Tag: gps tracker

Stay Warm and Keep Your Cold Weather GPS Tracker Powered Up

The frosty winds of winter are upon us and what could warm our hearts more than being able to recharge a GPS tracker miles from civilization while giving ourselves a nice little boost in warmth as well?

Well, that is a silly question (obviously) because there are a lot of other things that would warm our hearts much more than that.  Like puppies.  Or sitting down to a meal of Mexican food with Conan O’Brian.  Or the thought of standing way up on the observation deck of the Eiffel Tower and motioning that you want to get down by slithering down the steps like a snake.  All those might warm your heart when stranded and overtaken by the delirium of frost bite.  But if your are getting a warmed heart from one of these things you probably would have benefited from a jacket designed to keep you warm and recharge various electronic devices, including your cold weather GPS tracker.

Refugium Cold Weather JacketThe name of this magical jacket is Refugium and it is currently being sold by Mountain Hardware for $230.00 MSRP.  From what I could tell from a quick glance through the online retailers offering this product they were all selling it at a price between $229 and $230.

I have to admit that the name sounds pretty cool to me.  Refugium.  I almost immediately get the image of a wandering individual on a snow encrusted mountain surrounded by silence and the death of winter.  From the looks of things, he stands cold and alone – the enemy of a season that strips the earth bare to make it new again.

But on the inside of his protective shell the man enjoys the warmth of his man-wrought refuge.  A lightweight power source fills his Refugium with warmth derived from countless hours of ingenuity combined with the slow plodding of man into the technological age.

But not only that, his Refugium also keeps a wide variety of his personal electronic devices well charged as well.  Cell phones, MP3 players, digital cameras, and GPS tracking devices all can get some much needed energy love from this mobile power and heating system.

Woah.  Did I just lump GPS tracking devices in the same category as personal electronic devices as mobile phones, iPods, and cameras?  Does that even make any sense?

There are a few good reasons why a GPS tracking device would pair wonderfully with a jacket like this.  The most obvious reason would be that of survival.  Outdoor adventurers usually do not take a break from their adventuring just because there happens to be 4 feet of snow on the mountain.  They still want to do the next big thing.  If they are going to be out in the wilderness for prolonged periods of time chances are they are going to take a GPS tracking device with them, especially if they have friends and family who are concerned for their safety.

And if they are using a tracker it is probably going to be a satellite GPS tracking device since this type of tracker does not rely on a cell phone network to get its location information out to friends and family.  After all, there is not very much cell phone coverage on Mount Whitney, Mount St. Helens, or Mount Everest.  But there is access to the sky, which is home to the satellites used in the GPS system and the commercial communication satellites used  by such tackers as the SPOT GPS tracking device.  If you are a serious outdoorsman whose adventuring takes you far and afield from the hard crust of civilization then a safety device like a satellite tracker is going to be one of your best friends in the event of an emergency.

It might work something this.  An adventurer is out in the midst of the beauty of nature when a storm suddenly approaches.  He is still on the face of the mountain, exposed to the storm as he traverses a particularly treacherous portion of his journey.  The driving snow causes his dangerous journey to become downright perilous as the cold weather begins to attack his footing and the sensation in his extremities.  Blinded by the sheet of white falling steadily, our adventurer misses his next step, falls, and badly injures himself.  After a brief effort to try and find a safe haven to weather out the storm our adventurer resigns himself to endure the rest of the storm in the open and activates his cold weather GPS tracker in the hope that the signal is going to break through the terrible storm that is surrounding him and allow him to contact some rescue personell.  He really does not feel like he had much time since he can feel the warm liquid of his life blood running down his leg.

Unfortunately, the storm is interfering with his GPS’ ability to get a signal from the Global Positioning Satellites as well as the commercial communication satellites that his GPS uses to find its location and to communicate with the authorities.  After a few hours trying to find a trace on his position, the adventurers’ cold weather GPS tracker is beginning to get dangerously low on power.  If his device looses power then it is all over for him as he slowly bleeds to death on the mountain.

Luckily, this is not the end for our GPS adventurer.  He is wearing this Refugium cold weather jacket with its portable power supply.  He docks his GPS into the power supply port and is able to get a few more hours out of his GPS tracking device.  This is just enough time for the storm to dissipate enough for his SPOT GPS tracker to get a strong enough signal to find its location in the world and to make contact with a communications satellite.  The authorities are notified and within a few more hours our adventurer is rescued.

While this is kind of an extreme example, I think it does make the principle extremely clear about how a jacket like this could be used to make GPS tracking last longer in the coldest and harshest of conditions.  It also exmplifies why it might be a better idea for individuals using such a jacket system as they engage in dangerous activities to forgo using it on frivolous items like cell phones (which do will not work in remote areas), iPods, or digital cameras and to instead use it to keep their cold weather GPS tracker alive and active.

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.