GPS Insight Blog » Miscellaneous

Aug 06 2011

Tracking (and using) the Branson MO “Downtown Trolleys”

Category: cell phone capabilities,GPS Insight Employees,Miscellaneous,mobile mapping — rdonat @ 8:38 am

I am on a Summer trip with my 2 boys for their vacation to Branson, MO. It’s like Disneyland for kids in the Ozarks in Missouri.

As we were getting onto the Trolley which shuttles you around “Old Town” Branson, I realized they were a customer of GPS Insight’s, and asked a support person to send me the Mobile Map link to their vehicles so I could “track myself” and see how close the trolley was later when it was time to get back on. [Mobile Mapping is a free capability within GPS Insight under the "Mapping/Mobile Mapping" menu. You just need to retrieve the unique, secure link and you can view your vehicles from any smart phone or tablet]

Here is a picture of the boys on the Trolley:

My boys on the Branson Downtown Trolley

So within a minute or so my support person was able to text me the link to use from my smartphone to see the Trolley position:

Where the Trolley is according to GPS Insight

Then quickly I clicked on Street View to see where Google thinks it looks like out my Trolley Window:

Google street View from Trolley Location

And quickly I took a picture with my iPhone to show it was EXACTLY like that at the moment:

Actual picture I took from the Trolley window

Not bad, Google (or GPS Insight)!

The Branson "Downtown Trolley"

I got off at the Bass Pro Shop stop so my kids could look around in advance of their big fishing trip the next morning. I’ll talk about how I was able to minimize my wait for the Trolley (it was 111 degrees and HUMID) in the next article.

I’m glad we’re able to help Branson with their Trolley Tracking initiative. Great town to visit with your family. For more information click here!

Thanks,

Rob.

Tags: branson, business vehicle tracking, car tracking, commercial vehicle tracking, Fleet Tracking, fleet tracking device, fleet tracking software, gps fleet tracking, GPS Tracking, gps tracking devices, mobile mapping, trolley tracking, truck tracking, vacation, Vehicle Tracking

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Jan 09 2011

Should we change our logo?

Category: Miscellaneous — rdonat @ 3:43 pm

I have my 5 year old daughter and 10 year old son in the office with me today (Sunday), and Sarah said she lost her “work shirt.” I told her I didn’t know what she meant. She said she would draw what she meant, so she put this on my whiteboard:

Sarah's new Logo?

Not bad! I figured out what she meant — we have T-Shirts with the logo on them & I had given her a small sometime when she was here. Her brothers must have stolen it so she got a new one today…

Here’s a picture of the artist with her drawing (and a cup of carrots she got from the fridge):

Sarah with her new Logo

She’s playing Club Penguin right now in the main Conference Room right now on the 120″ projection screen — tough life!

Sarah makes use of the conference room

Jack (my 10 year old) is equally busy in a smaller conference room, playing Halo Reach online with his friend on XBox:

Jack plays XBox at GPS Insight

He was mad that when I made him smile for the camera, someone killed him in the game…

The family that “works” together stays together, right?

Back to work for me now…

Rob.

Tags: Fleet Tracking, fleet tracking software, GPS Tracking, gps tracking system, Vehicle Tracking

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Dec 13 2010

GPS Insight adds new servers to keep the site fast — with no downtime

Category: Availability,Miscellaneous — rdonat @ 11:48 pm

GPS Insight is very fast, and we never hear complaints from our customers about the site speed, the time it takes to run a report, wait for map refreshes, etc.

But as we add customers and vehicles under management, we always ensure we add as well as migrate to newer and better hardware.

When we do maintenance and server upgrades, our customers never see the impact — we have redundancies in place to ensure we can “cut over” while replacing/upgrading any particular part of the system.

We have spent the past few days migrating a few “old” servers which were still being used to newer ones.

I took a quick look before we finished up this process, and saw that our oldest web server had been up without being rebooted for almost 3 YEARS STRAIGHT:

GPS Insight web server up for 2.9 years without a reboot

Another key server was up for 800 days exactly before being “put out to pasture”:

GPS Insight server up without a reboot for 800 days straight

Don’t try this with Microsoft operating systems… (sorry Bill).

