GPS Trackers for Small Aircraft

kostasite2 years ago

Hi all,
we are looking for tracking solutions for General Aviation aircraft. We started our test using Teltonika FM920 which works pretty well when there are not a lot of cell towers, for example over the sea or in villages, but we have a huge problem when the aircraft is fast (250-300 km/h) and over big cities with lots of 2g towers. My assumption is that because 2G has a slow handover speed, the device is not able to establish a connection before jumping to the next cell tower.
Our next step at the moment is to use also UDP and also we are waiting for a teltonika FMC130 which is 4G but we haven't tested it yet.
Do you have any feedback or info about these and what else to check?
Finally, do you have an inexpensive (<200) device with maybe satellite capabilities except GSM? Teltonika used to have a module but they do not produce it any more.

Jonathan2 years ago

@kostasite, have you thought about using mobile telematics for this case?
you can use a smartphone or tablet to collect and broadcast location data to the Traccar platform.

Damoov provides such services, which you can use to track aircraft as well.

We support two tracking modes:
Trip log - telematics data is captured and kept on a smartphone level until you finish your flight, then transfer data to the platform
Realtime tracking - telematics data is captured and broadcasted in real time to the Traccar platform.

So, it works regardless of network coverage and doesn't require any hardware devices inside your aircraft.

kostasite2 years ago

Hi @Jonathan, yeah but we do not want to have an extra smartphone or tablet. We want something in the aircraft, as the pilot changes. As you mentioned, iPhones for example, work really well and they do not have such problems, but we need a device that will stay with the aircraft.

Jonathan2 years ago

@kostasite, if your pilots have smartphones with the app, you can group flights from different pilots' accounts under one aircraft profile.

kostasite2 years ago

I know but again this is not totally possible. We have tried solutions with mobiles and sometimes they forgot the device, sometimes not charged, sometimes no data plan, etc. Thanks for the feedback although

Jonathan2 years ago

ok. I got you.
in this case, It is better to have an independent device.

Richard Acosta2 years ago

Since the solution could be a mobile phone or tablet, maybe the way is to put one on the aircraft, independent from the people on it.

Jonathan2 years ago

@Richard, thanks.
absolutely forgot about this. Some of our clients use cheap Android devices for that.

kostasite2 years ago

@Jonathan, we tried some cheap Android ones but they had huge problems.

Jonathan2 years ago

@Kostasite,
you can try it with our app. we have a large number of clients from India and South East Asia and we have managed to train our technology to work with such devices.

https://www.damoov.com/telematics-app/