Real Time Vehicle Tracking Made Easy 207
Makarand writes "The Washington Post has an
article
about a vehicle tracking system built by a
start-up 10-20.com.
The system uses low orbit satellites for exchanging location information making it
available anywhere in the US. The tracking device,
the size of a paperback, can be installed in any vehicle and powered by a battery.
A small antenna installed on top sends signals to satellites marking its
position on a web-based map. The equipment costs around $1000 and monthly
fees range from $20 to $65. The service plan will determine how often your position will be updated by the system. The tracking system
FAQ on the company website is pretty detailed."
A company in the UK has this... (Score:5, Informative)
TruckSecure (Score:2, Informative)
It can be used to track hazardous materials shipments, plus provide access and security controls to the vehicles.
Pretty cool actually.
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Re:Car Rentals (Score:3, Informative)
The contract stated that the driver could be penalized for not obeying local traffic laws, but it was not clear in the contract that the car rental company could institute the fine without corrobration from the local police.
I'm sure that the car rental company has changed the relevant language in the contract.
Already exists (Score:5, Informative)
APRS (Score:5, Informative)
HAM radio operators have been doing this for a while, but cheaper (with slightly more effort):
License: ~$10 testing fee
Basic GPS: ~$100
APRS packet-capable radio: ~$300 (US)
A couple of cables: ~$20
The GPS sends location data to the radio, which broadcasts digital packets to a "digipeater," which is wired to the internet...
A trip to findu.com and you're tracking. No monthly fees, plus you can use all the equipment for other stuff.
Re:Cell phone gps car alarms... (Score:5, Informative)
There are many different cell phone tracking technologies being developed for E911 purposes. They can also be used for other purposes (stolen car tracking/shipment tracking/finding bad guys/traffic probes):
1. GPS-enabled. The only problem is getting the satellites when you're under cover (trees/tall buildings/indoors) and it takes a while to sync up. You also MUST have a GPS on every phone you wish to track. I'll bet the cell phone manufacturers like this one the best.
2. Time difference of arrival (TDOA) is an infrastructure-based method that measures what time a particular signal hits different sets of antennas. Not especially resistant to multi-path and requires very accurate timing.
3. Phase angle of arrival. Measures the phase angle of incoming signals between the phone and different receiving sites. Triangulates and find the phone within 100 yards or so. Works pretty well in a multipath environment. Also infrastructure based.
Re:APRS (Score:3, Informative)
Close but not quite. Most digipeaters are NOT connected to the net. They simply digipeat the packet to a much wider area than the original. The device that sends the data to the internet network is called an "IGate". My friend Sean has created a floppy based linux distro that has IGate software on it. Here it is, if you would like to check it out. [rimboy.com]
South African scenario (Score:2, Informative)
In South Africa where vehicle theft and vehicle hijackings are at record breaking levels, there have been vehicle tracking systems for private vehicle owners and also fleet operators for a number of years.
Look at www.netstar.co.za [netstar.co.za] and www.tracker.co.za [tracker.co.za].
Both of these companies have a good track record. No excuse for the pun.
Re:Not completely fool proof!!! (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Affordable Countermeasure (Score:5, Informative)
Tracker is also cheaper than this US system.
Troc
EPIRB -Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacons (Score:2, Informative)
For hobby use, APRS, mentioned above works well, and even the Space Station is equipped. APRS is beginning to show up in consumer walkie-talkies as well.
OnStar and various private services use GPS and the cellphone and/or pager networks, and GPS in cellphones will soon become obiquious. I expect these folks won't sell many at that pricepoint for a single-purpose system.
137-151 MHz (Score:1, Informative)
I wonder who's leo satellite constellation they're using. Orbcomm's?
Re:Credit Card? (Score:1, Informative)
10-20.com founder comments on previous posts... (Score:2, Informative)
- "It already exists": Yes, there are competitors to the 10-20.com system, but most of them use the cell phone network to move their data. One of our main selling points is that this works anywhere in North America, not just areas that have cell phone or 2-way pager coverage. Our market is the long-range traveler: small businesses with large geographic ranges, field service vehicles (oil, forestry, land management), RV's, off-road vehicles, etc. I will readily admit that cell phone transmission strategies make more sense in dense urban environments; that's not who we're after. Most of North America does not have cell phone coverage; we cover those spaces, and provide an easy-to-install solution for those huge areas.
- "How is this different than OnStar or LoJack?": OnStar uses cell phone data. As far as I know, OnStar does not allow you to access maps or history of your vehicle's position, and it is a "poll" based system, meaning that there is no information of where your vehicle is until there is an event (crash/panic/call outbound) or a poll by the central office. LoJack simply is a theft recovery system that is available to _some_ police departments in _some_ states, and is completely unaccessible by the customer - they don't even tell you where it's installed. With either of these two systems, you have no idea where your vehicle is, or was, unless there is an extraordinary circumstance.
- "You can do this with APRS": Yep, you can, and I applaud anyone getting their license and spending the time to put a system together. Most companies, though, don't want to go through this exercise. Plus, then you'll also need a back-end system to store the points, a mapping server to map them on street and topological maps, redundant servers to catch failures, etc. etc. To duplicate everything we have put together is a large effort, but if all you want is a subset, then perhaps there are less expensive ways to do it, but what's your time worth? (PS: APRS and/or wardriving users can contact me about possible very-small-fee use of our reverse geocode XML interface that takes USA-based lat/lon and spits out addresses over an HTTP query - a pretty neat service that we developed which isn't available for a reasonable price anywhere else, at least that we were able to find.)
- "This won't prevent criminals from stealing/stripping my car": No, the system really isn't designed as a theft prevention or theft recovery system, and we'll never probably advertise it as such. The antenna is fairly obvious, and easily decommissioned. This is a vehicle tracking system, which as a side benefit could possibly be used as a theft recovery system. If you have a driver who decommissions the antenna, that is detectable by the lack of updates to the system, which can then trigger an alert to one or many users.
- "This is an invasion of privacy.": So don't buy it. If your employer wants to buy it and put it on their vehicle, that's their right. We at 10-20.com are pretty fanatical privacy advocates, but we also recognize that if someone is paying you for your time, and is paying for their vehicle, it's their right to monitor the use of those resources. If this is a parent/child relationship, that is something that has to be worked out between the parent and child, and is a discussion between them and does not involve us. Note that we have an interesting system called "Peek-Proof" that notifies the child (if it's configured properly) via email every time a parent views their location on the system. This permission level removes the uncertainty of how often someone is accessing your position, putting the discussion back at the political level instead of the technological level.
- "Proprietary systems are bad": We're looking at how to deliver exported data for those of you who want to build your own tools. We like our offered tools, but it's nice to be able to support queries from outside. We also allow for incorporation of your maps (if you toggle that option) into your own web pages, at different map sizes and zoom levels.
Thanks for all your comments. There have been a few ideas in the above items which have made me consider different options for our next revision of the software.
- John Todd, founder 10-20.com (jtodd@10-20.com)