expected it to end like this.

GPS did not have anything to do with the emotional and relational sickness that marks this terrible tragedy.  It was not the satellites that pulled the trigger on the gun.  It was not a GPS receiver that someone implanted the thought to kill children in the wicked man’s head.  No, GPS had nothing to do with the actual evil in this situation.

But it does highlight s0mething interest that I have been trying to point out about GPS tracking for some time now: if this technology is used wrongly it can have devastating effects.  It seems that the amount of good that a technology can do is only proportional to the amount of evil that it can do in the hands of perverse and wicked men.  I hope that cell phone GPS doesn’t get abused like this often, but I know that this is just a pipe dream.  It is probably happening right now as we speak … and that makes me profoundly sad.

Yet Another City Considers GPS Bus Tracking

GPS bus tracking can be extremely useful for municipalities and public transportation authorities who want to provide top notch service to their customers while at the same time equipping their fleet with superior vehicle awareness and maintenance capabilities.  Several major cities have already adopted this type of tracking to help provide useful information to their users and to aid fleet authorities to better understand the condition of each and every bus in the fleet.  Some notable cities that use one type of bus tracking or another are Washington D.C, Chicago, and San Francisco – with both Boston and New York City considering some form of tracking for future use on some of their bus lines.

There are several benefits that users of these systems list.  Probably the first thing that users love about a publicly available tracking system for buses is that they provide users with more time.  When a user wants to catch a bus to head off to work, to school, or just out for a night on the town then they would normally just go to the bus stop around the scheduled arrival time of that specific bus.  If a bus is late (or heaven forbid it is early) then you have to wait for the bus to arrive – this could take 5 minutes or it could take half and hour in the case of the early bus.

But if the bus is being tracked with GPS then you can be certain of the buses location at any given point in time.  Some bus tracking systems, like NextBus, even employ a complex arrival time algorithm that will give you an estimated time of arrival for your bus given current traffic conditions.  Equipped with this knowledge, bus riders can make more informed decisions about then they should head out to catch the bus resulting in more time spent at home with the family or more time spent at work earning money for their family.

Another benefit often cited by users of these systems is that they help them feel safer.  I suppose that this has a lot to do with minimizing the amount of time that they spend waiting for the bus.  This is probably very useful for women who might feel at risk if they need to catch the bus in a less than stellar neighborhood or who don’t like being outside in the dark very long by themselves.  The less time they can stand waiting around for a bus the safer they feel when using the bus to get from place to place.

For those cities that experience a rather rough winter, bus tracking systems also help people stay out of the cold.  Again, this all goes back to being able to make better decisions about when to go out and catch the bus that bus GPS tracking software give to users. If they were not able to know where the bus is then they could not decide when a good time to head out to catch it is. If they don’t know when to go out to catch it they begin to play it safe and head out well in advance of the scheduled time so that they can be sure to catch the bus that is going to take them where they want to go.

This type of bus real time tracking seems like the future to me. I can totally see a country 10-15 years from now where every major metropolitan area has its bus lines tracked with GPS. It is efficient, useful, and provides a great service to the public. Also, if cities could spread this type of real time tracking to more than just buses and somehow link up all their transportation services this could really help consumers in their effort to make use of the most efficient transportation available to them. People wouldn’t want to travel by car when they could use the laser like precision of public transportation.

The only way we are going to get away from the energy inefficient modes of transportation is by providing superior alternatives – and it seems like GPS tracking is one of the key components that can make public transportation superior to driving by car.

How To Find A Lost Cell Phone With GPS Tracking

I lost my cell phone. Help!

We have all been there before – our precious cell phone has suddenly gone missing and we have no idea where it is.  We do a quick check of all the places that we normally put it; it isn’t there.  We rehash every event from the time we last remember having our mobile phone to the time when we first noticed that it was missing.  Where did we go?  Who were we with?  What was I wearing?

We try calling our cell phone in the hope that the ringer is on and that it is somewhere nearby.  We pace frantically through our home and run out to the car in the hopes of hearing our awesome ringtone.

But when all of this fails us, we are simply left with worry.  All we can do is hope that some switch will flip in our brain and we will all of a sudden “remember” exactly where it is.

How can we increase the likelihood of actually finding a lost cell phone? GPS tracking!

