Tag: gps tracking for kids

Small GPS Tracking Chips

I know this may be old news to some of the GPS enthusiasts of the world, but there is this company from New Zealand that is making some really ridiculously small GPS tracking chips – and I mean ridiculously small.  The company’s name is Rakon, and they make GPS chips for all sorts of things, but most of their chips are geared toward GPS cell phone market.  The fact that these chips are so small is important for all those in the GPS tracking community for several different reasons, the least of which is that small GPS chips are freakin’ cool.  The others mainly have to do with the future of GPS tracking.

But before we get into all the cool future stuff, let’s understand a little bit about the GPS chips that Rankon is putting out there.  These are powerful chips that function at some of the highest levels in the consumer grade GPS tracking products.  They do an excellent job at handling weak signal and dynamic environments, enabling maximum GPS performance when you need it most.  Their chips work indoor and outdoors, under tree canopies or in canyons, on country roads or beneath sky scrappers.  And the best part about these chips is that they are really small.  One GPS chip comes in at 2.5 mm x 2.0 mm – yeah, that is right, millimeters.  That is 0.09843 inches x 0.07874 inches for all those who live in countries that still use the backword inefficient imperial system.

Freakishly Small GPS Tracking ChipNeedless to say, when a cell phone company wants a small GPS tracking chip to install in their cell phone they are going to consider the folks at Rankon.

But it is pretty obvious that people who want to create GPS tracking cell phones are going to look for a small GPS chip. They want to conserve space inside their phone so that they can make is as slim and sleek as possible. Consumers want something that is going to be easy to use – meaning that it is lightweight but sturdy, small but not too small, powerful but not power hungry, and full of features (like GPS navigation and GPS tracking) but not too hard to use – and by giving them a small chip to use in the phone a company like Rankon is empowering phone creators to dream big with their phone designs.

This is the cool factor of this technology right now, but there is a lot of potential upside to having really small GPS chips for the future. One is that this technology can be used to help people keep track of their pets. Small GPS tracking chips for dogs could be implanted somewhere under the skin on the back of the dog and if coupled with the right technology this could provide real time GPS tracking of the pet’s whereabouts on a 24/7 basis.

The extra technology that you would need to generate to make something like this isn’t too hard to dream up. You would just need an ability to communicate wirelessly with a cell phone tower. This is technology that is already being made smaller and smaller. Today there are watches, which are much smaller than cell phones, that have the ability to make phone calls over the wireless networks that dot the countrysides of the world. I can only see this technology getting smaller and smaller too until one day it fits within a 2.5 mm x 2 mm space.

The next technology that would be needed will be some sort of power supply that is renewable and persistent. That way the small GPS tracking chip and the cell phone transmission component could be in constant use – giving it its 24/7 real time tracking capabilities. For this, I can think of two solutions. The first is to make this power source solar – so during the day the device works off the sun and then during the night is runs off stored power from during the day. This is probably a less than ideal solution since batteries never seem to have an infinite life cycle – heck, some batteries can’t even last a few months let alone 10-14 years that a dog is alive. The second solution is much better but much harder as far as I know – it is to harness the heat produced by the dog and use it to power the two devices.

This would be an incredible solution and would allow for tracking of all sorts of animal life. You could use it in a dog, but you could also tag all warm blooded animals with this type of GPS tracking chip and cell phone device combination in order to get huge amounts of position information for use in scientific research. Our ability to understand the movements of our companions here on this earth would grow at an incredibly pace.

This type of technology would also make these GPS tracking chips for children too. In fact, it would probably enable a future society to be able to know the exact location of every person in the world at the exact same time! If I wanted to get all 1984-esque, if there was a small microphone on the cell phone component then you would know where everyone in the world was and what they were talking about at any given moment. Now that would be something.

So in one way it is really cool that GPS tracking chips keep getting smaller and smaller, but in another way it is really creepy and a little unnerving. I know that technology is essentially amoral, but people sure as hell aren’t and I would hate to see what people would end up doing with this type of GPS tracking.

