GPS monitoring for personal use (part 1)

The use of GPS control for personal purposes is important, relevant and promising for the following reasons:

• Most global research companies predict a growing market for GPS-enabled devices. According to some forecasts, in 2022 it will reach 7 billion and will be one for each inhabitant of the planet.
• In addition to the widespread GPS and GLONASS, the countries of the European Union, China, Japan and India are actively involved in the development of their own GNSS technologies.
• The number of subscribers to LBS-services using GPS-technology is growing every year .
• The miniaturization and cheapening of devices spurs the development of the market for systems and applications for vehicle monitoring and personal monitoring.

The main functions of monitoring systems include: monitoring the current position on the map; viewing the route of movement for the selected time interval; creation of points of interest and geofences on the map, control of movement from / to geofences; generating notifications when certain events occur; generating reports and graphs.

In this article I will consider the functionality of applications and systems that are in demand when using GPS control for personal use.

Restrictions

In order not to deceive the expectations of readers, I will immediately make a reservation and list what can be attributed to personal monitoring systems, but this article does not cover:

• Secret tracking. A situation where one person wants to secretly track the location and movement of another. There are no peculiarities from the point of view of personal tracking, but there are many moral and legal issues.
• Bookmark beacon in a personal car. In order to return a stolen car, it is better to use the services of companies that have response agreements with law enforcement agencies. If you still want to exercise control yourself, then most modern beacons are configured for a specific mode of operation and process text sms commands. So, low battery notification and location information will be sent to the owner’s phone and you can do without using the system.
• Regular sports training. For these purposes, it is better to use specialized applications. There is enough choice on the market. For example: RunKeeper on Google Play.
• Laying routes. Modern car navigators quite well implement the functions of laying routes. Solutions for laying routes for transport are different from the laying of walking routes. I omit this topic in this article, but perhaps in subsequent articles on personal monitoring I will return to it.

Important system and application requirements

• Access to systems must have a browser-based interface for mobile devices. Unlike transport monitoring systems, access to personal monitoring systems must always be from anywhere and from any device.
• The price of devices should be budget . Currently, smartphones with GPS / GLONASS support are available on the market, the price of which is 2500 rubles and below. Specialized trackers are available on the market at prices of 1,500 rubles and below (http://chinawebshop.ru/category_97.html).
• Access to personal GPS monitoring systems, at least to their basic functionality, should be free (that is, without subscription or connection fees).
• Applications should be economical in terms of battery consumption. In the case of the implementation of applications on smartphones, the use should not lead to the need to recharge the phone two to three times more often than without using them.
• And most importantly, applications and systems should be as simple as possible.

Devices for personal GPS monitoring

• Smartphones . Most smartphones (Android, iPhone and Windows Phone) have GPS / GLONASS support. Using applications on smartphones is beneficial because the phone is always with you and we are used to watching it recharging. No need to take an additional tracker (very often we forget to take it or recharge it in time). Unlike specialized trackers, the problem with roaming is solved much easier (by switching to a special tariff of the operator). In addition, in applications, you can set the data transfer mode only over a WiFi connection.
• Cell phones with built-in GPS tracker . They have the ability to make phone calls to a limited number of numbers and transfer data about the current location and alarm signals (via the SOS button) to monitoring servers or specified phone numbers. Examples of devices - GK301, Concox GS503.
• Specialized trackers . There are a lot of budget models of personal trackers on the market. The main criteria when choosing, in my opinion, should be the time without recharging and compactness. In addition, the ability to send low-battery messages with trackers is very useful, so that a dead battery does not take you by surprise. A fairly convenient solution is watch trackers. They are always with you, do not forget in a bag or clothes. Examples - Xexun TK203 (Waterproof watch tracker with LBS support) or a more budget option - GPS tracker watch Rilla Watch G19.

Variants of using systems

In this section, I will describe the possible uses of personal monitoring systems not from the standpoint of the capabilities of existing systems, but from the positions that I would like to have.
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Continuous tracking mode

Always knowing where your children or elderly relatives are is a very natural need of people. In some cases, you do not need a detailed route as your loved ones move, but it is important to know that they have been in a certain place in the last 15 minutes. But, if there is no information for a long time and you began to worry, you should be able to send a request and receive information via the SMS channel.
The application should (saving the battery) transmit information about its location every 10-15 minutes. The application should be able to respond to SMS requests and send their coordinates by SMS. The application must be equipped with an "SOS" button. On the one hand, it should be quickly and easily accessible, on the other hand - protected from accidental clicks.
Sometimes your loved ones have to make a trip that makes you afraid. In such cases, location information should be transmitted more frequently, and at the time of arrival at the destination, the transmission frequency should be returned to normal mode.
The application should be able to change the frequency of determining and transmitting the coordinates of the inputs / outputs from the geofences you specified. According to the additional settings, the application should transmit information about the input / output from the specified geozones via the SMS channel.

Arrival schedule

You went to relatives or friends. They are waiting for your arrival at 12.00, but you are either delayed with departure, or stuck in a traffic jam. The saying “Nothing is worse than waiting” does not clarify an important addition - “not knowing when this will happen”.
The application should allow you to send a link to your friends or close ones where they can observe your movement and predict the time of your real arrival. Access to the link must be protected (for example, with a complex parameter that is difficult to find). Access to the display of your location on this link should be limited to the time you specify (up to a certain time or for a certain number of hours after the link is created).

GPS diary

It is useful for any person to know how much time he spends on the way to work, the way home from work, how much time and how often you spend on making the necessary purchases. How much time you spend on it to get to the cottage. At the same time accuracy within 10-15 minutes is quite enough.
The application should allow you to create zones of your frequent stay and be able to display statistics on the time spent in these zones, as well as the time spent on moving from one zone to another.

Control of walks and trips on vacation

On vacation, we take walks. Trips to neighboring cities. How much time and how much distance did you travel during the week of your vacation? In my opinion, this is interesting. What beautiful places did you go to and how long did it take? It is also good to have a "cheat sheet" when you tell friends and family about your vacation. To monitor the distance traveled, more frequent collection of GPS coordinates is needed. But not rarely, leaving the place where we stopped, we forget to turn on this mode.
The application must be able to switch to the control mode of entering / exiting the current stop zone. When entering the stop zone, the polling mode is more rare, when exiting, the more frequent mode of collecting coordinates is automatically activated. The inclusion of this mode should be accompanied by a sound notification to avoid battery consumption, if the detailed route and distance are not critical (just walk around the city).
Some of your walks were in very interesting places. You will want to share them with your friends.
The application should allow you to send your route to other people, and by downloading and saving it, they will be able to go through it, checking with your route.

Return to the hotel

A few years ago, after an evening walk in Rome, we decided to return to our hotel. It turned out only with the fourth attempt. Three times we returned to the Trevi Fountain. When traveling to unfamiliar cities, it is helpful to have information about your current location and the location of the hotel where you stayed. Also useful information about the nearest public transport stops.
The application should allow you to record the location of your hotel. It is good if the application allows you to download maps of the immediate vicinity in order to access them without using the Internet (in order to avoid spending on the mobile Internet).
There are a large number of Travel Guide applications, but they are more focused on excursions and are not made for all cities.

In the next part of the article, I will look at the systems and applications on the market, as well as present personal monitoring solutions in our ViaLatM system.