GPS Insight | GPS Fleet Tracking Blog

Dec 10 2009

Which of your vehicles has been to the crack house?

Category: Ad Hoc Reports,detecting unauthorized vehicle usage,Fleet Tracking,Fuel Savings,Google Earth,GPS Insight Employees,GPSI-4000,Landmarks,Safety,Trimble — rdonat @ 2:50 pm

I used to use this as a far-fetched example when talking about the benefits of retroactive landmark reports:

“Let’s say you catch one of your drivers buying crack at a crack house — don’t you want to know which others may have visited there in the past year or more?”

Well, in Detroit, they actually found a city employee’s vehicle at an actual crack house.

It’s detailed in this Automotive Fleet article.

So, now that there is a real life example of this, how would you use GPS Insight to easily determine the other vehicles which have visited that same crack house?

Here’s how:

First, find the exact location by looking at that vehicle/date/time and create a landmark with the convenient link from that point (we’ll pretend my house is a crack house).

First, run a 3D history map for that day (pretend yesterday):

Use GPS Tracking to find out who's buying crack with your vehicles

I’ll pick the “crack stop” at my house (really me coming home from taking the kids to Buffalo Wild Wings, a different kind of crack) and blur the street names in case anyone wants to come see for themselves — then I click on “Landmark: Create from Point”:

Pick a stop & create a landmark around it

Now I choose a Polygon landmark, change the color to green (why not?), and outline the areas a vehicle might PARK IN (not my house, which is a common mistake — you want landmarks to be where people park, not where the actual landmark is!).

I call it “Crack House.”

Now when I refresh my menu to pick up the new landmark under “Reports: Landmarks” I can run a 1 month at a time landmark report (note clicking the month name selects the entire month):

Run a GPS Tracking landmark report on a crack house in GPS Insight

Other than my wife & I, no other vehicles show up in December, so I go to November and see that a few other vehicles have been tracked in that exact area. Note the “Passing through” option which is checked — this means the visit will show up even if the ignition is not turned off while there (e.g. a drive by drug buy — my guess is crackheads like to idle too).

There was too much activity for my vehicle (with 3-4 devices), my wife’s & the company Scion (3 devices), so I created an “all but robs” group and ran the report against that:

Quickly create a vehicle group in GPS Insight

So Elliot and Ryan were in the crack house zone in November:

Elliot & Ryan at the crack house?

You get the idea. Obviously this is just a simulation — Elliot was dropping off a credit card we had forgotten at a restaurant the night before, and Ryan was dropping my wife off after her car needed service.

But what is important here is GPS Insight allows you to go BACK in time to check for landmark activity.

Several competitors do NOT (including two of the largest/oldest ones in our space). They will only allow you to report on landmark activity in landmarks which you created BEFORE the activity took place.

That means you would need to know all the crack house locations in advance! I hope our customers don’t have that information handy.

Although, I’ve often said you would have to be smoking crack to go with another solution…

Rob.

Tags: Fleet Tracking, landmark reporting, unauthorized usage, using vehicles to buy crack, Vehicle Tracking

Comments (1)

Nov 29 2009

Counting & Reconciling Tolls using GPS Insight fleet tracking

Category: Ad Hoc Reports,California,CUSTOM APPLICATIONS OF GPS INSIGHT,Driver Accountability,Google Earth,GPS Tracking,Landmarks,New Features,Reporting,Reports — rdonat @ 2:47 pm

We have a customer in San Francisco who wanted to be able to reconcile the # of trips they make across the Bay Bridge (since they pay a toll when coming into the city).

Here is a picture of the landmark they defined (along with a nice 3D representation in Google Earth):

GPS Insight Landmark of the San Francisco Bay Bridge

We added a “Passing Through” option to our standard landmark report to help with this requirement. Before this, the landmark visit would have required the vehicle to either stop or idle for a minute to register. If you click the “Passing Through” checkbox, it will count any activity through that “zone.”

GPS Insight landmark report adds "passing through" option

Now when running the report (which took less than 3 seconds), you get each time a vehicle went through that area (I’ve blurred out the vehicle names for customer privacy).

GPS Insight vehicle tracking landmark report

This makes it easy to see that 7 vehicles went a total of 23 times across the Bay Bridge.

But how many tolls is that?

You only get charged on the way INTO the city. Exporting that report to Excel gives us some additional information such as heading (what direction the trip took through the landmark). So only Southwest trips should incur a toll. That shows 8 of them according to this Excel Screenshot:

How many tolls should we be charged across the Bay Bridge?

We added Heading as well to the exported version of the report. Since space isn’t at a premium in Excel, we usually put all columns into the exported versions of the reports there.

This helps our customer, & I thought it would be worth detailing here in case other customers can think of a good use for this.