Here’s how this technology can help:

Lost Cell Phone No GPS Tracking

  1. Have a GPS tracking app on your phone. This will either need to be already installed or you will need to install it remotely (see here for tips on remote installation).
  2. Access your phone’s location using the web. Most tracking apps have some sort of web interface through which you can access your tracking information remotely. Do this; it should tell you where your phone is.

Yes, finding a lost cell phone by using a free tracking apps is that easy. In our tests of various apps we have found that the whole process can take just a few minutes to complete, even if you don’t already have the software installed on your phone. Conditions do need to be right for this to work process to work. They include:

  1. Your cell phone must be on.
  2. Your cell phone must have a connection to your network or be connected to WiFi.
  3. Your cell phone must be able to get messages from GPS satellites.

If you fail in any one of these items you will not be able to us GPS tracking to find your mobile. Sorry.

Understanding How GPS Tracking Works For Cell Phone Recovery

If you have not already heard, GPS stands for the Global Positioning System and is a series of satellites that emit a radio signal that can be read by specialized GPS receivers. These receivers use the information encoded in the radio signals to do a little math called trilateration.  Once that equation is done, the GPS device will know its exact location on the globe. Pretty niffty, right?

GPS systems have become increasingly smaller over the years and have made their way into pretty much every single smarphone on the market.  Chances are, if you own a newer cell phone that runs Android or iOS then you have GPS in your phone.

GPS tracking occurs when the position information is gathered by the device. This information is either stored locally or sent out from the device of the network. The former process is called data logging, and is only GPS tracking of a sort.  The latter process is what most people think of when they talk about GPS tracking and is often referred to as real-time GPS tracking. If you are trying to find a lost cell phone they you are trying to use the second variety.

Once the cell phone has found its exact location using GPS (or by a very similar mathematical process using cell phone tower signals) it can send that information out over the wireless network to which it is connected. The cell phone only needs to be on.  Most tracking programs will work behind the scenes with little to no action taken by a user.

Therefore, the cell phone must be on so that it can process the signals it is receiving from the GPS satellites and talk over the cell phone network. It must have a network connection of some kind to send the information that it gathers from the satellites.  This information then travels across the network to the company that is helping you track your phone. Finally, it must be able to get messages from the GPS satellites in order to find its position in the world.  If it has no position information it will have nothing to communicate.

Finding A Good (Free) GPS Tracking App To Find Your Phone

Finding the right app for your particular brand of phone is definitely not easy.  The biggest problem is choice, especially for Android users. You might want to check with your phone’s particular app store or see one of these posts for potential apps:

  1. Our post on How To Install GPS Tracking Apps Remotely To Find A Lost Or Stolen Android Cell Phone also contains a list of all apps that can be downloaded and installed to your phone remotely that we have personally tested on our Android phones.
  2. We also have a list of applications and software that can be downloaded here: Free GPS Tracking Applications and Software
  3. We have still another list of free options out there for cell phone tracking

Also, if you feel like paying for something that you could do for yourself for free then you could always go with a one of your provider’s tracking plans. I have seen a family plan for a little as $5 a month depending on your current service agreement. While this is a nominal payment, it is ∞ more expensive than free! If you can get the same service for free, why not do it?

A Final Word: Data Plans

No matter what your final choice for an app is, you are definitely going to need to have a data plan that will allow for the transmission of data across the network.  Most people already have one anyway (you own a smartphone, after all).  Those that do not have a data plan are often not worried about losing a phone that only costs $40 to replace!

Data plans are important because your cell phone will have to send the information about its position across the network if you want to track the phone in real time. You can’t find your lost cell phone without your cell phone telling you where it is. It can’t do that if it doesn’t have any way to send its coordinates out over a wireless network.

I would even recommend getting a pretty robust data plan because of all the fun and interesting apps that it will let you experiment with. For example, cell phones are great for a variety of fitness activities A lot of people take their phone with them anyway when they run for safety purposes, listen to music, or make phone calls.  Why not also use it to track your runs? There a ton of apps out there that track distance, average speed and time spent running.  Most even use websites that let you share workouts with friends or stay accountable to an online community. (Check out review of Endomondo for just one app in this market.)

This is just one additional application.  There are many more, from social apps to navigation apps, that can leverage the power of GPS to make life easier, more interesting or just plain fun.

