GPS Insight | GPS Fleet Tracking Blog

Mar 27 2010

Useful But Somewhat unknown SMS capability

Category: California,cell phone capabilities,Ease of use,Google Earth,Vehicle Tracking — rdonat @ 11:26 pm

We have an SMS query capability which allows you to see the driving distance between a vehicle & an address, a landmark, or another vehicle.

It is documented at http://support.gpsinsight.com/wiki/support/sms_query_documentation under “Driving Distance.”

You just text “gps [vehiclename] distance [address | landmark | vehicle name]

It just came in handy for me while my family & I were driving in California. I mentioned we were close to our office and my wife asked how close it was [we drove right past... We're going on vacation this week].

I didn’t know the exact name of the landmark we have for it (GPSI – LA) so I just SMS’d our 477-477 (GPS-GPS) short code with “gps nav2 distance gpsi” — nav2 is the vehicle we were in. The return SMS told me the list of valid landmarks meeting “GPSI” — GPSI – LA was the one I needed so I sent it again, & it showed that I was 12.1 miles away, a 25 minute drive:

Use GPS Insight SMS Queries to see how far it will take you to drive somewhere

We got close — within 4 miles of the office. But I’m on vacation, so we just kept on going…

Driving by close to the GPS Insight LA Office in City of Orange, CA

So close:

Driving by the office on the way to vacation

Great way to show how useful SMS Queries are for our customers though — they are an optional, but highly useful capability. We use them ALL THE TIME ourselves.

Click for more information on our GPS Vehicle Tracking Mobile Access.

Rob.

Tags: cell phone capabilities, gps distance, gps fleet tracking, GPS Tracking, gps vehicle tracking, sms query capabilities

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Mar 15 2010

Finishing the Atacama desert race in Chile

Category: Chile,Google Earth,People Tracking,TT-1900 — rdonat @ 2:33 pm

Keir finished the Atacama Crossing “4 deserts” race — 250 km across the Chilean desert.

We tracked him using a GPS Insight TT-1900, and here is the track of his entire journey:

GPS Track of Keir Oxley finishing a 250 km race in Chile

Here is a picture of him crossing the finish line:

Picture of Keir Oxley finishing a 250 km race in Chile

He finished in 64:13:23

Congratulations Keir!

Rob.

Tags: 4 deserts race, Chile, gps fleet tracking, GPS Tracking, gps vehicle tracking system, Keir Oxley

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Mar 12 2010

Keir is still racing across the desert in Chile, tracked by GPS Insight

Category: Chile,Google Earth,People Tracking,Skiing,TT-1900 — rdonat @ 7:07 pm

Keir is still hiking across the harsh Chilean desert as we speak, tracked with a 5.9 oz. satellite tracker in his pack.

Keir hiking across the Chilean desert

Not to be outdone, I covered 40 miles today in the harsh wilderness myself, with only the assistance of 20 ski lifts, gravity, 2 skis and a couple of beers:

Ski tracking in Deer Valley at Park City UT

Just kidding, obviously a lot harder to walk 20-some miles across the desert than ski around a bunch. Maybe I should invite Keir next time…

Rob.

Tags: Chile, gps fleet tracking, GPS Tracking, gps vehicle tracking, Race the Planet, Skiing, TT-1900

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Mar 12 2010

40 hours into the Atacama Crossing “Race the Planet” race in Chile

Category: Chile,Miscellaneous,People Tracking,TT-1900 — rdonat @ 7:56 am

Keir is doing well, in 112th place (out of 127 left in the race), and there are a LOT of people who have dropped out.

112th out of 127 left in the race

The site says he has raced for just shy of 40 hours. We are tracking him every hour with a GPS Insight TT-1900.

I ran a track like this:

GPS Track of Keir across a Chilean desert

And see where he’s gone (roughly — we update once an hour):

GPS Track of Keir across a Chilean desert

This shows 94.2 miles, but it’s been more than that, since he’s not racing in a straight line.

Good luck Keir! He’s got 1 more 25 mile day, then a 50 some mile day tomorrow to complete this race, his second Racing the Planet race.

Rob.

Tags: Chile, gps fleet tracking, GPS Tracking, gps vehicle tracking, Keir Oxley, Racing the Planet, TT-1900

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Mar 09 2010

Tracking Keir across the desert in Chile

Category: Chile — rdonat @ 2:14 pm

My Brother-in-law Keir Oxley is at it again, doing another “Racing the Planet” 126 mile extreme race through the desert in Chile (his blog is available here).

Last time we tracked him through the Sahara Desert.

They are raising money for earthquake victims. Again we are tracking him using a TT-1900, which weighs 5.9 ounces, and reports world-wide, every hour.

