One of the best devices on the market right now for child tracking is the Amber Alert GPS. It is a small GPS tracking device than can provide real time updates on your child’s location and help you answer that all important question: where is my child?
With the Amber Alert GPS you get a very powerful GPS tracking device in a nice, compact package. Coming in at 1.77″ x 1.68″ x .78″ this is one of the smaller tracking devices on the market. You can easily conceal this in your child’s pocket, coat, or backpack without it being annoying to the child or easily detectable by someone seeking to do your child harm.
Even though the device is small, it does not loose any of the functionality that parents are going to be looking for in a safety GPS for their child. The position information is accurate and the number of ways that a parent can access this information is impressive. The following are all ways that parents can be alerted about the position of their child:
- The call or text the Amber Alert GPS to ask for a position update. If you have a web enabled phone you can see their position on a map right on your phone.
- View a map of their location online in real time whenever you want to get an update.
- If your child presses their SOS button you messages can be sent out to 5 phone numbers or emails, meaning that you and your spouse can be notified of the SOS on your phones and your email – this is a great feature for working parents who have to juggle different phone and email accounts.
- If your child goes outside a predetermined GeoFence then you will be alerted of this movement via text message or email.
- Be notified if your child starts moving faster than a predetermined speed that you set up. This can be good for child safety, but is particularly helpful in tracking teen drivers and monitoring their driving behavior.
- And finally, if the temperature exceeds or drops below a certain threshold there is also an alert that is sent out to you. This alert can be modified and is useful for ensuring that your child is safe and comfortable.
In addition to all the location feature there are two additional features worth mentioning. The first is the SOS button. This button, as you might have implied from the bullet points above, will send out a message containing your child’s location when they press this button. These messages will continue to appear every 5 minutes, giving you a fresh update of your child’s location. This is obviously huge. If your child had to press the button because they were being taken by a stranger then having their position delivered to you every 5 minutes will help you and the police locate your child extremely quickly. Even if they are not taken, but only injured or scared, it is really nice to be able to get to them quickly if they are on the move without having to call the device to see where they are at.
The second important feature is something that the Amber Alert folks call “monitoring.” This is a feature controlled by the parent that lets them listen in on what is going on around the child. Again, this is a huge feature when something is going down with your child and they have pressed the SOS button. If they are under attack you can hear the voice of the attacker or you can hear that your child is handling the situation appropriately and getting the help that they need. Monitoring equips you with the knowledge that you need to make an informed decision about your child’s safety.
With all these positives about this child tracking device we have to talk about some of the negatives associated with it as well. The first is a fairly short battery life. This device can hold a charge between 18 and 24 hours. While this is plenty of time in most circumstance, it can be a hassle to switch batteries every day to ensure your child has full power for the next time they are separated from you.
But to be honest, this power issue is entirely expected. When you have a device that is as small and concealable as the Amber Alert GPS and allows you to get real time tracking information you are pretty much guaranteed that the battery life is going to be relatively brief. The technology just isn’t there right now.
If you decide to purchase the Amber Alert GPS you are going to be getting one of the best products on the market for child tracking. The device is not cheap, but you really do get a lot for the money that you pay.
How small can a chip be, and have the same effect?
Hi Cindy,
I think chips can be extremely small, as seen in this post: Small GPS Tracking Chips. That is really, really small. The problem with most GPS tracking devices is not the size of the chip, but all the other stuff that has to go with it in order to make it work right. The phone modem, power supply, and antenna all take up space and make the devices much larger than a simple chip would indicate. Really small chips are useful for making devices smaller, but until advances in power supply size are made there will always be a size issue for these devices.
-Joe