A Short Guide to GPS Trackers for Vehicles & Why You Need One

Global Positioning System or GPS tracking has become an essential part of our lives and can help us track almost everything. We use GPS-enabled devices in our daily lives to track and locate many unknown places, but did you ever wonder how GPS trackers work?



What is a GPS Tracking device?

 

A GPS tracker for cars is a device that relies on a cluster of satellites to locate your position on the face of this earth. GPS trackers often provide latitude, longitude, altitude, and heading data for a given location.

 

Vehicle GPS trackers: Features & Benefits

 

You’ll find GPS trackers commonly in most mobile devices nowadays, and it is one of the main reasons why GPS tracking system has become quite popular. 

 

Access trip history easily - GPS trackers collect and store your location data so that you can go back and look at the trips you made. In addition to collecting location information, some GPS trackers can also measure speed. Data analytics-driven trackers can provide additional information about your trips.

 

Easy real-time tracking - Many GPS trackers provide real-time tracking with live location updates. This feature lets you use your tracker whenever you need it.

 

Geofencing & creating zone alerts - The term ‘’Geofencing’’ is used widely nowadays. With this capability, you can create a virtual “fence" around a specific area and receive arrival/departure notifications whenever the tracker enters/exits that particular zone.

 

Types of GPS tracking devices

 

We can broadly divide GPS tracking devices into three categories based on their primary functions.

 

Data loggers record location in routine intervals and save the information in the device’s internal memory. Some cameras use data logging to display the location, like where the photo was taken, and data loggers can be used to track vehicles, too.

 

Data pushers are the most common GPS tracking units & are commonly known as “GPS beacons." Rather than saving the location data on internal memory as data loggers do, data pushers send and store the information on the server. It means the storage space of the information is not as limited as for the data loggers.

 

Data pushers can also collect information about speed or altitude and store all of the information on the predetermined server at routine intervals.

 

Data pushers serve personal purposes and commercial purposes. The GPS tracker in your phone is a data pusher, and so are many vehicle tracking devices. Data pushers are also the type of GPS used to prevent theft of items from stores.

 

Data pullers are the last type of GPS trackers, also called GPS transponders. The data puller GPS does not send location updates at routine intervals. Instead, you request the data from it. This type of GPS is sometimes found in computers or for items where the location does not need to be known constantly.

 

OBD-II GPS devices

 

OBD GPS trackers for vehicles plug into the onboard diagnostic (OBD) port of a light or medium-duty vehicle. Usually, an OBD device draws power from the OBD port and contains a built-in antenna with a GPS module to receive the signal.

 

In addition, OBD trackers communicate with the different vehicle subsystems to receive vehicle diagnostic and fuel consumption-related data. A cellular OBD GPS tracker directly communicates with the cell tower to send the location and other vehicle performance data to the server over the cellular wireless network.

 

Users can view the information using standalone software, web browsers from a desktop/laptop computer, or smartphone apps. There is a huge growth in the OBD tracker’s user base, and vehicle owners now prefer OBD devices over ordinary GPS tracking devices as the former can keep a check on the vehicle’s health while tracking its location.





 

GPS tracker for consumer and commercial uses

 

Many GPS trackers exist for cars and commercial vehicle fleets. Most of them are battery-operated. These GPS trackers can connected to the automobile, and the tracking data can be accessed remotely from a server. These are a type of data pushers.

 

Other types of trackers can be plugged into the OBD-II port of the car, which is mostly used by mechanics to collect data and provide analytical information.

 

Fleet trackers possess more advanced features compared to consumer devices. They use the same technology, but the analytics portion is more complex because there are more vehicles to keep track and the user needs data for every unit in a fleet.

Fleet trackers use telematics technology and can be placed under data pushers.

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