Cell phone tracking probably won't work. Despite all those pretty maps on TV, cell phone coverage has lots of holes. Also, iPhones suck power like mad when using GPS.

There's better options, including the little GPS trackers some climbers use when they ascend Everest.

Yeah, Macs also do that uptime trick. The highest I've ever seen was on Inktomi search engine clusters... 100 million queries a day and hadn't been rebooted in 2 years.

When I say commercial stuff, I mean commercial grade solutions have been fully developed for "where's my trailer".
http://gpstrackit.com/ http://www.trailertracking.com/ http://www.fleetilla.com/ etc.

Cell phone tracking probably won't work. Despite all those pretty maps on TV, cell phone coverage has lots of holes. Also, iPhones suck power like mad when using GPS.

How does a commercial device communicate? They're not using someone's cel infrastructure?

The main argument against an iPhone is that there's no provision for external antennas for GPS & comm meaning it would need to be mounted in a window for best results (maybe inside a plastic box to disguise it). (It could go on a roof that way and be more omnidirectional but then you're more at risk of damage, theft, concerns about overheating on a sunny day etc.)

Power isn't an issue as you'd wire a 12V car adapter (or the guts from one) to one or more large deep cycle batteries.

Steve

In 2009 we placed a GPS tracking unit in the dome car on the 4449 train. It was from a company called World Tracker and was bought off ebay for around $250. We just had to purchase a sim card from T-mobile and the tracking began. The system was designed for tracking of cheating spouses or employees.

The system worked great with the exception of dead spots in the mountains. it updated regularly at 45 sec intervals. The problem we had was amount of web traffic following the 4449. At times we were serving over 5000 continuous viewers that were logged on for 8 hours at a time. This caused the server to crash multiple times. When the server crashed, all the viewers were kicked off. When they all started logging back in, the cycle would repeat.

Once in Minneapolis we were able to fix the problem by moving away from Google maps and going to Google Earth for tracking. This created neat 3D tracking. When we went to Google earth tracking, the system never crashed.

This was very popular as people tracked the train on their cell phones while out chasing. These types of systems are inexpensive and change the way railfans chase trains. Passengers can also login and find out where they are and how fast they are going. We will definitely use the system again - this summer!

One of the previous posts jogged my memory. Several years ago, CSX in Baltimore had PTI, the railroad taxi company, install GPS tracking transmitters on their yard vans, so the terminal TM could see where everyone was. They had been having problems with drivers sneaking off to sleep, or go hacking (illegal cab) with the van, or in one case use it for running drugs (gotta love Charm City, The Wire was more documentary than fiction!).

Anyway, this device can be tracked from any PC that has the software package. It will show the location of numerous transmitter equipped vehicles at once, show them moving in real time over a map, give cross-street location, and the actual speed the vehicle is traveling at. If anyone here is really serious about tracking a piece of equipment, I'd say that is the way to go. I believe the hardware box can be hidden, but you need to install a small whip-type antenna through a window, at least that is the way they were installed on the vans - upper corner of the windshield. Obviously, the antenna has to be in a place the satellite can get the signal.

I was thinking about this thread and it came to mind that many automobile leasing companies put GPS tracking systems in vehicles so the leasee can see where their sale force is or track their delivery trucks. Maybe you could check with one close to you to see what they use.

Later!
Mr. Ed

They make specific units for highway trailers and contrainers. This is unique in that the transceiver must carry its own battery pack (which is swappable) and thus cannot be reckless with their consumption of electrical current from a host vehicle. All the ones I looked at appeared to use GPS and the cellular networks.