Related articles:

How To Use GPS Real Time Tracking Effectively

Here is a quick little story ripped from the headlines about the effective use of GPS real time tracking:

According to reports coming out of Boston, police recently made use of GPS real time tracking system to seize 360 pounds of marijuana and to make 3 arrests.

Upon executing a search warrant at a certain location, the police found a crate containing the illegal substance. After a brief field test that verified the contents of the crate, they were then able to get a second search warrant that allowed them to place a special GPS real time tracking device that allowed them to follow the crate to a new location.

The three suspects in the case were also observed trying to move the crate by loading it into a van. It was at this time that DEA agents made a move and captured them.

According to DEA estimates, the 360 pounds of marijuana would have had a street value of around $700,000.

There are a few different interesting aspects of this example that I thought were worthy of note. The first is that the police obtained a warrant to install the real time tracking device inside the crate. We have seen in two different cases where the use of GPS tracking has come under direct attack in the court system. Earlier this year, a Wisconsin court ruled that warrantless GPS tracking is legal. Then a few months later, a New York court ruled that warrantedless GPS tracking is illegal. It is no wonder that the police in this case wanted to play it safe and get a warrant before installing any GPS device.

It is also rather interesting the speed with which the police were able to get a warrant. I don’t have a time line sitting in front of me, but it sure sounds like the police were able to get what they needed in just an hour or so after discovering the illegal drugs. That is pretty fast, but is probably related to the fact that they verified that the substance in question was actually something that is illegal to posses.

The second important thing is the the police actually chose a GPS real time tracking system for this particular situation. When you want to track something that you want to take action on, like a fleet vehicle or a teen driver or a distressed spouse, then you need to have some real time information in order to take action on. Sometimes data logging GPS trackers will simply not cut it and you need something that is going to give you on demand information. The police realized this in this situation and choose an appropriate tracker. Are you doing the same for your tracking needs?

The third and final interesting thing is that the police let the criminals engage in enough activity to sufficiently incriminate themselves before swooping in for the arrest. If you are being tracked by the police with GPS then the last thing in the world you should be doing is committing a crime, but because the police were covert about they were able to install the device and catch the criminals read handed. This is important for those of use who will want to do some covert GPS vehicle tracking ourselves. Are we being wise about our device placement? Are we making sure we are in a position to take action on our real time data?

It can be a very fruitful exercise to examine the effective use of GPS tracking devices. It will help our minds better understand all of the useful applications of the great technology and examine our own practices. When we examine how we make use of GPS technology against these real life examples we are better able to see our own shortcomings and see areas for improvement. If we are using GPS real time tracking, do you think you can see any ways to improve your own use of this powerful technology?

Track Your Spouse With GPS

This is a pretty touchy topic in the world of GPS tracking. Some people think that tracking your spouse is the worst thing that you could ever do in your entire life. Others think that it is a fine thing to do given certain permissions from all parties involved. Still others feel like any form of tracking, even covert GPS tracking, is acceptable because of the agreement made by the couple in the covenant of marriage.* Our feelings about spouse GPS tracking are as varied as just about anything can be.

* Perhaps this should be added to the marriage vows: “.. in GPS tracking and out of GPS tracking …” What do you think?

Personally, I am somewhere between allowing covert GPS tracking and permission based tracking. The way I look at it is like this: When a couple gets married they are making a solemn vow to each other to be there for the other. They are committing to be together with their spouse until they die, no matter what types of circumstances come their way. We say “for richer or for poorer” and “in sick and in health” among many other vows and promises. What we do in this is make declarations that I will be married to you and provide for you and protect you no matter what comes our way – whether poverty or riches, sicknesses or good health. Marriage is for a lifetime.

As such, there is a great degree of responsibility between spouses to be faithful and serious about their marriage relationship. You should try and make things work as best as you possibly can. All of your effort should be on working with your husband or wife on growing deeper in love and in building your trust and respect for each other. You should work tirelessly on making the other happy.

But there are some instances where husbands and wives violate the bond of marriage by being unfaithful to their spouse. They hide the unfaithfulness and keep it a secret from their spouse. This is to be expected, but I think it is the right of the cheated upon to find out the truth. In such cases I think that GPS tracking is completely within the rights of the spouse who is being cheated on in order to find out the truth about their spouse’s activities. It should not be used to stalk, or hunt, or harass. Only to find out the truth.

