Hold on to your hats!

On Friday September 23, 2011 – a six ton defunct satellite is expected to come crashing down to earth.  Government officials don’t know exactly where the school bus sized satellite will be falling.  However, if it does happen to land anywhere in the United States FEMA will be directly involved.  The satellite named UARS was launched in 1991 to study the ozone layer.

NASA is advising people, “If you find something you think may be a piece of UARS, do not touch it. Contact a local law enforcement official for assistance.”  NASA also claims that,  “Since the beginning of the space age, there has been no confirmed report of an injury resulting from reentering space objects.”

Interestingly enough, “A woman in Turley, Oklahoma, got a noggin-knock in January 1997 when she was struck with a lightweight fragment of charred woven material. She was not injured. The sky junk was identified as debris from a Delta 2 booster, which reentered the Earth’s atmosphere on Jan. 22, 1997. Other debris from that booster included a steel propellant tank and a titanium pressure sphere.” (from space.com)

The question often asked is, can I mount my GPS tracking device so that it is hidden from plain view?

The answer is yes.

Here’s a little background, GPS signal is beamed down to earth from the 24 Global Positioning Satellite System.  The signal transmits on the 1575.42 band, better known as L1.  These radio signals are pretty robust, they are able to penetrate and be received through materials such as wood, glass, and plastic.  However, they will not penetrate metal.

That being said, a GPS device placed in a vehicle, under a dash with no metal obstructions works well.  In fact, most every hardwired GPS vehicle tracker is installed this covert manner.

So how than does a GPS tracker work under a vehicle?

That’s a good question, as vehicles are comprised primarily of metal, one would expect it not to work at all.  GPS signal as it is beamed down, hits the surface of the earth and gets reflected back up, basically, it bounces off the ground.  A vehicle equipped with a GPS tracker attached to it’s under carriage is able to receive the bounced GPS signal.

Some people are under the impression, that GPS tracking devices can be mounted inside a vehicle’s engine compartment.  This will not work, the engine compartment is one big metal box.  Moreover, the heat produced by the engine may damage the electronics inside the GPS tracking device.  We would not recommend this.

The portable PT-10 Professional GPS tracker, works extremely well in these conditions.  Feel free to contact with any GPS questions you may have, thanks for reading our blog!

Our Live GPS tracking systems generate a lot of data. Thousands of records per month for each vehicle. What’s the advantage to the end user?

For one, route playbacks are precise. Getting position updates every 10 seconds versus every one or two minutes are much more accurate. A user on the Live Trac system can stop, start and even rewind playback, while viewing vehicle positions on a map. A questions about a vehicles location, at a given time, or even vehicle speed can be reviewed and verified at anytime.

For a business owner, GPS tracking can be much more than “watching” your employees. In fact, with proper reporting, you will be able to easily identify efficient, as well as inefficient driver behavior. Almost any metric, related to a driver’s behavior can be measured.

In basic terms, all this data is stored and held on a database. Sifting through the data and identifying events such as a vehicle driving at an odd hour, or on a day it shouldn’t be moving can be done fairly easily.

Did you know that many insurance companies offer discounts for anti-theft, vehicle protection devices?

It makes total sense.  With our hardwired Live Trac gps tracking system the chances of quickly recovering your stolen stolen vehicle are increased 100 fold.  The moment your vehicle is stolen, you will be able to view the exact location of your vehicle.  Add another layer of protection, like a starter disable, and once your vehicle’s ignition is turned off, the car will no longer start – until you re-enable the starter on the vehicle.

The installation of a LiveViewGPS hardwired system may qualify you for insurance discounts with your carrier.  We have seen discounts ranging anywhere from 5-33%.  Some states have mandated anti-theft device discounts.  These states include Texas, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, New York, New Mexico, New Jersey, Minnesota, Massachusetts and Illinois.   Keep in mind that each insurance company has a set of criteria that will determine the discount level.

If you’ve purchased, or are thinking of purchasing a LiveViewGPS vehicle tracking device, we strongly urge you to contact you insurance carrier to see what if any discounts would apply.  We are always happy to hear from our customers and potential customers, so if you’ve gotten a discount quote and would like to share, please let it in the comments below!

Covert locate on demand gps trackers allow a user to request a position update at will.  Commonly known as a “ping” request, a query is sent to a device which responds back with its location.  When integrated with a web based solution, the user’s request is typically done by pressing a request “locate” button from the web interface and within seconds, the user can see the location of the device on a map, like Google maps.

What goes on behind the scenes is a bit more complicated.  Using a combination of the internet and a wireless cellular data network information is transferred from server to device and back to server where it is viewed by the user.

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