SCADA, Telematics & GPS Technologies

ColdTrak, the leading Cold Chain vehicle tracking system from market leading GPS tracking specialists CMS SupaTrak is helping UK businesses save money on cold chain running costs thanks to the tracking applications

The cold chain monitoring solution enables fleet managers to get more control of their cold chain fleets by tracking the exact location of their vehicles whilst allowing their drivers to monitor the precise temperatures of refrigerated cargo saving them considerable costs.

In accordance to EU regulation EN 12830:1999 all cold chain businesses must now supervise the exact temperature of chilled or refrigerated goods whilst in transit ColdTrak has proven to be an indispensable business asset.

ColdTrak works using the very latest ZigBee technology and uses robust sensors that send precise temperature recordings from the refrigerated trailer to a central information hub or system in the cab with the driver. Should there be any changes in temperature the driver will be notified and the correct action can be taken.

Source: Open Press

Following the hike madness in global fuel price, Gussmann Technologies is revealing their precious Fuel Consumption Management module in their AVLS/Fleet Management software. Some charts & consumptions reporting are told to be as additional features in current version of the application, ver3.2. They also developed special fuel flowmeter & level sensor for this purpose.

Gussmann Technologies website, G1 web application

Vehicle Tracking System that rely 100% on GPRS sometimes will have this problem. The tracking device is functioning with GPS module exactly calculate the location. It keep on reporting to the central server for every single minute. The owner of the car or vehicle simply can watch their car moving on the web-based map on his or her PC. Suddenly, his or her car simply disappears on the map. Is the car just vanished into the air? He/She call the provider, regarding the lost. The operator pick up the call, and check the status of the car using SMS directly to the tracking device. He got text-based reply with car location and engine status.

The car maybe still drove by authorized driver on have been carjacked. How to solve this mystery?

The answer is: poor GPRS coverage. Hahahaha. Let’s the telco step forward to be blamed. The owner still not satisfying about this. So, he/she decides to stop subscribing the service. Again, the telco frees without blames and upgrading their system. The AVL provider is always lose. Maybe, we should do something about this.

One of our products is AVLS, Automatic Vehicle Locating System that make use of GPS and GPRS technologies as the main methods to locate and gather data into our main server before displays it as a dot in a web-based map that can be accessed by our customers anyway thru the internet. A part of our customers will use it as a Fleet Management tool. We also experiences some poor data gathering which is sometimes maybe result by poor GPRS coverage, invalid GPS data & also by bad vehicle wirings.

I’ve a short conversation this morning regarding to invalid GPS data or poor data retrieval from units that have been installed into VIP cars. I didn’t get a clear picture about type of car or the maker. Our field technicians told that it’s because of tinted-windshield. Sounds reasonable to me anyway.

The VIP cars, for sure should be a luxury car, got it windshields tinted and some of it have embedded radio antenna built into it.

Let’s talk just a little bit about how GPS works. Think of your GPS receiver as a little FM radio. The GPS satellites send signals that your GPS receiver can listen to. In fact, the frequency that GPS signals are broadcast over are on a frequency simlar to that of FM radio (1200 MHz and 1500 MHz areas). Anything that might disturb good reception over FM radio can also cause signal issues for GPS receivers.

It turns out that both of our readers were in vehicles where the FM antenna was built into the windshield. In one case the car was new to the reader and thus they didn’t notice that the poor reception had started when they started driving the newer vehicle. In the other case the driver was finding that the GPS could only pickup a good signal when on either side of the dashboard; when it was in the middle it was under the FM antenna and they had a difficult time getting a solid GPS signal.

I’ve also heard sporadic reports that certain tinted windshields can interfere with GPS reception although I haven’t been able to see this happening with my own eyes. So the type of car you drive (or more specifically the type of windshield you have) can interfere with the GPS signal. If your vehicle has a windshield with an integrated FM antenna you might need to locate the GPS receiver away from where the FM antenna is located to get good reception. I even heard from one reader who said their FM radio would no longer work when they turned on the GPS.

LoJack Stolen Vehicle Recovery System is an aftermarket vehicle tracking system that allows vehicles to be tracked by police after being stolen. The manufacturer claims a 90% recovery rate. The name “LoJack” was coined to be the “antithesis of hijack”, meaning the theft of a vehicle through force. Today, LoJack’s core business comprises the tracking and recovery of cars, trucks, construction equipment, commercial vehicles and motorcycles. Additionally, LoJack is expanding into newer, emerging markets through licensing agreements and investments in areas such as cargo security. LoJack Corporation claims that over 200,000 vehicles have been recovered worldwide since the product was introduced more than two decades ago.

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