We have been in the GPS Tracking industry for almost 7 years now. Enough to learn and FIX the limitations of GPS to ensure the highest quality data possible (e.g. 99.x% — if anyone tells you they’re 100%, well, guess what, they’re not).
So, today I found a perfect example to show the lengths to which we go to make your data 100% reliable (well, 99.x%…).
I had a 7:30 AM phone call and an 8:30 offsite meeting.
I had to get to my meeting by 7:30 so I could sit in my car and get on the call, then be there for my meeting & the breakfast prior.
So I had to idle for almost 40 minutes in order to avoid baking in my car in the hot Phoenix heat.
Here’s my stop report for 2 separate devices installed in my vehicle, both showing a ~37 minute idle stop:
GPS Insight Stop Report
One device (Rob) gets its speed data from the engine’s computer, and is more expensive because of that. One device is less expensive but has to “interpolate” its speed from GPS Satellites traveling 9 THOUSAND miles per hour at over 12 THOUSAND miles in space. And it’s remarkably accurate, but there is unfortunately what we call “positional GPS drift” of up to 20 feet typically.
So when the devices move 5-10 feet due to this “drift,” we interpolate a speed of 1-3 MPH typically. But that means the device doesn’t look like it’s stationary, therefore it’s not idling.
Thankfully GPS Insight has a formula (which can be tweaked for different types of fleets, e.g. slow-moving street sweepers) which “consolidates” multiple drift points into a single idle event and position.
Our customers would never see this “inaccurate” GPS data, but here’s a picture of the REAL LOCATION REPORTS to include the drift for both the 3500 (talks to the engine for speed but not as accurate with GPS) and the 3900 (much more accurate GPS which it derives speed/distance/acceleration from):
175' of drift for the diagnostic device (we fix that)
The “drift” in the picture above is corrected over long idle stops to the “center” point which typically has the most reports.
For the 3900, the drift is MUCH smaller — only 15′, and again, we “consolidate” that into a single 38 minute idle stop with a single “pin.”
The corrected map looks 100% accurate (well, 99.x%…):
"Fixed" stop locations and idle time
This shows my 2 devices in my car both stopped for ~38 minutes, and 29 feet apart (vs. the 175′ we saw above on the 3500).
And my car is 12′ long, with antennas in the front/back of the vehicle, so that’s not too bad (they show in the right locations +5′ or so each).
We consolidated the GPS drift into a single “valid” point, both in terms of position and time spent idling.
This is a HUGE distinction between GPS Insight and other companies who will either show you that your vehicle was someplace it really wasn’t, or far worse, show you that it wasn’t actually idling when it was.
Without doing all of the processing on “drift points” at 1-3 MPH, you wouldn’t know that the vehicle was actually idling, and you would lose a HUGE component of your potential ROI using GPS Insight.
This is fairly low-level, but I wanted to make sure the extent to which our product validates and consolidates data to make it actionable and insightful (and ACCURATE) isn’t lost.
There’s a big difference between this type of product and a typical “dots on a map” product. You should know there are major differences OTHER than price when it comes to GPS Fleet Tracking.
Thanks,
Rob.