So far he has gone 22 miles (we show about 19 since the tracking device only transmits once an hour and he’s not traveling in a straight line):

Keir traveling across the Chilean desert (Atacama crossing)

I’ll try to keep the site updated with tracking screen shots.

Good luck Keir!

Rob.

Tags: gps fleet tracking, GPS Tracking, gps vehicle tracking

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Feb 21 2010

Better GPS Tracking than EZ-1000′s for Skiing

Category: Arizona,EZ-1000,Garmin Integration,Google Earth,GPS Navigation,People Tracking,Skiing — rdonat @ 10:14 pm

I took my boys (7 & 9) skiing (snowboarding they correct me every time…) up to Flagstaff AZ this weekend.

I brought my Garmin Edge 705 (a Garmin for bikes, basically) & put it in my coat pocket to get a really good feel for where we went during the weekend. It logs every 10 seconds for eventual upload (vs. once a minute in real time for the EZ-1000 I brought along as well).

Garmin EDGE 705

They are really nice, and we don’t sell them — I bought mine at the bike shop. [We do sell Garmin's for vehicles and can integrate them with our GPSI-4000 GPS tracking solution though...]

The Garmin is an optimist, and thinks I ran up all those hills & burned 5248 calories in the process (had I brought the wireless heart monitor it would have known better):

Garmin's interpretation of my Skiing with my kids

This is a great image of GPS Insight vs. Garmin (bear in mind we are an “ACTIVE” tracking system whereas the Garmin is “PASSIVE” and needs you to upload the data eventually):

GPS Insight vs. Garmin for ski tracking

The “pins” are EZ-1000 points [every minute while in cell coverage, which is spotty on the mountain]. The yellow circles are Garmin points (a LOT more of them).

Here is the Garmin unit track of where we went (and where I remembered to turn the unit on…):

Skiing at Snowbowl in Flagstaff AZ

It’s nice to have that for sports usage. But if you want to track your vehicles in real time, that’s not an option — you need an active tracking solution like GPS Insight. Both are great products — just for entirely different needs.

And here are my cold kids. Lots of snow this weekend, and way colder than they’re used to living in the desert.

Rob's kids in their cold-weather snowboarding attire

Rob.

Tags: gps fleet tracking, GPS Tracking, gps vehicle tracking

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Jan 19 2010

Finding my snowboarding kid on the mountain with GPS Insight

Category: Arizona,EZ-1000,Google Earth,GPS Insight Employees,GPS Tracking,mobile mapping,People Tracking,Safety,Skiing — rdonat @ 11:27 pm

I pretty much have a never-ending supply of EZ-1000′s so I brought one skiing with my 2 boys on a recent trip.

Jack, my older son, is old enough to go skiing (boarding, he would correct me) without me. Actually, he has officially passed me by — he does black runs I refuse to do (small on a board is way better than big on skis when it comes to moguls).

I wanted to know where he was at one point so I ran a quick mobile map on my iPhone & put it in “compass mode” so I could see what direction he was from me.

Here it is (I’m the blue dot, Jack is the red pin):

GPS Insight EZ-1000 tracks my snowboarding son on the mountain

Here he really was (my eyes are better than the 3 megapixel camera on the iPhone…) — note that he’s between the lift & the ski patrol “house” just like the map shows it:

GPS Insight EZ-1000 tracks my snowboarding son on the mountain

I ran a 3D history of that device for the 2 days I remembered to bring it and put it in Jack’s pocket & it puts him exactly where my iPhone shows him at 1:44 (note the time in the first screen shot). Waiting 4 minutes at the bottom of the hill for his 2 friends:

Showing skiing activity using an EZ-1000 from GPS Insight

Also interesting is the straight lines which depict the lifts very clearly. The main lifts are in the “clutter” of dots on the left side, but the lifts we went on once each are really easy to spot toward the top right.

It’s easy to see which runs got the most use by turning off the “time slider” and looking at just the blue path:

GPS Tracking my son on the ski (board) slopes

Here are my two boarders:

Jack & Ryan on a snowboarding trip

And by looking at the GPS track as well as how well he was jumping and grinding, I can tell Jack went through the terrain park most of all:

Jack grinding/jumping off a box in the terrain park

I’ll try embedding a Facebook video I have of him going through the terrain park here:

Rob.

Tags: gps fleet tracking, GPS Tracking, gps vehicle tracking

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Dec 26 2009

GPS Insight tracks a Princess on Christmas

Category: Arizona,cell phone capabilities,EZ-1000,Google Earth,GPS Insight Employees,mobile mapping — rdonat @ 10:34 pm

My 4 year old daughter Sarah got a Disney Princess jeep from Santa Claus on Christmas (along with a liberally applied Tinkerbell makeup kit, earrings and much much more…).