Thanks,
Rob.

Tags: bay bridge, GPS Tracking, landmark report, san francisco, toll collection

Comments (1)

Nov 15 2009

How much time in the NASCAR pits? (we use GPS tracking devices to find out)

Category: Ad Hoc Reports,Arizona,EZ-1000,Google Earth,GPS Insight Employees,GPS Tracking,Landmarks,People Tracking,Reporting,Reports — rdonat @ 10:14 pm

We were lucky enough to get a couple passes for this weekend’s NASCAR event, to include pit passes to the garage & pits.

We had a couple of EZ-1000′s with us, and I want to show how easy it is to quantify how much time we actually spent in the pits (vs. the stands/box):

I first create a landmark called “PIR Pits” around the pits:

tracking activity in the NASCAR pits

Then cut & paste the PIR Pits landmark into GPS Insight:

Paste a geofence into GPS Insight

Paste here:

Paste geofences into GPS Insight

Confirm here:

Paste geofences into GPS Insight

Run a report here:

GPS Track of Pit activity at NASCAR using GPS Insight EZ-1000's

1.9 hours in the pits

Except that missed the part where we went really close to the “inside the building” chatter from the GPS device, so I had to carefully re-draw the polygon to get a more accurate picture of the true time spent down there.

So even though we may pick up a little bit of false “in the pit” activity since it’s so close to the box/grandstand (with drift due to the device being enclosed), this adjustment to the “pits” will give a better representation of how much time was there:

Extend the boundary of the pits geofence to get all activity

While we get a couple of random “1 minute” visits which are inaccurate due to the EZ-1000′s “inside” drift, the 2.8 hours is much more accurate than the original 1.8 — both Brent and I spent half an hour in that remote area of the pits and it makes a big difference to the total amount of time in the report by accurately creating the polygon:

2.8 hours in the pits

A fun (and loud) time was had by all:

NASCAR in Phoenix

And a favorite of mine, the RedBull 83 car:

RedBull NASCAR

I like this car so much I bought the $60 model for my bookshelf. Brian Vickers may have come in 38th today, but we drink a lot of RedBull and don’t have much use for Lowe’s in our office.

Rob.

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Oct 29 2009

Sahara Race almost over!

Category: Egypt,Landmarks,Miscellaneous,People Tracking,Running,TT-1900 — rdonat @ 9:40 am

My brother in law Keir has covered over 30 of the total 54 miles for today as of 9:15 PST. This final 5th stage requires him to go 54 miles in 40 hours.

Here’s a picture of what we’ve tracked so far since he left Base Camp 5:

GPS Tracking Keir across the Sahara

Rob.

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Oct 25 2009

Sat Tracking in Egypt – Keir has left the base camp

Category: Alerts,Egypt,Google Earth,Landmarks,People Tracking,Running,TT-1900 — rdonat @ 9:05 am

I was curious when Keir, my brother in law racing 162 miles across the desert, would get started today, so I put an alert on his tracking device and built a quick geofence around his “base camp.”

GPS Tracking Geofence around Egypt Base Camp

Then I created an alert to let me (and his wife/parents in law) know when he got moving in the morning (down to the hour — the device only transmits to the satellites every hour since it costs around $.25 per “ping” and it probably doesn’t matter much to us which exact route he takes through the God Forsaken Desert):

Geofence Alert for Keir's Satellite Tracking Device leaving Base Camp

Then I got the email (I didn’t send myself a text message since it would wake me up in the middle of the night):

It went off at 12:14 AM local time, and Egypt is 9 hours ahead of us so they must have started between 8 and 9 AM local time. Here’s the alert I received:

GPS Tracking alert

And a quick image of his trek so far — I think they do 26 miles a day (a marathon a day until they do 162 miles). He had done 19.7 miles so far today so far, and is averaging around 2.6 miles per hour. That means a couple more hours I would imagine.

Hiking across the Sahara Desert with GPS Insight satellite tracking

Makes me tired just thinking about it. Actually, I think I’ll go for a run this morning, but a lot shorter and a lot cooler than this one.

Rob.

Tags: GPS Tracking alerts, Sahara Race tracked with GPS Insight GPS Tracking, satellite tracking in Egypt

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Oct 22 2009

Alerting me when UPS picks up a package using gps tracking

Category: Alerts,cell phone capabilities,Conferences,Ease of use,EZ-1000,Landmarks,Mapping,Miscellaneous,Package Tracking — rdonat @ 2:45 pm

We just finished up at the TruckIT conference in Dallas yesterday. I had a high value package to send and wanted to know when it had been picked up by UPS.

So I put an EZ-1000 in the box (it was a nice new LED TV).

