GPS Tracking ROI

Ultra Mobile Platform … looks pretty cool, doesn’t it?   There are a lot, a virtual ton of handheld or pocket devices you can buy that will play music, play video, access the Internet, calculate your stock dividends and make you less of a dork.  (well, I’m not so sure about that last claim ;-)).  But in almost all cases these devices have used “one off” kinds of processors and chip sets rather than those from the big names, like Intel.

Also, they have typically not addressed GPS … either the personal location aspect or the use of live GPS tracking of people, vehicles or other business assets to get an ROI that translates direct to a business’s bottom line.

About the best I have seen to date have been some HP handsets that run Windows Mobile and have a built in GPS receiver, rather than the common kludge most manufacturers seem to think is adequate … selling you the device without GPS and then selling you some sort of “stick on”, a GPS receiver that talks to the main device via a USB (Universal Serial Bus) port or my absolute least favorite, the under-performing, over-hyped  Bluetooth technology which I still look upon as a solution in search of a requirement.

Anyway, about today’s featuree. SiRF is one of the top of the line chip manufactures who has made a real name for themselves in the GPS world over the past few years. Now, instead of focusing on black pieces of silicon and plastic that can be linked together they are moving into the realm of integrating GPS with the other features of the device … an excellent move in the view of Mr. GPS.

Intel and Microsoft handhelds have had one major problem for years now … they eat power like a 300 pound BBW eats Burger King Whoppers … and there hasn’t been a stomach stapler solution that works up until now.

Not only are these UMPC devices something worth watching (in both senses of the word), but the power saved through smart integration may yet enable Microsoft and Intel to actually penetrate this market with something that will run longer than an hour or two between battery charges.

It isn’t the weekend yet for most of you but it is Friday morning here in the Philippines and I just couldn’t resist this eye candy.

UAV (Unmanned or Uninhabited Aerial Vehicles) are hot items in today’s world of war fighting, surveillance, mapping and other sciences demanding an aerial platform for sensors.

I originally got pointed at this curvaceous beauty by a Reuters article slugged: Venezuela launches Zeppelin to tackle rampant crime.  Zeppelin thinks I?  Wow, who is building that and how big is it?  I try to keep up on most of the lighter than air “new ideas”, see here and here for a couple neat examples … but a Zeppelin?  Wow.

OK, Reuters, it is not a Zeppelin.  But it is a really nice blimp (or non-rigid airship) made by a company in South Korea by the name of HanGIS.

The GIS in Han’s name stands for Geographic Information Systems, a buzzword from the late 1990’s that refers to systems that use both geographic data and “old style” information systems … what we used to call databases.  I worked for a great little GIS company a few years back .. one of my dearest friends was the chief tech guy and he and I were both fascinated with LTA (Lighter Than Air) vehicles.  We even had a remote control indoor blimp for our trade show appearances … but we were never smart enough to realize we could have made money from our “boys and toys” fascination.  Hats off to Han GIS and to Caracas, Venezuela for using an innovative and modern “old technology” for the right reasons.  You may now click next to read what the curmudgeon has to say about Reuters 9and other mass media’s reportage … or not.

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I think I have been pretty open about the drawbacks and weaknesses of GPS … anyone who reads this blog a month or more certainly  knows the term “urban canyon” and if you didn’t you will learn more today.  The industry in general is pretty honest when making claims for performance .. especially claims of rapid ROI (Return On Investment) which can be verified easily.  But one place even a few of the big boys fall down is failure to acknowledge the places where GPS doesn’t really work well, or work at all.

URBAN CANYONS: This is a generic term for any place where a GPS receiver can’t see an adequate expanse of sky because of crowded city buildings.  No matter what the manufacturer tells you, all units will suffer from this effect.  And the effect will vary significantly from day to day and hour to hour.  I get quite a chuckle out of schemes to put GPS units on taxis in (as just one example) New York City, where the drivers are in strong opposition to the plan.  Since New York has probably the largest and deepest concentration of “urban canons”, the units are going to perform abysmally a great deal of the time and the drivers are surely going to point this out.

By definition any other place the sky is obstructed is going to cause poor or no performance as well.  Heavy canopies of tree foliage, tunnels and underground parking garages are the worst culprits.  Just imagine a GPS receiver heading east along ah highway locked on to 4 satellites to the North, West and South … nothing to the East, where the receiver’s vehicle is headed, because there’s a huge mountain up ahead.  Suddenly the road goes into a tunnel, and when the vehicle pops out on the East side of the tunnel perhaps none of the former “ok” satellites are going to be in view.  I’m not sure if there’s a command in the processing chip of most receivers labeled “WTF?”, but that’s an accurate description of how the unit is going to feel.

Reception Problems: For reasons as far ranging as huge eruptions on the Sun’s surface to Homer Simpson’s unshielded sparkplugs on his rusted out 1982 Belchfire sedan, GPS signals are not guaranteed to get down from the satellites to your receiver 100% of the time.  Typical GPS systems just “jump” from where they last knew their whereabouts to where they finally find themselves after signals resume … but that’s not what actually happened to the vehicle during the reception outage and would be really disconcerting to a person watching supposedly “live” real-time tracking of the vehicle.

One Smart Provider: ublox is a Swiss company who is one of the few manufacturers if GPS chip sets (the “engines” that power all GPS receivers) who is smart about the needs of the system.  They have been steadfastly designing and rolling out products with a RD Dead Reckoning components .. sensors that take the speed of the vehicle as measured by the turning of the wheels and the compass course made good and continually update the supposed position based on actual vehicle behavior until the satellites one again provide an adequate update.

Before you invest in a system, ask your provider what’s going to happen when your units lose signal … because it is not a question of if you’ll enter and urban canyon, but rather when.