GPS Tracking

Hello to all, i am new to the site and have a big question. If you have a GPS attached to your laptop and an aircard in the PCI slot can you, or is there any software that will send the GPS information back to a server via the aircard? I know you can get a GPS tracking system that does this via a contaned unit but you have to pay a yearly charge to have it uploaded to their server every minute or so. If we already have an aircard that is on line then I would love to figure a way around the yearly charge and a seperate GPS system. Anyone have any ideas?

Hi photoman36302,

Welcome to Laptop GPS World.

Franson GPS Gate may be just what you need. Check it out, and let us know how it works out.

P.S. Judging by your user name I suspect you have a great passion for photography. You are welcome to contribute to our newly started Pictures & Albums.

I use Franson GPSGate to send out my info. The people that want to track me use an addon for Google Earth called GooPS. This shows the exact path that I've driven.

GooPS is free if you only use it to track one device.

I've never played with this myself. What update frequency can you get from this kind of setup?

I'm not sure what frequency it updates at. I just looked in the settings but it doesn't show how fast it updates. I'm guessing it's either 1s or 5s just from the way the tracking looks. I've been in truckstop lots and you could see the exact path I've driven through the lot on the satellite image.

Here's the link to GooPS:
http://goopstechnologies.com/

Also, ALK's CoPilot has built in live tracking and messaging. With their system the user tracking you can see your location and destination with ETA. They can also send you messages through the program itself. However, their Live feature doesn't seem to work too great. I've had unknown people send me messages and new destinations. I've also done the same thing to others by logging onto my own account.

There may be a difference between the update frequency to the server and the resolution of the track that is displayed. Each update to the server can include all points tracked since the last update, so the server can display as fine a resolution as your GPS is tracking without duplicating that same frequency of update.

So, even though your GPS is probably checking every second or so, GPSGate could, for instance, update the server once every five minutes with dozens of points captured by your GPS during that five minutes. That allows the server to display the same track resolution as you see on your GPS without having to make so many updates.

I hope that makes sense.

...ken...