Compact and affordable GPS tracking units have been available for a while now but from what I had read a year or so ago, the latency for tracking info was delivered every few minutes and depended on the carrier’s service reliability and coverage area in a single or multiple markets with the latter still being the case. High latency is not good when a thief is running off at speed with your stuff as minutes translate into several miles between location reports while you hope they’ll get stuck in traffic or stop somewhere for a while.
I noticed that Verizon has partnered with GPS Heroes and their GPS units claim to have only a one minute ping latency between location reports. Surely this will improve as technology advances. They specialize in small GPS tracking devices for vehicle fleet monitoring and now smaller portable battery powered personal tracking units which is what I’m interested in hiding in my cases and bags that protect the expensive gear. If it wasn’t for the $40 / month / unit charge for the service, I’d have a personal unit for almost every high dollar piece of my gear to get text alerts for tracking, boundary limits, etc.. I was told the battery life in the personal unit lasts for days. Apparently the service rate is the same for the personal & vehicle units but if you get either vehicle unit, the data features included with that service are extensive and impressive. There are also no data limits with any units’ service.
If you have a production van or truck, one of their installable units is plug & play into any vehicle’s (1997 & later) central multi-pin CPU OBD data port usually located on the lower dash protected by a plastic cover. This is what a maintenance center uses to connect a vehicle to a diagnostic machine. So, the newer plug & play unit can be ported to any vehicle with a ’97+ OBD data port. If you have a vehicle older than ’97 without the OBD port, you can use the installed unit or the personal unit. In addition to the GPS location, the vehicle units tell you alot more than you’ll ever need by sending text alerts indicating when it’s cranked, how fast it’s traveling and on and on. The admin control panel allows all kinds of customization, permissions and is compatible for viewing on most mobile devices. You can even set geofences that visibly indicate and alert you if the unit has crossed a preset perimeter boundary set by you as well as view an animated recorded graphical travel path while it was in motion. In addition to seeing all the locations the thief went and stopped to offload and/or sell your stuff, you can see everywhere that mischievous PA drove your vehicle for personal use and deduct that lost fuel and time from their pay! 😀
Other than the one-time $99 setup fee, which includes the first & last month’s service fee, the good thing is there’s no contract, you don’t have to and can’t buy the units and they’re replaced for free if defective for the entire time you have service. Kind of like Panavision’s rental model. However, if it is stolen (haha), such as in your stolen car or gear and not recovered or you cause loss or damage to the unit, it will cost you $200 for another one. I’m not sure if car insurance would cover that but it might. I don’t know if it’s a limited promotion or not but as of now they’re offering a 90 day satisfaction guaranteed or money back trial period where you only pay for the amount of monthly service used.
If anybody already has experience with personal, portable or installed GPS units, especially if it’s with this company, please post your results. Thanks.
Personal / Plug & Play / Installed GPS Units – once there, scroll down for pictures & info