Slashdot Mirror
GPS Trackers Find Novel Applications
Pickens writes "Inexpensive GPS devices like the Zoombak (which costs just $200 plus $10 a month) have becomes so prevalent that some people are using them routinely to keep tabs on their most precious possessions. Kathy Besa has a Zoombak attached to the collar of her 5-year-old beagle, Buddy. If Buddy wanders more than 20 feet from the house, she gets a text message on her phone that says, 'Buddy has left the premises.' The small size made possible by chip advances over the last two or three years is enabling many novel uses of GPS tracking. An art collector in New York uses one when he transports million-dollar pieces, a home builder is putting them on expensive appliances to track them if they disappear from construction sites, a drug company is using them after millions of dollars in inventory turned up missing, and a mobile phone company is hiding them in some cellphone boxes to catch thieves."
Ok, say I'm paranoid. Is there anything on the market that can detect these devices?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Isn't this the goal of RFID, to be able to track all your things.. but much much much cheaper than the zoombak's nutty price.
I wish I could have something like this for my car keys... I lose those damn things all the time!
If patriotism is racist, is racism patriotic?
$200 + $120/year? Not "inexpensive" enough for me to stick onto my dog!
They have had tracking devices around for a while now. Are these just the first designed for non-police or non-military?
That's enough out of me.
$10 a month? I wonder if I put one in my car if I will get a $10 a month break in my car insurance bill.
-516
... no potential for abuse whatsoever!
I caught the Mountain Wumpus! He gave me his treasure chest ($100) to let him go free again.
to their employees. If any of them get to close to things like OSCON, Ballmer comes after them with a chair.
How come there is no first post? I'm confused.
Mahalik: She told me that she heard a zombie going through her trash the other day. The next morning, she turned up missing.
C. J.: What? Okay, back up. How in the hell do you "turn up missing"?
Mahalik: 'Cause nobody knows where you are when they realize you ain't there!
C. J.: So you telling me that you can appear and disappear at the same time.
Mahalik: No, man. You can't appear and disappear at the same time. The bitch ain't David Copperfield!
C. J.: Mmm. No, no. But you can't be gone from one place and show up somewhere else entirely. So when you turn up, you're never missing. And when you're missing, you never turn up.
Mahalik: Unless... you a zombie.
C. J.: Damn! Hey, that's some plausible shit right there. You should blog about that.
Mahalik: I'm gonna put that on MySpace.
C. J.: You do that!
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
This is a great opportunity for nursing homes to track old people when they wonder off
I work for what's left of a company that actually managed to go bust developing this stuff.
We faced several challenges with the technology. Power consumption gave us ulcers, as did mobile network coverage. This is a non-issue in the city, but just wait until you're out of town.
GPS wanders around enough from fix to fix, even with WAAS, that it can be tricky to compare fixes to detect movement, or to track movement of less than 50 meters. Oh, and the GPS needs to be able to hear satellite signals. Good luck on that.
Finally, once you have a fix back at your server, you need to make it meaningful to the user. They do not generally want a bare latitude and longitude. They want to know what street their car is on. When the parents want to know if the kids take the car too far from home, they want to enter a street address, not a latitude and longitude. This is harder to get right than it looks.
Favourite application: tracking sub-prime used cars so repo men can find them.
...laura
Am I missing something here? Don't mobile phones already have GPS (at least here in the USA)? And unique ID numbers burnt into them? Sure, another always-on GPS device could be handy for as long as the battery lasts (which begs the question of why can the battery last longer in the tiny GPS bug than it lasts in a consumer targeted GPS unit), but it would seem that most mobile phone thefts that could be caught with this GPS bug would be caught and tracked down as soon as the thief or buyer of the stolen property tried to use the phone anyway, and the phone could either be made useless (greatly reducing the incentive for theft) or let working (to help track down whoever has it, just as the GPS bug would do).
This sounds like something that was invented by the Department of Redundancy Department.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
For $200 I will sell you a really nice leash. That will stop that pesky beagle from getting away.
It's funny how the Times' editors felt it necessary to punctuate each letter in "G.P.S.". What is this, the Man from U.N.C.L.E.? Maybe some year they'll realize that GPS is regular everyday stuff. You know, like A.T.M. machines and D.V.D. players.
I read this as
GPS Trackers Find Novell Applications
My thinking was that it was some kind of subtle joke...
