A Personal GPS Locator Can Make Your Life Easier

John Taylor

A personal GPS locator is a handy little unit taking advantage
of assisted GPS technology for helping to determine its own
location as precise and reliable as possible. The location
information is normally triggered by requests from the internet
or from cell phones.

If you're making the request from the internet, you need to go
to a certain URL that the GPS locator vendor gives you and log
in. Then you will have to follow the instructions with normally
is nothing more that pushing a button or make a click on your
mouse and the real time location of you and your GPS locator
unit will be displayed on a map. You will be able to see your
neighborhood on this map and zoom it in and out and also scroll
it in the directions you want.

Using the cell phone alternative all you have to do is sending a
text-message to a number that your personal GPS locator's vendor
gives you will get the same as described above displayed on your
cell phone window.

Some of the GPS locator units offer personalized safety Zones.
What do I mean by this? A safety zone is a customized virtual
boundary around the location that you've chosen. For equipment
with this function you can normally be alerted via email and/or
text message when you enter or leave any safety zone you have
defined. Most GPS locator units allow you to create several such
zones and they can all be active simultaneously at any given
time.

Continuous Tracking

Dependent of what type of GPS locator you have you can set how
often the feature shall update your location, for example every
5 minutes or every 10 minutes, etc. The last updated time will
normally be displayed on the map or another place.

History of Locations

Location history can be useful; therefore many models are
equipped with this feature. The more expensive the model the
more detailed information you normally get. With this feature
you will have an overview of stored information so you can see
where your GPS locator has moved in a certain periode of time,
for example the past hour, day, week or even month. Models with
this feature will often display the information on a map, that
you are able manipulate as the real-time map, such as zooming
and scrolling.

Power Alerts

Depending on the model of your personal GPS locator, you can be
notified through email or text message when your GPS unit has
been powered off or when the battery's capacity level is at a
certain level, for example when there is 20 percent battery
power left.

As you may already know personal GPS locators are in the same
class as cell phones and other electronic communication devices
when it comes to aviation security, which means you can't use
them on airplanes.