With that said, I also think that spouses should be up front about this type of thing with each other. Going into marriage they should make an agreement with one another that if ever the other in the relationship expects some form of infidelity then they have the right to do some covert GPS tracking.

In most normal circumstances I do think that most couples should adhere to the “mutually agreed upon” principle of spouse GPS tracking. This just makes a lot of sense to me and my understanding of how marriage should operate. Aside from suspected cheating, a spouse should never track their other just because they want to. This would be a violation of trust and the promises made to the other at the altar.

With all that said, there are a lot of cool things that couples can do if they decide to use GPS tracking together. Here is just a smattering:

Create An Environment of Safety
When you are separated from your spouse, GPS tracking is a great way to stay connected and help them feel safe. If they know where you are at any given moment they can provide a lot of support for you. If you get attacked, they can come to your assistance. If you get injured, they can find you without having to call you and have you give them directions. Also, if a natural disaster were to separate you from each other all you would need to do would be to check on their location via the GPS tracker that you have on them and you can find out exactly where they are and be reunited with them. GPS makes a ton of situations easier to cope with.

Be Able To Give Great Directions and Assistance
One situation that often occurs is getting lost. We find our self in a new place and our bearings get a little off. All of a sudden we find that we are in a neighbor we have never seen and don’t know how to get out. It might be late at night and we may be feeling our heart rate rise as we drive around looking for some type of help. Instead of having to spend hours working out of this situation all we need to do is call our spouse. They can find out our exact GPS location and plug that into a mapping software like GoogleMaps. They then could give us turn by turn directions on our way home and out of our scary predicament.

Wouldn’t that be neat?

Get Fit Together
One of the most common things that spouses try and do together is get fit. GPS tracking can help spouses keep each other accountable even if they don’t have a schedule that lets them workout together. Just do your daily run, hike, or bike with your GPS tracking device and some free GPS fitness software and you can have a detailed log of your spouses fitness activity. If you go all out and buy a device like a GPS running watch it will let you even share your workouts between devices. If you want to keep pace with each other and you own a GPS watch like the Garmin Forerunner 405 then you can use the virtual partner feature on this device and even “race” against your spouse’s recorded time!

Spouse GPS Tracking Devices

Probably the best way for spouses to track each other with GPS is through the cell phone. There are dozens of free cell phone tracking applications out on the market that will make your tracking very cheap if not entirely free. While these cell phone programs do require a GPS enabled cell phone and a pretty big data plan if you want to have continuous real time tracking, they do provide stellar results given the price for the software (free!). If you don’t already have a GPS cell phone and you don’t have a data plan, it is still probably the cheapest form of GPS tracking out there right now. You can see our list of free GPS tracking software and cell phone applications for more information and phone compatibility.

If you don’t want to go with a cell phone to track your spouse with GPS there are stand alone device that you can use, but these are often much more expensive and simply not as useful as a cell phone. They might be necessary if you want to do covert GPS tracking on your spouse, but most people aren’t going to need to tracking their spouses in this way.

GPS Antenna Improve GPS Tracker Performance

Every GPS device that you buy today already has a GPS antenna in it. These antenna help your GPS receiver pick up the signals being sent out by the Global Positioning Satellites, giving your navigation or GPS tracking device more accurate information to make their position calculation with. In some circumstances, GPS devices can benefit from having an external GPS antenna in addition to the one already included in the device. As far as I am aware, there are three main type of external antenna to choose from. They are active, passive, and reradiating antenna.

Active GPS antenna
An antenna is consider active when it uses something that is called a Low Noise Amplifier (LNA). LNA is useful because it can help an antenna capture very weak signals by giving them a “boost” in sending them along to your GPS receiver. There are a couple different ways to visualize how this works, but I think that this one might work for a lot of people:

Imagine for a second that the signals sent from GPS satellites are messages in a bottle that get dropped into a very large swimming pool. In the pool is a man sitting in the shallow end who is there to collect these messages and read them aloud. This man represents your GPS device (navigation or tracking). Strong GPS signals are represented by bottles that get dropped within arms reach of the man – they are easily read by him. Weak signals are dropped off into the deep end and almost never make their way to the man in the shallow end of the pool. They are lost.

Now we need to add the active GPS antenna to our analogy. For this, lets imagine a wave machine represents what an active, LNA antenna does to those weak signals that get dropped in the deep end. Through the sheer force of wave power, the LNA antenna pushes the weaker signals along toward the GPS so that it can gather up the information contained within the bottles.