I've been wondering how long this would take to get into a more public role. I've had ham radio based APRS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_Position_Reporting_System) installed in my cars for a while. When I show people a publicly available map of my travels, reaction ranges from salivating impressed (it's probably been ham radio's last "killer app"), to absolute horror ("you mean, you don't care if people know where you are?").
But, I think a lot of people would willingly turn on such a feature (say, on a mobile phone with a GPS chip and a GPRS connection.
Anyway, I read the article to our beagle and asked her opinion. She points out that beagles do not run away, they are called away on urgent tracking business. She feels that any human that hangs out with beagles and wants to attach tracking boxes to them is a distrustful person who possibly lacks the right spiritual qualities. She also reminds me that she can detect a beagle treat coming out of the bag across three fields, and that in any case anyone who has trouble with beagles taking off is simply not taking them for sufficiently long walks. She thinks I should notify the ASPCA before relations completely break down between this unfortunate beagle and its lazy, distrustful owner.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
satellite mounted high power rfid readers
i am of course joking but i just scared myself thinking about the spy agency/ military bureaucrats who would actually sign off on this concept
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I got a GPS unit that connects to my camera. I use it to keep track of my photos by embedding the location inside the EXIF information in the photo. That way if I lose it, I know where to go to find it again. Oh, wait. Nevermind. Though it is useful for geocaching.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
Does anyone know of a tiny GPS logger that could be used for tracking cats?
I have a co-worker who has a couple of outdoor cats, and one often goes on trips for a day or longer, not coming home. When he comes back she wonders where he has been (and the rest of us are a little curious as this seems to happen relatively often).
I would be great to have a little GPS logger that would just keep track of where he had been so we could try to see what he's been up to. The device mentioned in the article is interested, but it's quite expensive (due to the active nature requiring the monthly subscription). The other devices I've seen are either custom built or not very small (more like standard GPS handheld size).
Does anyone know of any small (small enough to put on a grown cat) and inexpensive (under $200) boxes that would fit the bill?
Pet tracking would be quite a bit of fun, especially with pets that seem like they might have a large home range they run around. Heck, it's geocaching with a moving target!
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
For providing people the ability to summon help or provide their whereabouts, there are things like SPOT which is less expensive than the system mentioned in the article, both for purchase and maintenance. For purely emergency use, the Personal Locator Beacons are more expensive to purchase but require no service fee. However, there's no way to send non-emergency or "I'm here" messages.
Liam Healy
Im just glad someone found Novell's applications. I haven't seen any in years............... *chirp *chirp........... thank you ladies and gentlemen, I'll be here all week
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.
Nice zoombak plug! (which costs JUST $200 plus $10 a month)
If you would like to better hide your advertising in an 'article', don't use JUST when describing the price. It makes it sound like an infomercial.
my dogs (which are the ages of 13, 11, 2) are worth a lot more to me than the $400 a year it will cost me to keep track of them, god forbid they get out. i'll piss away $400 in a weekend. to some of us they're more then justs "pets" and "man's best friend".
and no... i'm not with peta and i eat meat. i just love my mutts.
While it is not GPS, you can attach a Cat Cam to a cat to get a time lapse record of where the cat has been.
Indeed. I pondered on that point for a moment or two.
These applications aren't that interesting for geeks, even if the basic tech is. This story is just an ad for Zoombak.
--
make install -not war
This sounds great for keeping tabs on my future wife...
It's unfortunate that this device is hobbled by the crappiest network in the US. They should have picked Verizon or AT&T.
He's going to rack up a helluva SMS bill considering they love to roam.
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
The more mature and somewhat cheaper DriveOk http://www.driveoktracking.com/products.php devices have been available for a while now.
The signals from the Galileo Positioning System are supposed to be able to penetrate buildings and that would be a vast improvement over GPS. It's not ready yet of course.
But what they've actually developed is a small, inexpensive GPS tracking device. Small enough and cheap enough so that almost anyone can track almost anything. As production ramps up they'll get even smaller and cheaper.
I can imagine all the fun and thrills: track your kids, your spouse, your employees - what fun! This isn't some cheap RFID solution; this little beauty will find them across town or in another state. I'll bet our government would love to embed these little goodies in every new car produced (without saying anything). After 10 years or so they'd be able to track virtually every vehicle in real time; with that ability it'd only take a little time for creative bureaucrats to find ways to monetize the data.
