GPS Tracking

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 A Michigan tourism organization and a nearly century-old private yacht club mixed high-tech with tradition when planning this year’s Pure Michigan Bayview Port Huron to Mackinac Boat Race.

The Bayview Port Huron to Mackinac Boat Race, one of the most challenging, longest and popular freshwater sailboat races in the world, will be held for four days beginning Saturday, July 25 along Lake Huron on Michigan’s east coast. The event draws about 250 sailboats and thousands of sailors from all over the United States and several countries. Yachts range in length from 26 feet to more than 80 feet. An estimated 100,000 fans are expected to gather on the shores of Michigan and Canada for the annual spectacle. Michigan officials estimate up to $60 million in tourism dollars will pour into the state, if the weather is good.

For the first time in its 85-year history, all the participating boats will be furnished with GPS tracking devices. Pure Michigan is hosting the new online system. Race fans will be able to track the progress of each boat on the course, with live updates, at www.michigan.org.

“For fans and spectators, we are excited to be able to use the latest 21st century technology to bring this exciting event to their laptops, in addition to the majestic experience of being at (starting point) Port Huron for the pageantry and fun,” said Race Chairman Frank Kern.

 The race is sponsored by the Bayview Yacht Club of Detroit, Mich. Founded in 1915, it is one of the most prestigious, independent sailing clubs in the state. The club established the race in 1925.

There are two courses. The longer course, “Cove Island Course,” is about 293 miles and it crosses into Canadian waters. The 252-mile “Thunder Bay Course” is comparatively shorter and calmer. Only the most seasoned of sailors are invited to be part of the yachting crews.

The regatta has grown to grab media coverage worldwide, partly due to its combination of sportsmanship, strategy and family tradition. Sailors are at the mercy of the wind and weather.

This year, fans can watch via the Internet, 24 hours a day, if they so choose. The GPS tracking units that will be affixed to each boat are being provided at no cost during check-in at the race. The transmitters are about the size of a paperback book. The race participant must ensure that the unit is installed according to directions and must make every effort to see that it is functioning for the duration of the race.

The “real-time” GPS tracking systems will give out vital information that will be displayed online, including each yacht’s position, direction and speed. Every hour they will send signals to a satellite and on to the website.

Viewers will be able to see the yachts on either a Google satellite image or an animated nautical chart. They can click an option to view all boats in a particular division or class, along with an unofficial leader board; or they can enter the name of a boat and the computer will pick it out in the fleet. Fans will also be able to see how their favorite boat is doing by reading a “percentage of race completion bar” that is based on the distance to finish line.

A map overlay is available that will even show surface winds along the course, so the viewer will know what kind of weather the participants are facing.

Sponsor Pure Michigan conservatively estimates that the web page will receive 12 million hits from around the world over the race weekend. When a GPS tracking option was offered in 2008 for the similar Chicago-to-Mackinac race, its website got 25 million hits.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Seems a guy can’t take an ambulance out for a spin anymore, without getting jail time.

EMTs in Kansas City, MO. exited Research Medical Center on June 14 after dropping off a patient and discovered that their rig was missing.

Apparently a passerby was feeling adventurous at 4 a.m. and took the unlocked vehicle on a joyride.

It didn’t take long for the crew from MAST, an independent ambulance service, to figure out that the GPS tracking system installed in the company’s ambulances for efficient routing and fleet tracking, would work for theft recovery.

They called police, who were guided by the ambulance’s real-time GPS tracking transmitter along State Route 70 into Independence, MO., a trip of about 13 miles. It was not reported whether the thief played with the lights and siren.

“That’s a nice added feature, being able to find our ambulance when it’s inadvertently stolen,” said Aaron Howell from MAST.

The ambulance was found crashed near Winner Road, with the alleged thief still inside. He had apparently lost control of the vehicle. Thomas Glisson, 41, of Kansas City is accused of stealing the vehicle.

“When you have an emergency vehicle that’s occupied by someone that’s not familiar with the vehicle, it can become a danger,” said Howell.

 Glisson got a ride to the hospital from another ambulance to be treated for minor injuries. Damage to the MAST ambulance is estimated at about $125,000.

