Track-it.info webblog

Altough it’s has been available for a while, our alarm alerter has now been extended with the alarm dashboard!

So not only will you be notified by email and / or SMS you can now monitor the actuals on your alarm dashboard. With a configurable time span the page will be uploaded with the latest measurements.

What you’ll see are the latest values measured on each device that has it’s alarm settings configured.

The dashboard will auto scale the odometers. But we think a maximum of 25 odometers is still well readable.

Setting an alarm for a specific device is as easy as clicking the mouse!

Now you’ll know when thing go out of hand!

Start taking control over your business with this feature and be on de drivers seat again!

What started with just an idea of reclaiming lost golf balls way back in 2005 has lead to today’s business. Tracking & tracing of basically any object with our Tracktivator and offering a remote monitoring platform for basically any device/machine.

When you think of this from an object hiarchy point of view it suddenly becomes clear that there is a huge overlap in these two services.

So the objects that we can track & trace on our http://track-it.info site are the devices we want to monitor on our http://connect2.track-it.info site.

So the first step to complete integration of these two starts with implementing the dynamic location of the devices on our Connect2 platform. Therefor we introduced two new parameter types: Latitude and Longitude.

By using these parameter types the position of each object will be updated with every message it receives from the device. In other words: the device will be displayed on the map on it latest known position.

Further integration will naturally evolve from here on. Finally these two service will assimilate completely over time.

When we started our business in Septmeber 2005 we had a vision about connecting any kind of device to the Internet. By doing so daily live would become a whole lot easier when it comes to knowing about the whereabouts of your valuable assets. And with assets we are not talking about hardware only. With our Tracktivator you can really track anything as long as the Tracktivator is connected to it. So lost your dog? With the Tracktivator you’ll find it back in no time. Calling your dog an asset is a little crude, we know. Or are we talking about a new breed; the assethound….

So know with our new service, called Connect2, you can monitor any data from any device, even our Tracktivators. The service offers you a secure environment, in which data is being stored and only accessable to you, or the ones you’ve granted access to.

Once your device is connected to the Internet, you define which data is of your interest and in which column you would like to see the data displayed on screen. Next you define what kind of graph you would like to see, based on the data you defined earlier. And we are talking about defining not programming! And this is al done through the website!

You can even modify the layout, so your users will find a known evironment, just like it’s being part of your companies website.

Once you’ve setup your environment, you’ll be able to see all your devices( or customers or users) at once, projected on the cool maps of Open Street Maps; a free and open source alternative to Google, Yahoo and other mapping services which will charge huge license fees when used in a commercial environment.

Then selecting the device you have the latest process data at hand. Just one more click and you’ll have all the graphs in front of you.

It’s a sunny day on the beach. Your children are playing on the water front. Everyone is having a great day. After a view hours, with the sun peaking at its highest point you get a little sleepy. A scenic view gets your attention and in the next view seconds you loose your children out of sight.

They where playing enthusiastically in the surf, didn’t notice that they where drifting further and further away from where they where seated…

You panic! Where are my children?…..you can’t see them… there are out of sight….more panic!!

Does the above scenario seem familiar to you? Then you know what is feels when you lost your children out of sight!

With our new Tracktivator GC101, your kids will not be able to leave you and a perimeter you want without notice! Just enter your location and a perimeter into the Tracktivator and as soon as your child breaks trough the perimeter, you’ll get an SMS with there position.

Geofencing is hot!. So, being the nr1 company in the Netherlands we thought it might be a good idea to explain a little more about the benefits. Well sure, big brother is watching but how many of you have been watching Big brother or one of it’s derivates? Even before George Orwell’s 1984, your bank could give you a personality description, that even a good shrink couldn’t come up with. All based on your credit card behavior. So stop complaining and start using the benfits!

In the above example of Track-it.info’s geofencing services we see that a geofence was created in just 2 mouse clicks and a warning is displayed in case any object, in this case a car, breaks through the fence.