Cell Phone GPS Tracking

Cell phone GPS tracking is a little tricky to talk about because mobile phones have GPS-like capabilities without having to be GPS devices.  So, in some cases, a cell phone is able to be tracked even when it doesn’t have a GPS receiver installed in it.  The reason behind this is rather simple and has everything to do with a principle I have already covered on this site: trilateration.

Once you understand the basics behind this principle you will see that is is obvious that a cell phone could be tracked whether or not it was GPS enable.  Simply put, trilateration takes the know distance of an entity from 3 or more objects to calculate the exact location of that entity.  I know, that sounds confusing – but it really isn’t.

Imagine that you are sitting somewhere in a room.  The room is a 10×10 square and you are somewhere in it and you want to find out exactly where you are in the room.  There is a desk in the middle of one of the walls that you are 5 feet from.  On the exact opposite wall there is another table in the middle of the wall that you are exactly 5 feet from as well.  Then there is a mirror on the third wall that you are looking at yourself from 5 feet away.  Where are you in the room?

If you answered, “In the center.”  Then you already know everything you need about trilateration to completely understand how a cell phone can work without actually having a GPS tracking device installed in it.

Let’s use the example of the two table and the mirrors from above to help us understand this.  The tables and the mirrors here represent cell phone towers that are dotted across urban landscapes all over the country.  In my city, they are dressed up to look like palm trees or other pleasant things but you still know what it is, a cell tower.

These cell towers transmit cellular signals out to mobile phones.  The signals travel at a constant speed which makes finding out the distance between cell phones and cell towers very easy.  All one must do is record the amount of time it takes between the time that the signal was transmitted by the tower and when it arrived at the cell phone.  You then take the time that it took and multiply it by the speed at which the signal traveled.  This looks something like this:

Distance Traveled = Speed x Time

This will give you the cell phone’s distance from the cell tower.  Since the cell phone provider (a cell phone provider is a company like Nextel, AT&T, Verizon, TMobile, etc.) knows exactly where they cell tower is, they know that the cell phone is within x number of feet from that tower.  Imagine a big circle surrounding the cell tower in the map in your mind.

Now imagine a second cell tower that also transmits a signal that is picked up by the cell phone.  This is a certain distance from this second cell tower so imagine another circle around this second tower.  Where the two circles intersect are the potential locations of the cell phone as far as the cell phone provider is concerned.

Once you add a third tower in the mix you should have a pretty darn good fix on the location of the cell phone – all without the use of GPS tracking devices.

It is important to understand that this is also exactly how GPS works, but instead of cellular towers on the urban landscape you have satellites in the heavenly firmament  and instead of circles you have spheres around each satellite.  This is pretty amazing stuff if you ask me.

Now that we have learned that cell phones can have GPS tracking without actually having a GPS device installed in it, let’s take a look at what can be done with GPS cell phone tracking.

There are several different applications that should be considered, but we will only take a look at three to give us a flavor of just how awesome this type of technology can be.  Cellphone GPS tracking can be used for navigation purposes, to monitor a loved ones activity, and to learn useful things about your current location.

Cell Phone Tracking and Navigation

There is little doubt that the use of GPS for navigation purposes is a huge industry.  That was, after all, one of the initial impetus behind the Department of Defense creating the satellite system.  They wanted a way to know where they assets were but they also wanted to us it to tell where there assets were going.

GPS navigation has become the norm in many families across America with Garmins or TomToms or Magellans replacing the friendly AAA triptiks of two decades ago.  I still remember as a child going into the AAA office with my mother to get a triptik ready for a family vacation.  Now, you just enter your trip into the GPS and it does all the routing for you.

Cell phone companies realized that this was a huge market and that their technology could easily break into it.  They could either us GPS technology to do the mapping just like a Garmin can, or they could leverage the cellular signals they were already broadcasting to create new navigation systems.  Some companies decided to go with GPS and other stuck with the cell signal.