PALMETTO BAY, FL – An 18-year-old south Florida man accused of a series of cat killings is out on bond; and his whereabouts are being monitored by a Global Positioning System bracelet.

Tyler Weinman of Palmetto Bay is also ordered to undergo psychiatric evaluation and counseling while his case makes its way through the Miami-Dade County courts.

Police arrested Weinman June 14 and charged him with 19 counts of animal cruelty, 19 counts of improper disposal of an animal’s body and four counts of burglary.

Since April, 33 cats have been reported dead in Cutler Bay and Palmetto Bay on the southern tip of Florida. Nineteen are being linked to Weinman, who detectives say is the ringleader of a group of criminals. The animals were stalked, captured and violently killed, often gutted and mutilated, and the bodies were placed on their owners’ properties.

His attorney Michael Walsh said he is “a good kid who’s a victim of circumstances.”

Reports say police became interested in Weinman after viewing postings on social networking sites Facebook and MySpace. When they questioned him they allegedly observed scratch marks on his body consistent with those inflicted by a struggling cat.

Police got a judge’s permission to place a GPS tracking device on his car. The vehicle tracking report allegedly showed Weinman was in certain places at times when the cat killings were believed to have taken place. When questioned, he was unaware the vehicle tracking device was on his car and he denied he was in the areas in question.

Walsh defended Weinman, pointing out that the areas are along routes the suspect would have driven regularly between his parents’ homes. Weinman’s parents Douglas and Alba Weinman, are separated.

Weinman appeared in court June 16 and bond was set at $249,000.  The judge ruled that he was competent and didn’t appear to be a threat to himself or others. He posted bail and is undergoing counseling. He must wear a GPS-based electronic monitoring bracelet. Weinman is set to answer to the charges at an arraignment July 6.

Many following the case were disturbed that the suspect seemed unaffected by the arrest. He smiled for his mug shot and during court proceedings.

Defense attorney Walsh is yet to see the evidence prosecutors have against his client. Probable cause is sealed in the court file. Police suspect there might be more people involved in the crimes and said releasing information now would threaten the investigation.

Walsh claims police acted too quickly and without solid evidence, due to public outcry over the grisly cat killings.

As we have learned, the Global Positioning System is operated by the National Executive Committee for Space-Based Positioning, Navigation & Timing. These three eponymous capabilities have always been the core benefits of GPS in its simplest iteration, but the staggering amount of applications that have proliferated within this past decade have been much more varied, constrained only by the limits of human ingenuity. At the intersection of unprecedented technological innovation and decades of policies that have stimulated the growth of GPS, this simple tool has become an omnipresent and nearly invisible part of our daily lives.

On www.gps.gov, the official federally hosted informational Web site, possible applications run the gamut from roads and highways, rail, marine and aviation to agriculture, public safety and disaster relief. These illustrate the tremendous capacity that GPS has for serving the public interest by making infrastructure more efficient and responsive. Numerous cities have come to rely on geographic information systems, or GIS, which use GPS technology to collect data and synthesize it into useful information used to make important municipal decisions, from drainage plans to emergency vehicle routes. GPS is also a critical component of Intelligent Transportation Systems, communication-based technologies that use real-time data to manage traffic flow. (more…)

REVERE, MA – A long-time public works employee in Revere, MA faces termination and a series of felony charges after security cameras, along with a GPS tracking device on a city-issued truck, caught him stealing signs, which he allegedly sold for scrap.

An estimated 1,000 to 1,500 blank, metal signs went missing from the Revere Department of Public Works (DPW) sign shop over a period of several months. Michael Ferragamo, a carpenter with the department for 22 years, is charged with breaking and entering with the intent of committing a felony, and larceny.

The most recent theft was reported June 3, when the sign maker returned to work after personal leave for a family funeral.

City vehicles in Revere are equipped with passive GPS vehicle tracking systems. So when the theft was reported, police downloaded the location data stored on the GPS tracking units of public works vehicles. Investigators discovered that one city truck made unauthorized trips to the city yard on three consecutive weekdays in late May and early June. Surveillance cameras and alarm reports further helped police narrow the search for a suspect. Detectives believe the criminal got access to the locked sign shop by using another employee’s alarm code.

