Like the author I had the odd experience of programming these GPS/modems for vehicle tracking, except in the late 2000s. A small business with a fondness for DIY tech was keen to avoid filling out logbooks manually for their work vehicles so they handed me one of these things to try out. One of its strange proprietary AT commands would cause it to send a standard GPS string in a UDP packet to a specified hostname and port, along with the modem’s identifier. This could be linked with some different AT commands enabling primitive control flow - perform this action when digital input 1 (the ignition) transitions 0->1 or 1->0, and every N seconds while 1. Primitive but sufficient, it was actually pretty elegant being able to program up and install this ruggedised unit without extra hardware hanging off it. It turned into a nice little self-hosted system generating KML files for Google Earth, including live tracking.
I was asked whether the unit could be programmed to remotely cut the engine if it was stolen. It could via GPIO, but I declined to implement that.
I forget the manufacturer, but I found a deal on one of these in the 2000s. I wanted it as a backup internet connection, but the GPS and the features it offered were quite cool. I learned a lot playing with it and was happy to use AT commands again. The recent LTE modems I’ve used all have similar options and seem to have standardized at least part of the AT command set. These kinds of always-online devices are so easy to build now. I only recently stumbled across cheap prepaid IoT SIM cards on Amazon with CIRs. I’m happy to see another post from this blog. I lost an earlier one and meant to follow it.
Like the author I had the odd experience of programming these GPS/modems for vehicle tracking, except in the late 2000s. A small business with a fondness for DIY tech was keen to avoid filling out logbooks manually for their work vehicles so they handed me one of these things to try out. One of its strange proprietary AT commands would cause it to send a standard GPS string in a UDP packet to a specified hostname and port, along with the modem’s identifier. This could be linked with some different AT commands enabling primitive control flow - perform this action when digital input 1 (the ignition) transitions 0->1 or 1->0, and every N seconds while 1. Primitive but sufficient, it was actually pretty elegant being able to program up and install this ruggedised unit without extra hardware hanging off it. It turned into a nice little self-hosted system generating KML files for Google Earth, including live tracking.
I was asked whether the unit could be programmed to remotely cut the engine if it was stolen. It could via GPIO, but I declined to implement that.
I forget the manufacturer, but I found a deal on one of these in the 2000s. I wanted it as a backup internet connection, but the GPS and the features it offered were quite cool. I learned a lot playing with it and was happy to use AT commands again. The recent LTE modems I’ve used all have similar options and seem to have standardized at least part of the AT command set. These kinds of always-online devices are so easy to build now. I only recently stumbled across cheap prepaid IoT SIM cards on Amazon with CIRs. I’m happy to see another post from this blog. I lost an earlier one and meant to follow it.