GPS tracking of equipment
 

Hey guys,

Need some help with small, lightweight, durable, and long lasting GPS tracking units to could be attached to a piece of equipment in some fashion. I have looked at "The Spot."

My ideal situation would allow me to turn on my computer and be able to ping a piece of equipment and allow it to relay its coordinates. Does something of this nature even exist? The batteries need to be long lasting, because I may not have access to the equipment for long periods of time.

Thanks,
SmileWavy

u should be only limited money and physical size. if you put a big lipo battery pack on the Spot, it'll last much longer into weeks/months.

what kind of application are you looking at?

That will be an interesting device. The GPS will need to be outdoors to get a GPS lock to let you know where it is, and a way to transmit that data to the internet. Kinda sounds like a cell phone and with a BIG battery.

Not necessarily outdoors...just not in a heavily-fortified (concrete) building.

A lot of companies have been doing this for quite some time now primarily in the trucking/ logistics industries. Search for "logistic gps tracking".

Krystar,

I am looking at tracking oil and gas equipmeint globally. An easy task when you only have 10 small items to track domestically, but now have 100 small items to track globally.

There has to be some type of system for this application.

I understand that trucking companies use these. But, I need something thats roughly 2 inch x 2 inch. I am fairly space limited.

many of the buy & pay here car places use a tracker program..
have seen the software..
can't recall what it's called..
not sure about global..
does the US for sure ..

going this route would solve you power issue.

Portable GPS Tracker,Vehicle GPS Tracker,China Portable GPS Tracker Manufacturer

Used to be affiliated with these guys:
http://www.comtrack.ca/images/MT2000Spec.pdf

This looks like a viable alternative but, I haven't gone beyond an initial search:
http://gtxcorp.com/sites/default/files/GTX_GL100_Specs_Datasheet.pdf

Can you fit a solar panel? That would downsize the battery.

Tom, how big can this be?

GTX provides the equipment for biomed shipment tracking but, the real driver for Tom (besides the very small size he quoted: 2" x 2") is the length of time the tracking needs to be active. That's a surprisingly tight size requirement given my impression of the types of equipment that would be deemed "for oil and gas"

Define tracking..
Are you wanting to monitor something while it's in a building, to a defined parameter, or out in the wild?

In the wild:
GPS will track and save for downloading later almost anywhere, provided an antennae to the sky.

Sending might require telephony, a bigger battery, and/or bluetooth connectivity to a nearby device with that capability.