Wanted: Intro to real-time vehicle tracking

volga21

I'm based in Azerbaijan and am interested to understand how vehicle tracking systems might work in our circumstances. I work in a head office but we have several remote sites around 4-500km away. I'm interested in tracking:
- road vehicles moving at "normal" speeds between sites
- heavy equipment (bulldozers etc) moving slowly and relatively short distances on a local site, typically off-road.

We have local mobile phone services including GPRS. GPS-based maps of Azerbaijan are not good but we have access to Google maps. We might also have the capability (but not the knowledge) to develop our own electronic maps in the region of our main locations and sites as we do some other GIS-type work.

What I'm hoping for is a cost-effective solution that enables us to record and look up a GPS track log for a vehicle on a head-office computer - so, for example, I can log on at lunchtime and see where a vehicle has been during the morning, or the previous day. I know there are subscription services that do that in developed markets like UK/US, but don't know how it could work in Azerbaijan - we don't really want to be using international SMS messaging for this!

I understand that we'd need some sort of AVL in each vehicle, which can send its data by SMS and/or GPRS - thse seem to be around US$300 each (or GBP300 in UK). What I don't understand is what we need to be able to access the data in a usable format in the office.

Thanks
Phil

Darren · Posted: Thu Mar 12, 2009 2:19 pm Post subject:

There are quite a few solutions that would meet your needs. Aside from a GPRS or SMS link this one comes with desktop software that overlays the position on a Google Map.

You can monitor and track multiple devices as well.

See here.
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Darren Griffin

Tim Buxton · Posted: Thu Mar 12, 2009 4:10 pm Post subject:

I have one of these and I think it's great. It could be an option for you, but obviously you'd need to check that there is a suitable GPRS carrier in Azerbaijan.
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Tim

volga21 · Posted: Mon Mar 16, 2009 3:42 pm Post subject:

Many thanks for responses.

One of the things I don't understand is how much data (if any) these devices store between the times that they contact (or are contacted by) their base. Perhaps that's also connected to when you use SMS vs. GPRS. (We have a GPRS carrier in Azerbaijan).

I imagine that our head office would establish one mobile number to contact any/all GPS trackers and we'd use the GSM modem connected to a computer (not a smartphone/PDA) to achieve a GPRS connection with the tracker(?). I guess a GPRS connection will give us actual, real-time tracking when we happen to dial the tracker. But what happens in-between times? Does the tracker store data points and send them as soon as there is a GPRS connection, or does it just send SMS messages to the base phone every x seconds without storing any data?

And if the base phone receives a huge number of SMS messages every day, does the software read all those messages and extract them into a database capable of showing the track log?

I'm working on the assumption that our vehicles do not come back to base, so anything with rechargeable batteries won't work (for long). With the TR-151 I guess we could hard-wire to the car battery, not sure about the On-Trak but I guess it must be possible.

Also with On-Trak I wasn't clear from the article (or their website) where their website-map came into the equation if it isn't a subscription service and the tracker is going to communicate directly with my base phone. Was this just for the purposes of the review?

Thanks
Phil [/u]

coastersteve · Posted: Mon Mar 16, 2009 7:43 pm Post subject:

The OnTrak unit wires directly to the vehicle picking up on ignition, permanent 12V and Ground.

There isn't any subscriptions, that's why it isn't mentioned on our website! Once you've bought a unit, register (For free) and then use our online logging/recording as long as you own the unit.

Hope this helps,

Steve
OnTrak

coastersteve · Posted: Tue Mar 17, 2009 12:50 pm Post subject:

coastersteve · Posted: Tue Mar 17, 2009 1:08 pm Post subject:

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