GPS Insight tracks Princess Sarah

Never missing a chance to track something important, I covertly put “Rob 1000,” a GPS Insight EZ-1000 in the battery compartment:

GPS Insight tracks Princess Sarah

So off, we go. When we get to the corner, I check the location on my iPhone & it shows we’re there:

(I’ve blurred the street names):

Tracking Princess Sarah

Here’s a picture of her at that intersection:

Tracking Princess Sarah on Christmas

A quick 3D history report:

GPS Insight 3D History GPS Tracking map

… and here’s our 20 minute walk around the neighborhood. Per usual, our 3D mapping starts “light & thin” and gets “darker & thicker” so you can see the direction of travel is clockwise around the neighborhood easily, just by looking at it (or by the times which are at 1 minute intervals): [by the way, blue = idling, e.g. zero MPH, & green = moving]

Princess Procession on Christmas Day

She wants a faster car though already…

Princess Sarah wants a faster ride

If there’s one person I’ll break the “we don’t track kids” rule at GPS Insight for, it’ll be Sarah when she’s ready to drive (especially at the rate she’s applying her Tinkerbell makeup).

Ok, here’s one more bonus picture of my Princess:

Sarah on Christmas

Rob.

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Dec 19 2009

GPS Insight adds over 1,000 devices in one day

Category: Arizona,California,Google Earth,GPS INSIGHT COMPANY SPECIFIC,GPS Insight Employees,Miscellaneous — rdonat @ 11:20 am

We will have a formal announcement about this after the holidays.

Just last Tuesday, we lit up exactly 1,000 new units on GPS Insight for a new customer.

They all came online at the exact same time, which is not typical, but this had an interesting and noticeable effect on our daily processing.

Here is a graph we get each day which is typically 100% bell curve shaped. This indicates driving activity, and peaks during the middle of the day when most of the drivers of our tracked delivery vehicles, service vehicles, and government vehicles are out doing their jobs.

GPS Insight turns on 1000 new units

It was very evident when these devices started reporting to GPS Insight, so I thought I would point out the nice “bump” we got to our overall vehicle installed base Tuesday.

It is interesting to note that even though we have vehicles in 4 different timezones (6 if you include Alaska and Hawaii), and in 100 different types of business, they all wind up “smoothing each other out” to a single bell curve.

The street sweepers and a number of over the road/long haul vehicles work at night typically, which keeps our nighttime activity from dipping too low, and the early morning service workers (Construction, typically) get things off in a hurry starting around 4 AM MST (here in AZ this time of year that means 6 AM New York Time). The longer tail at the end of the day is because of overtime — drivers get going according to a schedule, but don’t always finish on time.

Some drivers drive to a workplace once a day, then there is no more movement until they leave to go home, and some drive all day long (e.g. delivery vans). When you you put together tens of thousands of vehicles though, across over 1,000 customers, things balance out and become pretty predictable.

GPS Tracking histogram / Bell Curve

Here’s a daily “by hour” for the whole month. The only anomaly is a slight dip in the 11:00 hour — I’m pretty sure that’s lunch related. I bet if our customers check the street view on their vehicles locations, there would be a lot of this stuff going on:

This is our Scion 4000 on the way to take a couple salespeople to the airport to head home after a week in the office:

19 minute lunch stop into the 11:00 Hour

In-N-Out stop for Joe Vidmar

Our Chicago guys only get into Scottsdale occasionally, and needed their In-N-Out Burger fix before heading back on Friday. Them & several other thousand drivers being tracked by GPS Insight around lunchtime. And now 1,000 more.

Rob.

Tags: 1000 new vehicles, GPS Insight, GPS Tracking, in-n-out burger, Vehicle Tracking

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Dec 12 2009

Inaugural iPhone blog article from between soccer games

Category: Arizona,mobile mapping — rdonat @ 1:04 pm

So I have 2 back to back soccer games today and while the kids are off warming up, I thought I would figure out how to write a blog post from my iPhone using a new app I downloaded.

I have to keep if about GPS so here is a screenshot of my location under the tree and my car’s location in red with the length it’s been stopped.

Jack just stopped 4 shots on goal. I should probably watch the game now…

Afterward, they had the obligatory pizza party:

Soccer Pizza Party

And how much time did we spend there, and at the games prior? Just run a quick (1.8 second) stop report for the day.

GPS Tracking stop report for soccer activity

Easy to see — 3 hours, 9 minutes at the games, 1 hour, 3 minutes at the party, and 17 minutes prior to the games getting snacks for the game at Target

By the way, the iPhone app for the blog is not very good. I had to use a browser to move the pictures around, and the sizes aren’t ideal. Oh well, I should probably be watching the game instead anyway.

Rob

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