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."

Comments

GPS bug detector?

[Hatta]

Ok, say I'm paranoid. Is there anything on the market that can detect these devices?

$200 + $10/mo!?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:$200 + $10/mo!?!?

[morgan_greywolf]

An RFID tag can't be used to track something very far from the RFID tag reader, let alone globally.

Inexpensive?

[g_adams27]

Inexpensive GPS devices like the Zoombak (which costs just $200 plus $10 a month)

$200 + $120/year? Not "inexpensive" enough for me to stick onto my dog!

Re:Inexpensive?

[fm6]

Everybody is not you. And jeez, $120 year is not that much when you consider the other costs of keeping a pet: vet bills, cleaning, paying for boarding or sitting when you're on vacation... And that's if you have some mongrel that you just keep for company.

I had this cat I was very fond of. Disappeared one day, and I never found out what happened to him. That was years ago, and I still miss the dude. That experience makes the Zoombak sound pretty cheap.

Re:Inexpensive?

[value_added]

Not "inexpensive" enough for me to stick onto my dog!

Seems like a fair comment, but if the dog gets lost, you'll need to figure in the cost of a reward and/or the time and resources required for putting up all those flyers. Then there's those emergency vet bills (if the dog gets into an accident), lawyer and court costs (if the dog bites the good samaritan trying to catch it for you), the loss of mail delivery to your home and cancellation of homeowner's insurance and a lawsuit (if the dog bites the mailman), or, if all goes well and the city finds your dog for you, the animal shelter fees. And this is all assuming it's not your wife's dog, or that you have kids whose questions you need to answer.

Beagles, incidentally, are notorious (bred, actually) for running off to hunt something down they find interesting, and then expecting you to catch up.

GPS sounds like an ideal solution for pet owners.

hiding them in some cellphone boxes?

[frovingslosh]

and a mobile phone company is hiding them in some cellphone boxes to catch thieves

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.

Re:hiding them in some cellphone boxes?

[daranz]

I'm assuming they're shipping cellphones that haven't been sold yet, and don't have any numbers tied to them (and so, they cannot send data over the network). Even if they had GPS receivers, they would have to be configured for the network, and then reset at destination. Even if this only involved inserting a sim card, it'd still be a bother, especially if you had to recharge the phones before putting them up for sale

Having a device that you can move between boxes as you ship them might be easier to do.

Re:hiding them in some cellphone boxes?

[DerekLyons]

and a mobile phone company is hiding them in some cellphone boxes to catch thieves

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?

Yes, mobile phones (some of them) have GPS. Yes, mobile phones have unique ID numbers. What you are missing is that "mobile phones" are not the same as "mobile phones in boxes" - as the former (generally) have their battery charged and installed and are powered up, while the latter are inert and those fancy functions don't work.
 
 

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

Using the phones built in features allows you to catch a single end user - once the phone has trickled from thief to fence to dealer to end user. Using a GPS bug you can track the phone through the entire chain and catch the guys at the start of the chain rather than catching the guys at the end and working up. From a LEO and a Loss Prevention point of view, this is much more efficient and effective.

Re:I used to do this stuff

[Technician]

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.

Check out the demo of how it works. They only give a location to the nearest intersection. This isn't very useful if your kid was abducted and whisked away into a large apartment complex. You know he is around somewhere, but out of sight. These would be much more useful for recovery of stolen property if in addition to the intersection, it gave the last 100 actual GPS coordinates. From there, you may be able to trace the direction to one block of apartments prior to loss of signal from going indoors. The last 100 fixes before signal loss would be very useful in tracking a stolen pet, child, or BMW.