While this is just an analogy, it might really help some people understand just how an active GPS antenna works. It will also help illustrate the fact that this type of antenna also requires some power to work properly. You need some power to move the signal along the antenna just like you need some power (in the form of waves) to move the bottles from the deep end to the shallow end.

As you can imagine, having to use power to work properly can have some downsides if battery life is a concern for you. There is no use in having a stronger signal if your device has been drained of all its power by your antenna. However, if your device is plugged into your car or some other power supply that is essentially limitless, having this type of antenna can really help improve your signal strength and the accuracy of your GPS device.

Passive GPS antenna
This type of antenna, on the other hand, does not carry an active charge and does not require any power to improve your GPS’ performance. The improvement that can be provided by passive GPS antenna is significantly less than that provided by an LNA GPS antenna. The main reason for this is that the length of the antenna is shortened by the absence of power since there is no “wave” to push the signals gathered at the end of the antenna toward the device.

To continue the use of our analogy, you still have all the pool stuff from above but instead of having a wave machine the deep end (the active GPS antenna) you have the man in the shallow end using a pool cleaning net to pick up bottles (GPS signals) that are just outside of his reach. So he can gather up more signals than before, but he just can’t get all the ones that he might with an LNA antenna.

Reradiating GPS Antenna
These differ from both the active and passive versions in that they make use of two different antenna in order to give the GPS receiver and extra boost. Also, a reradiating GPS antenna is good for those devices that do not have an input to plug in an external antenna. The way that these antenna work is that they collect the GPS signals at one point and then transmit the information to any GPS device within a certain radius of the it. It is this process of rebroadcasting the signals that the antenna receives that puts the ‘re’ in reradiate.

If we stick with our pool analogy we could see a reradiating GPS antenna as a little helper who is treading water in the deep end. As the message bottles land around them they place them inside a floating basket, which they push toward the man in the shallow end.

Like the active antenna, the reradiating antenna is going to need some type of power supply in order to rebroadcast the signals that it receives. They are also pretty hard to find, but there are a few different guides on how to build your own if you have some time and electric know how. Here is one that is for a portable GPS from Garmin called the eTrex: http://www.gartrip.de/antenna.htm

GPS Antenna and GPS Tracking

There is obvious applications for the use of GPS antenna in GPS trackers of all varieties. Fleet tracking could make use of these antenna to improve GPS signal strength in lots of different circumstances. If your fleet is often traveling off road in thick forests or among the urban canyons created by sky scrappers then you could use an antenna for your fleet to ensure a strong, consistent signal. You could probably employ any one of the three varieties mentioned above (active, passive, reradiating) and be perfectly fine. I would generally recommend getting an active or reradiating antenna and hard wire them to the vehicle so that they would have ample power supply and get a good boost to GPS signal

You could also use these in GPS car tracking as well. Again, all three types of external GPS antennas could be used. If you are not comfortable hard wiring the antenna to a power supply yourself, I would probably go with a passive antenna so you don’t have to worry about it. And depending what you are using this GPS car tracking for (monitor a teen driver, improve your driving habits, or as a safety feature on your vehicle) this type of antenna should do just fine.

One final note, the GPS receivers of today generally don’t need much modification to get a great position fix. More advanced GPS chips combined with the advent of A-GPS has made the use of GPS antenna relatively unnecessary. But if you still suffer from weak signal in some of the places you drive or you require very accurate GPS locations then you still might want to consider purchasing a GPS antenna for your GPS tracker or navigation device.

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.

The Best GPS Running Watches

GPS is infiltrating all sorts of markets that it wouldn’t normally be thought of as penetrating. Over the past several years we have seen several fitness GPS tracking solutions come to the forefront – ranging from GPS running watches, to bike GPS, to kayak GPS, to hiking GPS. All these have improving fitness as their goal and creating a unique training experience that generates great results for those using these devices.

While GPS tracking watches are only one expression of this phenomena, it is by far the most popular. As such, let us examine what are some of the best watches that feature GPS for fitness are:

The Garmin Forerunners: Best GPS Running Watches On The Market

Probably the best GPS running watch out on the market right now is the Garmin Forerunner 405. It is just a beast when it comes to giving runners of all skill levels exactly what they want in a watch.

