#Susan tells you#

How to design an excellent personal GPS Tracker?

Customer case.

A Finland customer bought a 4G LTE GPS tracker for his family.

And then he kept feeding back that the tracking historical were incomplete.

After obtaining the customer’s permission, I entered the personal GPS tracker ID number to view and analyze.

I found this user had filtered out WIFI and LBS positioning.

So, I think it’s necessary to make an explanation on some principles of GPS tracker positioning.

As GPS or Beidou Positioning chip only work in open sky outdoors, the tracker for person or pet, which is with independent battery power may couldn’t get GPS signal when it is indoor, under the roof or a tree. At that moment, the GPS tracker will turn to LBS or WIFI for tracking. Therefore, we don’t suggest to filter LBS or WIFI position.

As we all know, there are three main types of positioning data sources for civilian GPS trackers, satellite positioning data, base station positioning data and WIFI positioning data. Only satellite positioning data is directly offer location in latitude and longitude. When the tracker is connected to a satellite for positioning, it has high power and consumes battery power largely, so if the satellite connection fails during the program setting period (usually 60 seconds), the GPS tracker will stop searching for satellites and report nearby base stations and WIFI hotpots as positioning references, Then, through professional data service companies such as Google or Amap, those base stations or WIFI hotpots will parsed into latitude and longitude and displayed on the tracking APP or tracking system web map.

In fact, in sparsely populated areas, cell phone base stations are far apart. In particular, 4G LTE base stations are newly built, and the base station code is often changed. Data companies such as Google and Amap don’t get all the base station data and WIFI data. This will lead to some base station or WIFI hotpots data cannot be resolved to latitude and longitude normally. This is an important reason for some GPS tracker historical data loss and inaccurate positioning. At present, there is no good solution for GPS tracker in civil industry.

Finally, I have repeatedly emphasized with the users that most of the size of the mini portable GPS tracker is occupied by the battery, especially for pets GPS tracker and personal GPS trackers. 2/3 of the space is occupied by the battery, so while designing these types trackers, we need consider the small size and portability, as well as the longest standby time and accuracy of positioning. It is impossible to perfectly combine these three aspects with current battery technology, so we some trade-offs must be made. Therefore, we choose the size of the battery according to the standby time and appearance of the product, and then optimize the power consumption of the tracker through software logic. The most general software optimization is to switch the positioning way from Satellite positioning to LBS or WIFI when Satellite signal is poor, so as to reduce the power consumption.In this way to ensure the minimum size of the GPS tracker with at least two days of standby time.

We must be rational to know that civilian GPS trackers certainly cannot provide complete accurate position always. Even so, although it doesn’t provide the most accurate location, it narrowed the scope of his search from aimless search to a radius of 100 meters or even 10 meters when it was used for searching for people and things. This convenience is also of great significance. We have won precious time to find the target.

Finally, we hope that the majority of users can understand the GPS tracker technology and characteristics correctly and rationally.

Tracking is Caring.

Enjoy peace of mind for your loved ones.