Lots of equipment is stolen from constriction sites all the time. GPS asset tracking is a good way to help reduce these losses. Here is a recent story about an incident where the stolen goods were recovered because they had a GPS device on them. In this case, it was stolen appliances, but a bigger problem would be portable equipment like generators, concrete pumps, trailers, etc. Ublip provides tracking services for this sort of equipment. When the equipment is placed in an area where it should stay for awhile, you can set-up a geofence around it. A geofence is simply an imaginary boundary. When a tracked asset crosses a geofence, an alert is sent out. You may not be able to stop the thief from leaving with the equipment, but your chances of recovering it are much higher. This also guards against unauthorized use of the equipment as well as actual theft.

The title says it all. You can find a handful of GPS blockers on Google and even a couple on Amazon. The GPS blocker jams signals from satellites and makes it impossible to obtain a GPS fix. This means that your current location can’t be tracked. This can come in quite handy for those that fear “big brother” is watching over them. yet in the Ublip world we believe that adoption of GPS tracking technology will not come from covert or spy tactics, but through the open approach of Track ‘Em and Tell ‘Em. At any rate, if you’ve used one of these devices we’d love to hear how it works.

When I read all the buzz about GPS tracking and see all of the competition in our space it makes me think. Is there anyone taking a simplistic approach to GPS tracking? Is there anyone out there that’s making it easy to implement a GPS tracking system? From our experience there are many different parts to building any sort of end-to-end telematics or telemetry solution. In both cases there are sensors, devices, wireless networks, protocols, gateways, databases, and application software to name a few. But do the complexities of getting GPS data from a remote device to a backend system really need to be inflicted upon the end user? I use the term “inflicted” because the end user is just an innocent bystander that’s trying to solve a business problem. Maybe they simply need to know where their remote assets are or have been. In many cases the user interface is way too complex and gets in the way of solving a simple problem. Our belief is that GPS tracking should be easy (and somewhat fun) for the end user.

At Ublip, we’re not trying to build “everything but the kitchen sink” solutions and we like to focus on the handful of features that are the most important to the end user. Our architectural Foundation enables us to rapidly create M2M applications that are easy to use and extend. If you’re looking for simple solutions (such as easy GPS tracking) to complex problems then definitely give us a look. If you need something more complex then we’d love to hear about what you’re doing.