Either way you look at, cell phones now use GPS or a GPS-like technology to give turn-by-turn directions to drivers all over the country.  While this isn’t GPS tracking as most would think of it, it still is using a cellular phone to track and record position information.  It can tell people how to fast you are traveling, an ETA (estimated time of arrival), and it can actively tell you your current location.  This is GPS tracking if you ask me.

As we will see this information can be used for other purposes other than navigation.

Cell Phone GPS Tracking And Location Monitoring

Location monitoring is another useful application of GPS in cell phones.  Unlike the type of tracking that goes on for navigation purposes, the information used to track the location of a cell phone is actually transmitted from the cell phone back to the cell company.  This process is often referred to as “tracing a cell phone.”

We hear about it all the time if we watch any crime show drama.  They are always putting “a trace on the cell phone” or “triangulating the cell’s position” – especially when a kidnapper or other bad person decides to call up our favorite detectives for a to have a chat.  Essentially what is happening in these instances is that a third party, in the case the police, are using information gathered by a cell phone provider to find the location of a caller.

The police obviously find this information particularly useful, especially when responding to a 911 call made from a cell phone.  But there are other interesting applications for this as well.  One of them is to GPS track a teen in order to monitor their driving habits or to make sure that they are not lying to you about where they are. All teens use cell phones these days so this service is relatively painless for you and for them.  It is also relatively cheap and can be as little as $6 a month for 4 phones.

Another application of cell phone tracking is for getting fitness performance metrics.  Just take your phone with you on a run or bike ride when you have a certain application installed and you will automatically get information like the average speed of your run and the distance traveled.  You will even be able to see your entire course on a mapping application like Google Maps.

Another bit of information that cell phones have been regularly used to monitor is the activity of a spouse or lover suspected of cheating.  In situations where this could be going on it is imperative that the suspecting spouse snoops around the other’s activities.  This can involved GPS tracking or it can be through other methods, it just has to get done.  Cell phone GPS tracking can be a good solution for individuals that find themselves in this situation so you might want to consider using it.  It might be difficult if you have separate cell phone plans or they regularly pay the cell phone bill since any tracking charges will undoubtedly show up on your bill.  But if you are in charge of this you might be able to set up GPS tracking without them even knowing it.

Finally, cell phones can be a great way to introduce GPS into a kids life.  You could use the phone for GPS tracking for kids or you could just use it to help your child learn about the world around them.  Kids do great with mapping applications and it can really help them get a better understanding of the world around them.  They can also be used to keep kids safe in case of an emergency or other terrible occurance.

These types of location monitoring and tracking applications are going to become more prevalent over the next decade as we experiment with this relatively new technology.  It will be interesting to see how it all pans out.

GPS Tracking Cell Phones and Random Data

The last way that I wanted to talk about was the use of cell phones to communicate random data based upon the location of the user.  What I have in mind for this are apps (like those found on the iPhone) that tell you something specific that you can take action on or find interesting about your location.

If you are on a street and are feeling like Chinese food but don’t know the area you can type “Chinese” into this cell phone tracking app and it will give the location of the 5 closest Chinese restaurants along with some customer reviews and relative price points for the meals.

This idea can have many different applications in areas as diverse as real estate and movie theaters; fishing and ball room dance classes; or finding a replacement part on a car and finding a nanny.  Whatever someone is willing to write an app for the GPS tracking cell phone is going to be able to provide laser-like access to position information that can be used to make life simpler and finding the closest solution to a problem easier.

All of these applications of cell phone GPS tracking have current uses today, but can only be expected to be improved upon with time and advances in personal tracking technology.  You simply cannot underestimate the power of GPS tracking in a cell phone package – it is, in my opinion the future of all things GPS.

Free GPS Cell Phone Tracking

I have compiled a short list of free GPS tracking software and applications, with the majority of the applications working on mobile phones.  Feel free to check out this list and see if your cell phone is already compatible with one of the systems.  If it isn’t, you could always buy a new phone, right?

