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If your use is non-commercial, you can use APRS. There are Android apps for cell phones, and numerous devices, some tiny, suitable for embedding. You'll need a ham radio license, which for this community should be little more than a minor formality.

The network to receive and map positions is global. See:

https://aprs.fi/

APRS is a very nice tracking system. I've used it in the past to send location of race participants - such as a bicycle race, where I would travel behind the last rider, and then report the location automatically. You need digipeaters to insure good coverage, which can be set up portably. But worth the effort. They have ground truth of the last riders, the meal people can get an idea of arrival times of the last group, and if an ambulance or sag wagon is needed, an actual location is right there in lat-lon format.

If your use is non-commercial, you can use APRS. There are Android apps for cell phones, and numerous devices, some tiny, suitable for embedding. You'll need a ham radio license, which for this community should be little more than a minor formality.

The network to receive and map positions is global. See:

https://aprs.fi/

It does make you wonder what Snapchat was thinking with this feature. Did nobody anticipate that jerks would drive crazy speeds because of this thing?

Jerks do crazy things in any event. Perhaps the automaker should be sued because it created a vehicle that was capable of going 107 miles per hour.

I use an amateur radio operation called APRS. It tracks my vehicle via sending my GPS location to VHF repeater towers, that in turn broadcast the position to other radios and also to stations known as iGates. The iGates send the info to the internet, to sites like http://aprs.fi/ . Location, speed weather conditions, and twitter-like messages can be sent all over the world.

But just because my speed is easy to see, doesn't mean I'm going to speed. I have no desire to document myself driving at 107 miles per hour, as yes, if getting into an accident at that speed, that easily findable info would be used as evidence against me. Just proves I am dumb enough to document my stupidity.

It is a stupid feature on snapchat - which is a stupid application in the first place. But there has to be stupid things for stupid people to do, and an asshole who would drive that fast on the highway is likely to do so anyhow.

So let's ban Snapchat, APRS, dashboard Cams, or anything that documents the speed someone is going because some asshole dirves too fast using them.

I wish it were so simple, but read this blog post about what recently happened to aprs.fi, a well-known service in the amateur radio community for mapping APRS locations (and many other movements e.g. ships). Google tries very much to make sure that you are using as many of their services as possible, and here access to Google Maps was denied entirely because they had provided the option to use OpenStreetMap and it was possible to go from there to Google Street View.

Leo Bodnar launched a small balloon with a 11 gram payload. The payload is solar powered and has telemetry. Balloon hobbyists have been watching the flight since July 12th 2014. It is still flying. It has circled the earth (not at equator) about 5 times now I believe.

B-64/M0XER-4 Flight Web Page
APRS Position

Simply amazing. The longest flight I can recall prior to this was one that was launched in California and made it to somewhere near the Mediterranean sea a few days later.

Packet radio is done every single day on HF on up. With APRS, you can get messages from one coast to the other and back again without any internet or phone connection.

If you DO have an Internet connection, http://www.aprs.fi/ even shows you where all of the beacons, digipeaters, and stations are at a given time, and allows you to see all of the packets that are sent.

Radio amateurs (hams) have been doing something like this for years with APRS. Aircraft (and ground vehicles, boats, etc.) contain a VHF transmitter (and other equipment) to transmit GPS information to a network of ground stations. The data makes its way to some networked servers on the Internet and a feed can be taken by anyone. A raw feed won't let you visualize but numerous mapping applications are available.

Here's an example of the track of one specific airplane for the past 60 days.

If that site is slashdotted (quite possible) this site will also provide the track of KA1GJU-6 (and all other APRS stations) although visualization and useability for aircraft stations suffers.

OOPS, that was K6RPT-13, a different balloon . Here's the balloon, K6RPT-11:

2011-12-11T16:18:25: K6RPT-11>APBL10,WR6ABD*,WIDE2:!????????/?????????O???/??/A=189423V288 CNSP-11
2011-12-11T16:18:37: K6RPT-11>APBL10,WR6ABD*,WIDE2:!????????/?????????O???/???/A=109373V266 CNSP-11
2011-12-11T16:20:31: K6RPT-11>APBL10,WR6ABD*,WIDE2:!?????????/????????O???/??/A=109373V255 CNSP-11
2011-12-11T16:24:31: K6RPT-11>APBL10,WR6ABD*,WIDE2:!3715.57N/12152.44WO328/000/A=000082V255 CNSP-11

Here's both: http://aprs.fi/?call=K6RPT-13,K6RPT-11&mt=roadmap&z=9&timerange=259200&_s=ss_call

One method - and kinda fun too - get your Technician class ham license and setup an APRS tracker. Hams have been doing this since when, 1998 or so. It's pretty much 'ancient' tech. But robust as all get-out. Not only can you track your scooter - but you can do other things too. Better part? Once you've got it up and running - no air charges. http://www.aprs.org/ http://www.aprs.fi/

Seems they're out of AIS range. You can still see them on APRS.