Probably the first thing that you are going to notice about this watch is that it doesn’t even look like a GPS watch. Instead of being bulky and ugly, you find that the Forerunner 405 has a sleek and stylish design. Heck, you could even wear this watch like it was a regular wrist watch. While the battery might not work like a regular watch (it has a printed battery life of 8 hours with GPS enabled and 2 weeks in power save mode), it certainly looks like it could be one.

Once you get past the design of this running watch you are going to notice what a powerful training aid this watch is. With such features as Virtual Partner, which lets you race against a saved run that you or a friend recorded on a Garmin Forerunner 405, you get superior training aides that will help you push yourself to the next level of fitness.

Some models, like the one featured above, also have a heart rate monitor which will allow you to get a perfect picture of the areas of your workout that really push you the hardest. While there are some good techniques that you can use to approximate your heart rate without a monitor, there is just no substitute for getting the cold, hard data yourself with a monitor strapped to your chest. Some people find these devices cumbersome, especially women, but you quickly get used to them – especially when you realize how useful the information they provide is.

After you have trained, the Forerunner 405 also excels at letting you download your information to your computer. You no longer have to fumble for certain wires to hook up your GPS running watch to your computer because the 405 transmits the information from your watch to your computer wirelessly. All you have to do is bring the watch into proximity of your personal computer and you will automatically being downloading your latest workout onto your computer for Garmin’s GPS tracking software to begin its work on analyzing your data.

If you are someone that balks at the price of the Garmin Forerunner 405 you might want to consider the Garmin Forerunner 305. This is one generation behind the 405 and suffers from some of the drawbacks that the 405 was made to avoid. These include a bulky design and having to plug your watch into a computer in order to download a training session to Garmin’s awesome fitness tracking software.

However, it does beat the 405 out in some respects. One is that if you ever want to use the 305 for geocaching you can because it has a mode where your current GPS coordinates are displayed. The Forerunner 405 has no such display feature and therefore cannot be used in this function. Another benefit that some people will see with the 305 is that it makes use of the traditional button system. The Forerunner 405 uses a bezel system that allows you to quickly and simply access information from your watch on the go, but this system can be annoying to some individuals who find the touch bezel too sensitive. They gladly downgrade to the cheaper Garmin Forerunner 305 just for the buttons alone.

Timex GPS Running Watches

After Garmin, the next big player in the running watch market it definitely Timex. These watches differ from those produced by Garmin in that they usually do not feature GPS built in to the watch itself. Instead, they utilize a foot pod or some other type of GPS receiver that communicates GPS coordinates to the watch. While this generally means that the Timex watches have been much sleeker than the Garmin Forerunners in general, it also makes them a little less usable in my opinion.

Probably the best Timex GPS running watch out there right now is the Timex Ironman. It has a lot of feature that are pretty comparable to those provide by the Garmin Forerunners. Like the 305, the Timex Ironman can display your GPS coordinates for use in geocaching and other GPS related hobbies.

As far as being a great running watch with GPS, the Timex Ironman lets runners know a lot about their fitness activities. One feature that is particularly helpful is that you can set target heart rate zones that you want to train in. Once you has set this up, you can find out how long you spent in that target heart rate zone, how quickly your heart rate recovered after training, and what your average heart rate was during your run.

This Timex GPS running watch also has a 100 hour chronograph, 100 lap memory, 100 hour countdown timer, and a few different alarms to keep you abreast of your goals. It even sports an impressive battery life of 2 years, which is about 2000 times longer than the Forerunner 405! (But these numbers are just for the watch itself and not the GPS pod that comes with the watch).

The Bottom Line About The Best GPS Running Watches

The best running watch GPS is going to be the one that fits your needs and best matches what your personal fitness and training goals are. There are even more GPS running watches to consider, but we have chosen to just include these two for brevity’s sake. I hope that you find the GPS running watch that will fit your the best.

How To Evaluate a GPS Tracking Device

There is a sea of choices when it comes to GPS tracking devices today.  You have a wide range of tracking manufacturers to choose from as well as a great many providers to sift through in your search for the tracking system that is best going to fit your particular needs. This task can seem a little daunting to someone just starting out in the world of GPS powered tracking, but if you let a few controlling principles guide you in your decisions then you should be able to easily navigate this sea until you have found port with GPS tracking system that works out best for you and your needs.