I also have made some comments on how free free GPS tracking really is – if you are interested in reading those as well.  To sum up I said that if you already have everything that you need (i.e. GPS smartphone and a robust data plan) then it will truly be free.  If you don’t have either of these things then getting free GPS cell phone tracking is going to be anything but free.  You will have to pay the costs associated with getting the new phone and subscribing to the data plan.

GPS Tracking For Kids

Check out one of the smallest and most powerful GPS trackers for children: AmberAlert GPS

If you have ever found yourself wishing that you knew at any moment where your child was with an accuracy of up to 3 meters, then GPS tracking for kids might be something that you want to take a look at.  GPS has been around since the 80s when it was released for public use (before the Global Positioning Satellite system had been reserved solely for the military), but has only recently been made available for use by private persons for the tracking of the people closest to them – their children.

Before GPS tracking devices were simply too bulky to be of much use on a child – they were either too heavy to be safely and continuously carried, too large to be of much use for covert, safety oriented tracking, or they were too inaccurate to be of much help to consumers or their kids.  All this has changed in the last 5-10 years as technology has become increasingly smaller and more efficient.

Let me explain this with a similar bit of technological breakthrough that we have had in the same amount of time – namely that of computer storage. 10 years ago it would have a pipe dream to have a desktop computer with 160 GB of storage space – now iPods come with that much memory.  In the same way that computer technology in general has advanced so rapidly, GPS tracking technology has made leaps and bounds as well – becoming increasingly smaller, more power, more efficient, and more accurate.

All of these changes have been good for parents looking to keep tabs on their children with a technological solution.  But this begs the question, why should any child be tracked with GPS?

Reasons to Choose GPS Tracking For Kids

As far as I can tell, there are three main reasons to use GPS tracking for your kids: safety concerns, behavior problems, and paranoia.

Safety is probably the main reason most parents are going to want to use GPS to keep tabs on their children.  They want something that will quickly and accurately locate their child at a moments notice.  Is the child supposed to be at home but hasn’t been heard from in over an hour?  Are they supposed to be at Tim’s house to hang out after school and do some homework but a call to Tim’s parents reveals that your child never arrived?  Do you worry that something could happen to your child as they wait for you after baseball practice in the park by the canyon?  If any of these situations have happened to you then you know that you wish there was some way to find out where you child is right away.  GPS tracking for kids can provide accurate and reliable information for you in a way that is actionable and useful.

Take a moment and imagine that your child did not come home on time like you were expecting, fear is gripping you as you wait by the window for their arrival.  It could be that they simply hung around too long after school playing tether ball with their friends or took too long in the park as they cut across it on their way home.  You want to find out where your daughter is right now.  You run to your computer and you log in to your child’s GPS tracking watch provider to get a look at their position.  Your heart breathes a sigh of relief as you see that they are on their way home traveling at 2 mph about 2 blocks from home – they must have lingered too long at the park.

Now imagine that same situation where you find that your child is traveling 65 mph on a major highway heading away from home?  You’d dial 911 in an instant and you could be able to give the police some seriously useful information that would likely lead to the recovery of your child – all thanks to a GPS tracking device in your child’s backpack.

Another important reason to use GPS tracking for kids in some circumstance is behavioral problems or mental disabilities.  A child that is prone to wander because they suffer from some sort of behavioral or mental disorder is someone that you want to find and find quickly.  Short trips to the supermarket, or family vacations, or even simple trips to the park can become living nightmares as you search frantically for the child that has wandered off and slipped out of your site.  Child locators, a certain type of GPS tracking device, work great in this situation where quick feedback without the use of computer is necessary.  They are not always the best solution for families since they do have some issues and cell phones are becoming internet capable in a big way – making the obstacle of internet access to use location information much smaller.