Rob.

Tags: gps fleet tracking, GPS Insight availability, GPS Tracking, gps tracking software, server reliability, Vehicle Tracking

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Aug 14 2010

Real Cowboys Don’t Need GPS

Category: Humor,Miscellaneous — rdonat @ 4:49 pm

I was at Bass Pro Shop today getting some fishing things for my boys who want to go fishing.

I had to take a picture of this guy & his shirt.

Real Cowboys Don't Need GPS

I guess that is the end of our steer tracking initiative…

Hilarious!

[p.s. I checked online to see where to get this for those of you who can't wait to own your own.

Here you go: http://www.fortwestern.com/store/product.php?productid=421243&cat=509&page=5

Real Cowboys don't need GPS

Only $14.98…

Rob.

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

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May 25 2010

Good LA Times article on the history of GPS & the new system going in soon

Category: GPS Navigation,Miscellaneous — rdonat @ 1:09 pm

Here is a really good article about how GPS works, and the new satellites going up to replace the aging ones out there now:

GPS has become critical to EVERYTHING (to include GPS Insight...)

It’s really worth reading if you are interested in this world-changing technology.

Rob.

Tags: gps fleet tracking, GPS System, GPS Tracking, gps vehicle tracking system, NY Times

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Apr 15 2010

Happy 5th Birthday GPS Insight

Category: Fleet Tracking,GPS Insight Employees,Miscellaneous — rdonat @ 11:42 am

Today, 4/15/2010, is the “legal” 5th birthday of GPS Insight (as a product we celebrated back in August). I “spun off” GPS Insight from my consulting company as its own legal entity 4/15/2005.

In that time, we have grown from one customer & 286 trucks to having sold over 1,000 customers & over 20,000 tracking devices.

We have gone from 3 employees to over 30, and now have 8 digit revenues and are sustainably profitable (much better than 5 digit revenues and 6 digit losses back 5 years ago…)

My wife was nice enough to remember the “birthday” and send this bouquet of cookies to the office:

GPS Insight 5th birthday

Many Heartfelt Thanks to everyone who has helped us make it to this important milestone. It has been challenging for everyone through the past few years with the economy like it is, and we are proud to have helped our customers save money, identify problems, and keep their drivers and businesses safe with GPS Insight’s GPS fleet tracking product.

Here’s to the next 5 years!

Rob

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

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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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Feb 03 2010

About to send our MILLIONTH Alert and perform our BILLIONTH Alert Check

Category: Alerts,Miscellaneous — rdonat @ 11:50 pm

I have a daily report which comes to me which tells me how close we are to hitting 2 major Alert milestones:

GPS Insight's Millionth Alert and Billionth Check are coming soon!

We are very close to sending our MILLIONTH alert out.

Shortly thereafter (unless drivers stop causing alerts which, uh, isn’t very likely…), we will process our BILLIONTH alert check.

We process a huge number of alerts checks and send quite a few each day.

In the short time I’ve been typing this blog article, we have processed 15,282 checks, yielding a relatively small number of alerts — 3.

This is because it’s night and most of our customers’ drivers aren’t driving, let alone speeding, idling, or going in or out of landmarks. Chances are those were odd-hours alerts…

I’ll let everyone know when we hit these marks.

[worth noting, on 8/15/2009, when I last wrote about this, we were only at 350 million checks and 419,000 alerts. Customers are really starting to utilize our alerts more now than they have in the past]

Rob.

Tags: Fleet Tracking, GPS Tracking, GPS Tracking alerts, Vehicle Tracking

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Dec 20 2009

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year from GPS Insight!

Category: Miscellaneous — rdonat @ 5:56 pm

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year from GPS Insight

Click here for the animated holiday card!

Thanks for everyone’s support in 2009 & best wishes for the Holidays and a Happy New Year.

Rob.

Tags: Happy Holidays from GPS Insight

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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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