Here is how I quickly was able to create an alert to page me the minute that box left the hotel:

First I pull up 2D Mapping which has a convenient link to create a landmark from a vehicle (TV’s) current location:

Alerting me when UPS picks up a package using GPS tracking

Here I click the “Landmark: Create from point” link:

Click a link to create a landmark

Here I expand the radius to 1500 feet and save the landmark as Renaissance Richardson (the hotel we were at):

Create a landmark in GPS Insight

Now I can open up the Alert Manager and create a geofence alert for when that box leaves the area:

Create a GPS Tracking alert in GPS Insight

Choose the “New Landmark Alert” link:

Create a Landmark Alert in GPS Insight

Choose the EZ-1000 (named Demo), then name the alert “UPS Picked up TV” and enter my cell phone, and last choose the new “Renaissance Richardson” Landmark and change the “trigger” to “Outside”:

Vehicle Tracking alert (Geofence/Landmark)

I waited a couple minutes then hovered over the alert information icon to see that it had been checked 4 times (once per minute is standard):

GPS Tracking Alert

At 12:36 I received a text message on my iPhone telling me the package left that landmark:

Receiving a landmark alert in GPS Insight

Reading the alert, we see that the Demo device (in the LED TV box) left Renaissance Richardson at 12:35. The alert name is “Ups Picked Up Tv”

GPS Insight Landmark Alert

It’s been a couple hours since I got that alert, so now I can look to see where that UPS driver has gone since he picked up the TV (or if it was stolen, where they took it…):

GPS Insight history using GPS tracking device in a TV box

I should put an alert out there now to let me know when it gets to our office in Scottsdale so someone doesn’t take it home before I lock it away for the next trade show…

Rob.

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Sep 03 2009

New landmark dashboard dashlet available

Category: dashboard dashlets,Ease of use,Landmarks,New Features — rdonat @ 3:34 pm

We added a new dashlet to our list of those available on the GPS Insight dashboard yesterday.

Just “drag” it off the list of available dashlets onto your dashboard in the column you want it:

It is a list of landmarks, and you can choose from any available landmark and vehicle groups, and the dashlet will tell you how many vehicles are present in a particular landmark.

Additionally, it will allow you to click on any listed landmark, and will instantly zoom you to that location on the map.

This is useful if you want a feel for how many of your vehicles are at particular landmarks. You can use particular groups & have several copies on your dashboard (e.g. work locations on the left & home locations on the right, showing how many are at each throughout the day).

You can change certain properties of what it displays & how it is shown here by clicking the “edit” button (pencil):

We also added an option to our location dashlet to ONLY show vehicle stopped at landmarks:

This is subtly different, and shows each vehicle, not just a count of how many vehicles are at each landmark.

We hope these new capabilities help you and your organization. Please let us know if there are changes which would help your utilization of GPS Insight and we are happy to work toward making those changes.

Rob.

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Jun 14 2009

Camelback Mountain hike helped by GPS Insight

Category: Arizona,cell phone capabilities,EZ-1000,Garmin Integration,Google Earth,GPS Insight Employees,GPS Navigation,GPS Tracking,Landmarks — rdonat @ 9:32 pm

I decided to hike Camelback Mountain today — I’ll try to make this short (shorter than the 1 1/2 hour hike up & down the toughest mountain I’ve done in the Valley).

I couldn’t remember where to go so I looked it up on the internet & then dispatched myself via my Garmin from my PC:

Then I created a landmark as well, while I was at it (note I put the “route me here” address where it should go, but then I outlined the whole mountain) :

Then I routed myself there with my Garmin by wirelessly dispatching my vehicle’s Garmin to that location:

Turns out it was the wrong entrance — I go to the other one typically, so I drove around aimlessly finding that, plus the REI sports place where I bought a new water backpack (called a Camelbak, coincidentally…) .

Running an efficiency report, I ran 58% more time and 20% more miles (since the miles I went extra were on surface streets, not highways, this makes sense):

Here is my driving around aimlessly, wasting time & fuel (green dots, vs. blue “optimal path”):

Then I get to Camelback, and send a couple SMS notes when I start, get to the top, then get back to the bottom:

Here is my track of the 1 1/2 hour climb to the top and back (using an EZ-1000 at 10 second updates):

Here is an iPhone picture of me at the top, mapping both my iPhone GPS location (blue) and the EZ-1000 location (red pin):

But here is the good part:

Toward the bottom:

And at the top:

I’m a little sore after the 1 1/2 hour long trek up & back down, but the view is worth it.

And I even wore a GPS Insight hat…

Rob.

Comments (1)

May 25 2009

Hiking to Pinnacle Peak

Category: Arizona,competition,GPS INSIGHT ADVANTAGES,Landmarks,Reports,Running — rdonat @ 3:43 pm

I live in a beautiful area with mountains EVERYWHERE.