With the premium membership you even receive an SMS when objects breaks trough the geofence, inbound or outbound. It’s your choice!

And not only we provide software controlled geofencing, our hardware itself supports geofencing as well, completely autonomous if set by the user.

The software geofence is using a user controlled perimeter, which can be set on any location on the map, with just 2 mouse clicks.

The hardware geofence uses it’s displacement trigger, with user selectable speeds between 2 and 99 miles per hour. As soon as the Tracktivator is moved the owner/user of the Tracktivator receives an SMS while the object can be traced real-time on our web-site.

And that’s not all. Once the geofence is breached, you not only will be notified about this event, you can even listen, live!, to it’s surroundings by means of the monitoring capabilities of our Tracktivator(just like a mobile phone). As a matter of fact you can even use our Tracktivator as a mobile phone!

So now you know a little more about geofencing, in the next blog we’ll discuss some real-life situations in which geofencing is beneficial to you!

The following is a partial list of User Content that is prohibited on the Track-it.info Site. The list below is for illustration only and is not a complete list of all prohibited User Content:

* is implicitly or explicitly offensive, such as User Content that engages in, endorses or promotes racism, bigotry, hatred or physical harm of any kind against any group or individual;
* harasses, incites harassment or advocates harassment of another any group or individual;
* involves the transmission of “junk mail”, “chain letters,” or unsolicited mass mailing or “spamming”;
* promotes or endorses false or misleading information or illegal activities or conduct that is abusive, threatening, obscene, defamatory or libelous;
* displays or links to pornographic, indecent or sexually explicit material of any kind;
* provides or links to material that exploits people under the age of 18 in a sexual, violent or other manner, or solicits personal information from anyone under 18; or
* provides instructional information about illegal activities or other activities prohibited by these Terms, including without limitation, making or buying illegal weapons, violating someone’s privacy, or provides or creates computer viruses or pirating any media; and solicits passwords or personal identifying information from other Users;

Nowadays we trust our high-tech gizmo’s like there is no tomorrow. But what happens if one of these days our GPS enabled routing advisors drop dead? Have you noticed that, once addicted to your navigation system, you are no longer able to find track if you, for what ever reason, cannot use your navigation device? Well, I do. I get lost!

There was day that I could remember every track I’ve been before or at least I know how to find my direction. Since the use of my navigator, this skill has deteriorated rapidly. So for those who suffer the same symptoms here are some basic skill that will help you find your way everywhere!.

Navigation by using the sun and an analog watch; you can determine direction using a common or analog watch–one that has hands. The direction will be accurate if you are using true local time, without any changes for daylight savings time. Remember, the further you are from the equator, the more accurate this method will be. If you only have a digital watch, you can overcome this obstacle. Quickly draw a watch on a circle of paper with the correct time on it and use it to determine your direction at that time.Watch navigation

In the northern hemisphere, hold the watch horizontal and point the hour hand at the sun. Bisect the angle between the hour hand and the 12 o’clock mark to get the north-south line. If there is any doubt as to which end of the line is north, remember that the sun rises in the east, sets in the west, and is due south at noon. The sun is in the east before noon and in the west after noon.

Note: If your watch is set on daylight savings time, use the midway point between the hour hand and 1 o’clock to determine the north-south line.

In the southern hemisphere, point the watch’s 12 o’clock mark toward the sun and a midpoint halfway between 12 and the hour hand will give you the north-south line.
With these rules of thumb, you’ll always manage your way home.

Welcome to our new blog environment.

Why a new blog environment, you’ll ask.

Well, to be true we were not able to keep our promise to post to our previous blog on a weekly basis. Second there where to many problems maintaining the blog, ie not all, after our MySQL upgrade to a higher version. The pLog application just could not deal with that.

So, what is your new promise?
Well, uh, we’ll post updates whenever we feel like to. So no more publishing stress on our side.

Finally we hope that you will enjoy the articles we publish overhere.