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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."
... no potential for abuse whatsoever!
I caught the Mountain Wumpus! He gave me his treasure chest ($100) to let him go free again.
GPS is passive so probably not. You might be able to detect it sending but if it uses GSM or the old pager network you'd be flooded with noise.
You could (if you are that paranoid) block GPS traffic.
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An RFID tag can't be used to track something very far from the RFID tag reader, let alone globally.
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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
Yeah, and that's dog dollars. So that's like what, over $800 a year?
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It's called LoJack and I have it installed in both of my cars. You get a break on your insurance and in the even the vehicle is stolen and not recovered within 30 days you get a refund of the purchase price. However, they have a very good track record of recoveries, usually within a couple hours. I talked with two police officers before buying it and they both said it was great to have. Only works if the police closest to your car have the equipment but it's become standard with most cop shops so that shouldn't be a problem.
They also have an early warning system which I have on one of my cars and it's more annoying than anything. Basically if your car moves without the little box you keep on your key chain being present within the vehicle, you get a phone call / email / or text message (your choice) alerting you. The only problem is you have to change the battery every couple of months or you get false positives.
After having my neighbors truck stolen from right next to my open bedroom window one night, I decided I wanted something more than just a normal alarm (he had an alarm, his truck was locked, we never heard a thing and he never got his truck back) so I went with LoJack.
How is it that one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?
Beagles, incidentally, are notorious (bred, actually) for running off to hunt something down they find interesting, and then expecting you to catch up.
It's even better when you have a dog like the one I grew up with. He was half beagle and half border collie. He'd run off, track and chase down whatever it was he was after and then herd the damn thing(s) until you got there.
It didn't even seem to matter what it was - cows, chickens, my little cousin...
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.