When questioned, Ferragamo confirmed what the vehicle tracking report indicated. He had stolen signs, both recently and several times in the past. June’s batch of stolen signs was traced to a scrap yard in Everett, about three miles away. An employee told police he paid between $500 and $700 for them.

 The city upgraded security at the public works property last year. A city council member who proposed the equipment expenditure at the time had been criticized for being frivolous with city funds.

“Clearly, this was a reason why I felt it was important to have GPS tracking and cameras at the city yard,” councilman George Rotondo said after learning of the arrest. “After great ridicule from members of the council and the administration, this has proven to be an effective way to ensure accountability at the DPW.”

The sign theft was the latest in a series of incidents over the last year that put the Revere public works department in a bad light. Previously, a councilman accused the public works superintendent of assault, a public works supervisor accused crew members of sabotaging a city vehicle and the state investigated allegations that the department was bucking safety regulations.

Experts: Time to Push For Aviation System Based on Satellite GPS Tracking

Before Air France Flight 447 went down June 1 off the northeast coast of Brazil with 228 people aboard, most air travelers didn’t know that there are certain places in the world where passenger jets lose radar contact for long periods of time, especially over oceans.

A week passed between the first report that the four-year-old plane was missing and the recovery of bodies and wreckage in the Atlantic Ocean. Now, the general public and the news media are asking some prying questions. Among them: How could a commercial airline and the two involved countries (Rio De Janeiro, Brazil and Paris, France, the flight’s intended destination) lose something as big as an aircraft, for such a long period of time?

The current technology linking commercial pilots to their Air Traffic Control crews is ground-based radar, and the system is essentially the same as it was in the 1940s, explained Steve Moehling, vice president of sales for LandAirSea Systems, a Woodstock, IL-based designer and manufacturer of GPS tracking systems.

Like many other vehicles, airplanes can, and do, get location information from the GPS satellite system orbiting in space, Moehling said. But the commercial airline industry has been in no hurry to integrate it and they continue to rely on the Earth-bound radar.

LandAirSea has not only been a leader in the GPS tracking market since 1994; its leaders are experts on the subject of GPS tracking for aviation. LandAirSea’s first product in 1996, Flight-Trac, was created for flight schools. It was a passive flight analysis GPS device that recorded data and recreated conditions of a flight from a cockpit view, including instrumentation. In addition, Moehling has a degree in aviation management and both Moehling and President and Chief Executive Officer of LandAirSea Systems Rob Wagner are private pilots.

“It’s an absolute necessity to integrate GPS tracking into commercial aviation now – at least in trans-Atlantic flights,” Moehling said.

Moehling predicted the tragedy over the Atlantic will pressure the Federal Aviation Administration and other international aviation regulatory agencies to address the communications deficiencies of international travel, much the same way it changed airline security measures after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

“In aviation, everything is fine until there’s a disaster,” Moehling said. “And the problem is the airlines won’t do anything until they are mandated (especially when those improvements are very cost-prohibitive).” (more…)

A live demonstration is now available of LandAirSea’s 8100 tracking system. One of our real-time GPS tracking devices has been installed on a LandAirSea company vehicle. Potential buyers can, free of charge, see an example of this popular tracking method as this vehicle makes its runs, virtually 24 hours a day.

Follow these easy steps.

• Download Google Earth using the following link:  Download Google Earth Then make the following setting changes. Go to Tools, then Options, then the Touring tab. Change the “Fly-To Speed” to 0.5.  Also in the “layers” window, make sure “Roads” is checked.

Google Earth is a software program for Windows operating systems that includes maps of the earth in views including satellite, aerial photography and 3-D. The user can glide and zoom through images of a virtual world.

• Download and run the LandAirSea Universal Tracking Wireless (UTW) software. This is a shorter version of the UTW software included with every LandAirSea 8100 purchase.

Once the initial download is complete, on successive visits, simply open the Universal Tracking Wireless software to see the demonstration. It will automatically link to Google Earth.

LEWISVILLE, TX – Building materials and equipment have always been easy targets for thieves because they are fairly easily to move, often placed out in the open, and expensive.

Now construction crews and tradesmen can add GPS tracking devices to their list of security measures, alongside surveillance cameras and guard dogs.