One of the main problems that people suffer from is an abundance of choice. While we think we like to keep our options open, the human mind can only filter and process so much information at any given time. If we simply stare at the 20-50 different GPS tracking devices that exist on the market then we are going to get nowhere fast. We will despair of finding a device and either choose a suboptimal tracker or not even make a purchase all together. I hope that was follows is a series of useful filters through which you can sift through the many choices available to you in your quest to evaluate the GPS tracking device that is best for you:

Determine if you need real time tracking or if you are content with data logging. This is mainly going to depend on the type of tracking that you want your device to do for you and will generally be a very person specific question. Some applications just do better with a real time tracker while others do just fine with a data logger. I like to think of it this way, if you need to know information as it happens then you will want a real time tracking device. If you are fine with figuring out where something has been after the fact, then a data logger is going to meet your needs just fine. Fortunately, there are personal GPS tracking devices that fall into both camps. It is also often the case that a tracking provider will provide both data logging and real time devices for their customers to purchase.

Choose a tracking device with the appropriate battery life.  After deciding which style of tracker you are purchasing it is time to begin considering the battery life of your device. As I am sure we all know, most electronic devices are limited by their power supply or battery life. If they have week batteries then it doesn’t matter how great the device is, we simply can’t use it for that long or else the battery will run out. If we had to speak in general terms, most data loggers will have a longer battery life than a real time GPS tracking device. This is mainly because real time trackers have to communicate their information via a cell phone modem which is an extra drain on the device’s power supply. Some real time trackers overcome this problem by hardwiring the device to a power supply. This is particularly common in GPS vehicle tracking devices that are used in commercial applications. While this is also possible for other uses, like tracking a teen’s car or possibly even tracking, it is most often used for fleet vehicle tracking.

Choose a a GPS tracking device that is going to be the appropriate size for your proposed tracking purpose. If you are planning on doing any sort of covert GPS vehicle tracking then you really need to think about the size of the device. Something that is small and easily attached to or hidden under your target is a top priority since covert tracking only really works as long as it goes undetected. Once the target has found the device they will be able to remove it or change their behavior, resulting in skewed results. Generally speaking, you are going to want a portable GPS tracking device. This will allow you to move it various locations as the need arises and even track multiple targets over a short period of time. If the device is not portable then will lose some of the tracking flexibility that you might be looking for.

Find out if the GPS tracking software run by your company is going to meet your needs. As you might suspect, there is a host of different GPS tracking software packages that really cater to different tracking functions. For example, a child GPS tracking device is not going to have the same user interface or software package as a GPS car tracking device. They are used for completely different purposes by different types of people. They most certainly gather their information the same way (via GPS satellites and a process called trilateration), but what they do with this information and how they present it to their customers can sometimes be radically different.

The reasons for this are pretty obvious. The information a parent might want to gather from their child GPS tracking device is going to center around the location of their child. Have they stayed within their specified GeoFence? Where were they at 3:30 PM today when they were supposed to be home from school? Did they get to soccer practice on time? These are the types of questions that a parent is going to want to know and this is the information that GPS trackign software geared for child tracking devices is going to be able to provide.

Similarly, GPS car tracking devices have their own set of metrics that need to be reported and they will have software that provides that to end users. Things like vehicle speed, lane position, and past locations are all wanted by car tracking users.  This is obviously different information than what the child tracking folks want and will therefore result in a different type of tracking software.

Even among different providers of the same type of tracking service you will get different GPS tracking software packages and features. Be sure to check out screen shots of the tracking system and see if they have a live demo for you to explore. There is nothing more important than getting a hands on feel for how the software will actually work and how you will interact with the information that your device will communicate.

Finally, consider all the costs involved with your new purchase. Real time tracking devices generally cost more up front and have a reoccurring subscription that you have to maintain if you are going to continue to use the device. This subscription generally costs just as much as a cell phone plan (around $40) if you want to have true real time tracking. Data loggers, on the other hand, do not really have any reoccurring costs and they generally are significantly cheaper than real time trackers. While they don’t have a lot of the same cool features that a real time GPS tracking device might have, they are just as accurate and just as useful for certain tracking applications.

    In the final analysis, choosing the right GPS tracking device for you is going to be very situational. What might work for one person is not going to work for another. But if you follow these simple steps and use them as a framework through which to evaluate your GPS tracking purchase you should come out on the other side with a useful tracking device that fits your particular need for that particular situation.

    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.