Hmmm; distance / time calculations are cheap; car 298576893 covered 1.4 miles on I-15 in 58 seconds so look up the registered owner and mail them an automatic speeding ticket. Don't forget to also automatically notify their insurance company; they'll pay well for this data. Heck, the little tracking device could also forward marketable data such as what radio station is tuned in, what CD is playing, how many people in the car, etc.
Hey; that would be pretty easy - we've already got switches in the seats to detect occupants for seat belt chimes and airbag control, so if the GPS location is a car pool lane and there's not enough people in the car - mail the registered owner an automatic ticket for a carpool violation.
Systems like these NEVER make any mistakes, you know - and if you're doing nothing wrong you've got nothing to worry about, right? And just imagine how those bureaucrats would love to see that extra revenue coming in - and what they're likely to do to make this wet dream come true.
Just put yer tin foil hat on it.
Spot Messenger is a PLB that doesn't rely on cell towers. Good for being in remote areas in case something goes wrong. Friends or family can track your progress (if you let them) and you can send out a distress signal if you need help. http://www.findmespot.com/
GPS is not designed to provide an accurate measure of altitude. There are altimeters you could use to see if your animal got under a fence or up a tree, but GPS wouldn't be ideal for that purpose.
If you just used an intersection, you might not be able to find you pet here. With Lat and Lon, Google maps can show you your pet is here;
http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&safe=off&q=Finding+lat+lon+on+google+maps&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wl
Just plug in the coordinates in the map search bar as "44.077967 -121.314898" using format Lat.XXXXXX in decimal and Lon.XXXXXX in decimal. Use a minus for South Latitudes an West Longitudes. The above example is in a golf course in Bend Oregon USA. You wouldn't see your pet from the nearest intersection the service would provide.
The truth shall set you free!
How do these devices work? I know the GPS part is free, but how is the tracking communications done?
Can I do this without paying someone $10/month?
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
My GPS Tracker sent me this, about Buddy:
"Buddy has left the preferences"
"Buddy is in the neighbor's trash"
"Buddy is running into the street"
"Buddy is in the same position as a Chevy Suburban"
"Buddy is stopped on the street"
"A google satellite photo is attached with a picture of Buddy"
"Google Adwords has selected "Shovel" as something that you might need with Buddy."
This is my sig.
I feel a raft of very bad patents coming on...
You people need to learn a little humility, if you consider $200 for a lame-ass gps toy 'inexpensive'. I bet you have iphones and other apple equipment, too?
"Chair has moved 20 feet outside conference room window"
12:50 - press return.
Similar deal (but in Aussie $'s):
About $200 for the phone (limited to dialing up to 5 parent-/owner-set tel.no's; can be tracked on user's cell-phone (newer model, on which a map can be displayed) or by a tracking centre, that owner can contact - for a fee, eg, it the child or - here - asset goes missing).
The monthly fee can be higher, here: just under Au$ 30.00 / mon
(There's also a pre-paid option... cost...? We don't use 'em...)
Okay, so I'm a word nerd, but "millions of dollars in inventory turned up missing" is just a foul use of the language. How in the name of sweet little baby Jesus nailed to a tree can something "turn UP missing"? It's like proving god doesn't exist. Logically, you can't prove god doesn't exist, nor can things "turn up missing". "Turned out to be", "was shown to be", etc., it's not rocket science.
It tells me when Elvis has left the building
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
A buddy of mine was looking at getting a divorce, but hadn't said a word to the wife. Then, one day, he was balancing the checkbook and discovered a purchase, for a few hundred dollars, from a creditor he didn't recognize. When he looked online, he found that the company sold GPS tracker units, and provided a website which would allow you to see where the tracker had been for the last 48 hours or so.
He cracked her password on the site and saw that she'd been tracking his whereabouts for over a week. He dug through the car and found the tracker.
The next day, during his lunch break, he drove to the office of a notorious divorce attorney, and sat in the parking lot for about 45 minutes. He didn't actually go in and talk to the divorce attorney; he just sat in the parking lot. Then, he drove to one of the larger gun stores in the area, and sat in the parking lot for half an hour.
His wife as "extremely nice" when he got home, that day.
When he finally told her that we wanted a divorce, he cited her "suspicious nature" as part of his reasons. When she acted clueless, he went to the car, got the tracker, brought it in and showed it to her. Then, he logged into the website and showed where he'd been for the last few days. Finally, he smashed the tracker, in front of her.
I can seriously understand putting one in a car with a teenage driver, though. You would, of course, have to make sure they didn't know about it. Otherwise, they'd just ride with someone else who isn't being watched (or ditch/disable the tracker).