Battery powered vs engine powered
Asset trackers often are autonomous trackers with an embedded, replaceable or rechargeable battery which are glued or mounted easily onto the assets by customers themselves. Vehicle trackers are connected to the battery of a vehicle (car, truck, machine, …) and are installed by a professional installation team.
Real-time vs 1-24 positions a day
Vehicles change location far more often than machines, tools, tanks or containers. Therefore, vehicle tracking provides usually a real-time/live location. The constant data transmission requires a lot of power, which is why is installed onto the vehicles own power source (engine).
Asset trackers provide a location position either in a fixed time interval (between 1-24 positions a day) or when it gets triggered by something. A ‘trigger’ can be the start or stop of a movement, something by something a sensor captures (tracker temperature, pressure, …). The lower the frequency of the data transmission, the less battery power gets used up.
Data analytics
Vehicle tracking often is used as well to add other data / information besides pure location and usage, such as driving behavior or machine information via a CANbus connection. A rule of thumb is; the more additional data (besides location) you need from your asset, the more energy the data transmission will consume. This is often a decisive factor when choosing between autonomous tracker or vehicle trackers (BlackBoxes).
TIP
Did you know that you can combine asset, tool & vehicle tracking in 1 platform? BlackBoxes can capture autonomous trackers. A common use case goes as follows;
You place an autonomous tracker on a big toolbox. The tools inside contain small tags for inventory management. Your vehicle has a BlackBox for time registration and track-and-trace. When you place the box inside a vehicle, the platform automatically knows what tools & toolbox are there. When arriving at your destination, you’ll see all the things that should be in the car on the platform or mobile app.
Track anything everywhere.
Suivo is an Internet of Things and SaaS company. We combine , in a unique way to optimize your workflows and manage your fleet, machines, tools and people. With our trackers, tags and sensors we collect data in our IoT Cloud Platform. Through an intuitive web interface and mobile apps you can plan, manage and analyse everything. Our goal is to build bridges between the physical and digital world to increase the ROI of our clients significantly.
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