“I would guess a lot of homebuilders are using GPS tracking,” said Gopal Ahluwalia, vice president of research for the National Association of Home Builders in Washington D.C, who added that theft at construction sites costs the industry about $5 billion a year.

Recently, in Lewisville, a suburb of Dallas, TX, two air conditioning units were taken from a construction site. Each was valued at about $2,000. The builders of the housing development, Centex Corp. had discreetly hidden GPS tracking devices inside the appliances.

GPS tracking devices calculate location by capturing satellite readings. The device’s movements can be monitored in real-time from a remote personal computer.

For quite a while, GPS tracking systems have been used in vehicles, but as the technology matures and the units get smaller and more affordable, they are increasingly being placed on other household and business assets – even small ones.

In the Texas case, Centex managers set up their GPS tracking system to send them an automated alert message if their GPS-tagged equipment was moved outside a designated area. The technology is called geo-fencing. So at that point they logged on to a special Web site that enabled them to read the GPS tracking data. They found the air conditioning units in a storage facility in Irving, about 20 miles away. Police only needed the name of the storage unit’s lease holder. He led cops to the crooks.

Like guard dogs and cameras, GPS tracking devices do not guarantee that assets will not be stolen, but they add an extra layer of protection against it. If theft does occur, GPS tracking devices certainly raise the odds of recovery.

NORTH OGDEN, UT – A 41-year-old North Ogden, Utah man feels he is being unfairly punished for just trying to make a living killing bobcats.

Unfortunately, the hunter was the one who was nabbed and the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources (UDWR) sees things quite differently.

Jared Beal, a veteran bobcat trapper, is in court, facing multiple counts of “wanton destruction of protected wildlife” for well-exceeding the bag limit during bobcat season in 2007-2008. Wildlife officials obtained a warrant to place a GPS tracking device on Beal’s truck. It followed him around and recorded as the hunter set and checked more than 35 trap sites in three of the state’s counties: Weber, Box Elder and Tooele. The GPS tracking record, showing the days and location of his vehicle’s every stop, was admitted into court as evidence in his trial.

After removing the vehicle tracking device and examining the data, investigators convinced a judge to issue another warrant to search Beal’s home. Thirty-one bobcat pelts were found in the house. UDWR’s limit last bobcat harvest was six animals.

Unable to dispute the proof of excessive hunting, Beal’s lawyers are arguing that placing the GPS tracking device on his truck, and searching his house, were illegal. Motions were filed to suppress the warrants. Beal’s lawyer did not argue that police illegally installed the GPS tracking device when his truck was parked on his private driveway. But he said authorities crossed a fine line into invasion of privacy when the GPS tracking unit followed Beal into his garage and the safety of his home. (more…)

GPS tracking was developed in the 1970s by the United States Department of Defense to improve tracking capabilities of its targets. Since then, GPS tracking have also found other uses. The military applications of GPS span many purposes:

• Navigation: GPS allows soldiers to find objectives in the dark or in unfamiliar territory, and to coordinate the movement of troops and supplies. The GPS-receivers commanders and soldiers use are respectively called the Commanders Digital Assistant and the Soldier Digital Assistant.
• Target tracking: Various military weapons systems use GPS to track potential ground and air targets before they are flagged as hostile. These weapons systems pass GPS co-ordinates of targets to precision-guided munitions to allow them to engage the targets accurately. Military aircraft, particularly those used in air-to-ground roles use GPS to find targets.
• Missile and projectile guidance: GPS allows accurate targeting of various military weapons including ICBMs, cruise missiles and precision-guided munitions. Artillery projectiles with embedded GPS receivers able to withstand accelerations of 12,000G have been developed for use in 155 mm howitzers.
• Search and Rescue: Downed pilots can be located faster if they have a GPS tracking receiver.
• Reconnaissance and Map Creation: The military use GPS tracking extensively to aid mapping and reconnaissance.
• The GPS tracking satellites also carry a set of nuclear detonation detectors consisting of an optical sensor (Y-sensor), an X-ray sensor, a dosimeter, and an Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP) sensor (W-sensor) which form a major portion of the United States Nuclear Detonation Detection System.

Currently the GPS tracking technology is still widely used in the military.