A little more technical detail:

Most small/compact (handheld) amateur radios are UHF/VHF units. (Usually called HTs, for Handheld Transceivers) The two most popular ham bands are the 2 meter (144-148 MHz) and 70 cm (approx. 440 MHz, I'm a bit rusty and haven't touched my radio in a few years.)

VHF/UHF communications is line of sight based, so unless you're within LOS of a repeater, you probably won't be able to do much, unless you have friends nearby with similar units. You can operate VHF/UHF HTs in a unit-to-unit (Simplex) mode, but most people use them to talk via repeaters. Repeaters listen on one frequency and transmit on another, usually with an offset of 600 kHz in the 2 meter band. Even if you are in coverage of a repeater, it's not always guaranteed someone will be listening.

APRS (Automatic Packet Reporting System) can report your position with periodic position broadcasts. This could let friends track your movements whenever you're in coverage of an APRS gateway or digipeater, for example at http://aprs.fi/

There are also portable solutions for HF (global) communications (frequency 30 MHz), but the most portable solutions (suitable for a backpacker) will only do Morse code and not voice.

Getting a license is pretty easy and cheap (no Morse code required for the Technician license that allows VHF/UHF operation, and the FCC may even be allowing operation on the HF bands without a Morse test now - I'm not sure if they've updated their rules based on the ITU rule changes a few years ago), so I would recommend starting the process of studying and finding an exam session now.

Andy Dodd
N2YPH

This has been around for awhile. http://aprs.fi/ links devices sending messages via rf and also routes through the internet although the internet link is not needed. Doing it with cell phones is a good idea though.

Using HAM radio, I can do this using APRS (http://www.aprs.org) A GPS receiver tied to a mini-computer that you can build as a kit that acts as a modem for a small pocket-sized radio. Byonics (http://www.byonics.com) sells the kits called TinyTrak's or they make an all-in-one package that does this: http://www.byonics.com/microtrak/mtaio.php APRS is the packet radio format of the radio transmission, and it's picked up by APRS users in the area and forwarded over to an internet gateway. Then you could go to http://www.findu.com/ or http://aprs.fi/ to locate your call sign and watch it's movements. I do this all the time with my car and most cities have really good coverage. The only downside is it would require you to get a HAM license (not hard at all) and you can not use encryption at all. You would have to accept the fact that anyone can track your call sign, you don't have to give out your callsign to anyone though.

Here's the correct aprs.fi link: http://aprs.fi/kc2tua-8 - the article uses a CGI argument of callsign= while the correct one would be call=.

It saddens me that none of you have mentioned APRS. It's a long-standing and open protocol for doing positions reporting.

Slashdot needs more HAMs. ~KB1PNB

The advantage of using dumb old radios is that you can operate independent of any fixed infrastructure, so it's usable even where you don't have cell coverage.

Tracking something small like a dog (I've had inquiries about kangaroos, too) introduces the problem of antenna placement, though. APRS is typically used on the 2-meter band, which means a quarter-wave vertical antenna is half a meter long. I did once put a passive data logger on my cat, and found that she roams a little more widely than I thought, but that doesn't really count.

The advantage of relatively low frequencies and high transmit power is that you can cover a radius of 20 miles from one mountaintop digipeater (equivalent to a cell site), and they're not difficult to make solar powered.

There's a nationwide digipeater network in the US, and most of Europe is covered as well, along with much of New Zealand, Australia, and many other countries. I think there are at least two APRS-capable satellites on orbit too, though PCSAT-1 is dying. Internet gateways are all over the place, so you can map APRS stations online, and not have to maintain any receive-side hardware of your own.

I'm constantly surprised by the applications people come up with for this stuff. The most recent I heard was someone with a cable TV company who found that he could drive around and transmit at low power every couple of seconds and use a receiver back at the headend to plot ingress leaks in the cable system.

Add to that the fact that you can do two-way text messaging, weather, and telemetry, and it's more than worth the hassle of taking a simple multiple-choice license exam. It's this sort of thing that's going to save ham radio (if anything can) - talking to people around the world just doesn't interest people as much these days, when it's so easy to do on the Internet or the phone.