Personal GPS Tracker

mountainofdebt

Oh is off for a fortnight trek in the wilds of Scotland and I was wondering about getting him a GPS tracker to take with him ....just in case!

As he won't be near a power supply it does need to have good battery life or be able to be charged by solar power.

tia

debitcardmayhem

I haven't a clue, but are you hoping to track him or is he trying to find where he is?

gjchester

mountainofdebt wrote: »

Oh is off for a fortnight trek in the wilds of Scotland and I was wondering about getting him a GPS tracker to take with him ....just in case!

As he won't be near a power supply it does need to have good battery life or be able to be charged by solar power.

tia

A GPS tracker usually uses the mobile networks to upload a position, back to a monitoring person. Is that what you meant? The Scottish highlands are not great for mobile coverage so it may be of limited use.

Did you just mean a simple walking GPS unit so he knows his location on a inbuilt map?

Andy_L

or do you mean an emergency beacon

http://www.maritime-radio.co.uk/ACR-2875-Satellite-406MHz-Category-II-EPIRB-p/10087306.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPIRB

sillygoose

You are thinking of something like this..


http://cpc.farnell.com/jsp/level5/module.jsp?moduleId=cpc/622400.xml
http://cpc.farnell.com/alaska/apt-15/personal-tracker-gps-gsm/dp/SR07828

It suggests upto 7 day battery life, but if you took an emergency charger like this:
http://cpc.farnell.com/pro-elec/teemerg/mobile-phone-emergency-charger/dp/TE06059
and a supply of AA Duracells you could charge it up fairly often, the charger steps up the 1.5V voltage to 5V enough to charge thinks but sucks the life out of the single AA battery in one go.

As other say, these devices get the location from satellites and that bit works anywhere there is sky but then depend on the mobile phone network to send you the location. you need to put a PAYG SIM card in it with enough credit on it. Coverage is going to be patchy but a strongly suspect Vodaphone will give the best chance on average.

Maplin do a range of these devices, you could also pop in a store for a look.

epninety

If he's going properly into the wilds, away from mobile coverage, then you should be looking at this instead :-

http://www.findmespot.eu/en/

Used one for tracking in some very out of the way places, and it works very well. Not as cheap as the mobile based units of course.