And the final reason to get a GPS device to track your child is because you are paranoid and need to find someway to calm your own fears just a little bit.  The fact is that the vast majority of children have no need for GPS tracking.  They will go through their lives and never need the safety of always having their location just a moment away from being known by their parent.  Running a little late, being alone at a park after baseball practice, and playing hooky with a friend instead of being where they are supposed to be are all  normal activities for kids to be doing at some point in their life.  You probably did the same thing and your parents didn’t need a GPS device to keep tabs on you.

However, if you are person who works in Mexico City or some other place that routinely has kidnappings then it might be a good idea to get a GPS tracking device for your children so that when Man on Fire happens to you and your family, your Denzel Washington will be able to kick the crap out of the bad kidnappers who stole your Dakota Fanning.

Now that we have established three legitimate reasons to go out and purchase some sort of GPS tracking device for your child, it  begs the question, “What devices can I get that will provide GPS tracking for kids?”

Device That Use GPS Tracking For Kids

There are three main devices that you are going to find around the web and in stores that will assist you in keeping tabs on your child: gps tracking watches, covert GPS trackers, and kids GPS phones.

GPS tracking watches are a small, reliable, and kid friendly option for parents seeking to use GPS tracking with their children.  These devices are exactly what their name sounds like – they are a GPS tracking device that fits on the wrist of your child.  There are a couple of different brands available, but none of them are household names (certainly not Garmin, TomTom, or Magellan if that is what you were hoping for – though Garmin does offer a fitness GPS watch).  Some of the watches look a little funky, but in general they do provide you with what you are expecting.

In general, a GPS watch for kids is going to look a little bulky on their wrist, have some extravagantly ugly colors, and will probably throw up warning signals to any would be villain to get rid of the watch ASAP.  These devices are probably not as easy at GPS phones to get your child to use, but being attached at the wrist may make them less likely to be randomly lost.

The next option for parents to consider is covert GPS tracking for kids.  Again, there are a variety of different implementations to consider when going the covert route.  Do I go with a GPS in the shoe, teddy bear, coat, or backpack?  Do I go with a build in device or do I find something that I sew or attach myself?  How you answer these questions will determine what product you purchase.

The amount of information that you are going to get with a more covert approach to tracking is the same as what you would find with a a tracking watch, but the idea is that these covert trackers will escape detection for a very significant period of time.  If the device is hidden well enough in a “necessary” piece of equipment or apparel then you are almost certain that you will be able to find your child in any and all circumstances.

And finally, we have kids GPS phones.  These are kids cell phones that have integrated GPS technology so that they can get an accurate read on the phones position under almost any circumstance provided that the phone is on.

This combination of cell phone and GPS technology is very powerful.  A GPS signal will be able to give position information if the phone cannot use cell towers to establish a location, and cell towers can establish a location when a direct line of site with the sky has been obstructed by a car trunk, cement wall, or mound of dirt.  The cell phones power is in its usability in almost every circumstance.

This power is also its greatest weakness when considering it as a GPS tracking device for kids.  Everyone and there mother knows that cell phones can be used to communicate position information to the authorities.  This means that it is often the first thing to go if your child is in an emergency situation.  Kids GPS cell phones must be kept quiet and used very wisely by your child if it is to be effective at recovering them from something horrible.

In most normal conditions, kids GPS phones are great because they also let you talk directly with your child.  If they are late coming home, simply call them and ask them where they are – if what they tell you is different from what you computer is saying then you can deal with your child as you see fit.  The power to do so is now in your hands.

A Final Word On GPS Tracking For Kids

One thing that I haven’t mentioned yet but is very pertinent to our discussion here is the GPS tracking for kids costs money.  You are going to have to go in up front for a tracking device (whether it is a GPS tracking watch, covert GPS tracking device, or a kids GPS phone) and you are probably going to be hit with a reoccurring service charge every month to be able to use the tracking capability on the device.  This can add up to big money for a family already strapped for cash.

My advice is to think very carefully about using GPS tracking for kids and to only use it if it makes real sense given your family’s unique set of circumstances.