Before I moved here, I would climb them every trip.

Now that I’ve lived here, I never do.

Today I took my 9 year old son and his friend to climb (hike) Pinnacle Peak, an easy one nearby my house.

Just checking the map of my trip for the day, and it’s 7.8 miles there — we stayed for 1 hour 23 minutes.

You can see that the parking lot was full so I parked outside on the street, and I got there at 8:40, then left at 10:04:

Here’s a picture from near the top:

If I want to know how recently I was there last, I can quickly create a landmark from a stop report by clicking here:

Then create it, assigning to the Arizona landmark group while I’m at it:

Going all the way back to February, running a landmark report, I find my last time going there:

Note that you can go back >>> 3 YEARS <<< with GPS Insight (or more if you ask nicely) to get information like this.

Most competitors only let you go back 90 days & charge a huge amount if you ever need the data beyond that from them.

The last time I was at Pinnacle Peak was back in February, on 2/2/09, for 1.4 hours.

I need to get there more often. Now that it’s hot again, I think I may need to wait again until Winter.

Rob.

Comments (1)

Mar 02 2009

Zoo trip tracking with the new EZ-1000

Category: Ad Hoc Reports,Arizona,CUSTOM APPLICATIONS OF GPS INSIGHT,EZ-1000,Google Earth,GPS Insight Employees,GPS Tracking,Landmarks,Miscellaneous,Reporting — rdonat @ 2:10 pm

We haven’t started officially selling the GPSI-1000 yet, but I decided to test it today on a trip to the Phoenix Zoo with my family.

The GPSI-1000 is a tiny GPS tracking device which is battery operated and can be worn on a belt by security personnel, and other generally “outdoors” workers whose safety or productivity needs to be tracked by management.

It is TINY — only 1.4 inches wide by 2.5 inches long:

I wore it on my belt under my shirt all day & tracked my whereabouts every 2 minutes.

It isn’t something we recommend for tracking vehicles — our GO-3000, GPSI-4000, and LD/HD-3500 are the best for that.

But if you want to track your employees when they are OUTSIDE of the vehicle, it’s a great way to go. It will be available later in March.

At 2 minute update rates, it’s enough to know where a person has gone, and it has enough battery to last at least a day between charges.

Additionally, there is a single button which will allow us to implement either a panic alarm or a “mark my location” capability.

Here is a map of both my tracked vehicle (Navigator, the red lines) as well as the GPSI-1000 (worn while I drove, in blue):

The GPSI-4000 in my Navigator is fantastic at tracking the vehicle with fantastic accuracy. The GPSI-1000 (person tracker, really) does a good job but is only 2 minute updates, and occasionally loses track since its internal antenna is inside of the vehicle where it doesn’t get sufficient GPS signal. That’s not its job though.

When I get out of the vehicle, then it shows where we went, every 2 minutes. I won’t bore you with details of how much time we spent looking at giraffes, zebras, amphibians, etc. But I could — all we would need to do is overlay a map of the zoo, put up some geofences to match, and run a landmark report.

Instead, I can illustrate a little of that. Bear in mind that our typical GPSI-1000 “tracked individual” might be a security guard, a dock worker, a temporary worker who doesn’t need a wired GPS device in his or her car, etc.

But I can show you how accurate and useful this hardware can be, especially when combined with a vehicle tracking device:

Basically, once the driver “dismounts” the vehicle and does a patrol, some mowing of yards, movement of equipment, etc., you can still track that individual.

And if you want to know when and for how long they rode the Merry Go Round, you can use our typical GPS Insight capabilities:

Create a polygon around the satellite image of the Carousel (giving it a few more feet to make sure we catch the activity around it):

Then cut/paste into GPS Insight:

Then Paste into “Quick Import” under the Mapping: Landmarks menu:

After quickly refreshing the menu so that the new landmark shows up, run a landmark report:

.07 seconds later:

And here is the accuracy of the units while I was on the Carousel with my 3 kids and wife:

And here were the kids on the Carousel, oldest to youngest:

And on the way there with my family, I kept it under 68 (in a 65 MPH) on the trip there & back — the accuracy between both units is very good in terms of location, speed, and time — here are 2 points right next to each other & only 1 mph off [I called this unit the "Pants Patrol" since I was going to wear it on my belt, in case you were wondering...]:

These units should be available late March for $350 (with applicable $25 quantity discounts at 10, 25, 50, 100, 250 levels). Monthlies will range from $15-40 depending on update frequency (on 1 per hour/on demand to 1 minute). We should have a heavy equipment version of this unit available in April as well.

Thanks,

Rob.

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