Real Time Vehicle Tracking Made Easy

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."

Re:OK, but...

[eht]

ok, but what does that have to do with the car tracker dealie thingie?

Cell phone gps car alarms...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why the hell aren't cellular service providers jumping all over this? They should package a small gps device with a cell phone that I can put in my car to track should it ever get stolen. It should be part of my service plan, and should only carry a small charge (if any) to call the device. I would pay a couple hundred of dollars for this, i wouldn't pay $1,000 dollars for something that also has a monthly fee. Oh, and small cylindrical devices should also be made to go inside my bicycle frame....

Re:Credit Card?

[duncf]

No kidding!

PayPal is unprofessional, and definitely unacceptable for such a large payment (One-Time Equipment Fee: $700) to a professional company.

$700?!? for what? It's not even theft protection (a thief can break the antenna). Really, a cell phone (or even a sattelite phone) provides essentially all the same functionality (and almost certainly for less money).

I'd say they go bankrupt within 3 years, making that lovely equipment you bought useless to you.

Re:Laymen's terms

[shaitand]

How much does johnny have to pay in order to block his parents from violating his privacy in this manner?

$1000 is 'cheap'? Remote immobilisers are better.

[wackybrit]

$1000 and $50 a month is NOT cheap. I couldn't afford that to keep track of my car.

The thing is, most people don't need to keep track of their cars. Even fleet managers don't NEED to keep track of their cars. You can get remote immobilisers that use pagers so you can call them up and the car is immobilised.

If someone steals you car, call the immobiliser and stop them in their tracks rather than chase them across the state on your map.

Talk about overkill!

[Andy Dodd]

See other posts in this article about APRS.

Been there, done that, none of this J2EE, Tomcat, JBoss (read simply: Java bloat) BS. Just some small applications that can fit in an 8-bit microcontroller such as a PIC or an AVR (Tracker side) and a single floppy on the server/gateway side.