For clarity we’re going to break the electronics down into two parts.

We have the BEACON which is the part of the system that moves around and relays its’ position to the RECEIVER which shows the user the positional data or whereabouts of the beacon.

There are two basic approaches to relaying the beacon positional data back to the receiver and each of them have their own unique drawbacks.

The first method is to use the cellular network to send messages to the receiver device. Using the cellular network allows the system to be used pretty much anywhere that you have a cellular network but it might not work in the back-country where people would normally go hiking, boating, fishing or camping. If you intend to use the tracking system outdoors in those back-country places to track your dog if he gets lost then you’d better hope your dog has some good survival instincts and tracking ability of his own.

The Zoombak “Advanced GPS Car and Family Locator” is one product that uses a cellular network to relay the data back to the receiver. The receiver in this case is a web site on the Internet so you’ll need internet access to be able to use it.

Although Zoombak doesn’t charge a setup fee for the device; you’re going to have to pay a minimum $9.99 a month for the service and about $175.00 for the electronic beacon that you attach to the object you’d like to track.

The real drawbacks to the Zoombak is that you need internet access because it doesn’t come with a handheld receiver and that you’ll have a monthly service fee for as long as you’re going to use the device.

The second method is to use publicly accessible, free radio signals to send messages to the receiver device. Since the device is using public radio signals you can expect that there will be no monthly service fees which is a real bonus since paying a service fee for every electronic device that you own starts to add up to some real coin very quickly.

RoamEO is one manufacturer that makes these types of GPS tracking system devices that is made specifically for dogs. They give you a handheld receiver that tracks the position of the beacon in real-time so you can even use it in the back-country where there’s no cellular systems.

Since this device works on radio waves there’s some pretty strict regulations that they have to adhere to and one of them is the power level that they’re allowed to transmit. The handheld receiver will handle up to 3 beacons and the beacon device transmits at 2 watts on 154.6Mhz so the beacon isn’t going to be in Juneau, Alaska and transmit to you California.

The biggest drawback is that the device is only going to transmit about 1 mile and you’re going to foot about $400.00 for 1 beacon and the handheld receiver.

I really like the Zoombak device and if I didn’t have so many projects on the go I’d like to get ahold of a Zoombak to see if it could be hacked to be used off of their system and used independently of their service fees.

So how can one plan a route to take when there’s no concrete or asphalt pathways (and no navigational map data available either)?

The guys over at GPSies (pronounced Gypsies & meaning vegabond) have made available a conversion utility that will convert between 21 different formats! Now you can plan your route in Google Earth, export it as a KML and then convert the KML to whatever format your device supports! That means that this will be compatible with the different varieties of Garmin, Magellan, TomTom, Trimble and lots of other brands. Not to mention that with Google Earth (http://earth.google.com) you’ll have access to some of the best satellite imagery of the world to make your route.

Wow – Check out what www.GPSies.com has to offer.

There are a couple of settings on most devices that you can adjust which will allow you to collect more accurate data. You can usually set your device precision by telling it to throw away or ignore information that is not within a user-set range of accuracy. The two settings that you would adjust are the VDOP and HDOP tolerance values.

VDOP: Stands for Vertical Dilution Of Precision. The higher the VDOP value the more diluted or inaccurate your data becomes.

HDOP: Stands for Horizontal Dilution Of Precision. As with VDOP the higher your HDOP value the less accurate your positional information.

Different GPS devices allow you to configure their accuracy in different ways. Some GPS devices will allow you to tell it to ignore high (less accurate) DOP values. By telling your GPS device to ignore the high HDOP and VDOP values you’ll collect more accurate positional data. After adjusting these setting you may notice that your time to first fix (TTFF) takes a bit longer than when you allowed your device to collect data with the higher VDOP and HDOP values – this is normal and it is the price of accuracy. You may also notice some holes in your data collection. If you’ve set your device to collect a point for every second and it can’t get a value that is within your acceptable precision parameters it will just not store a point for that period of time.

You may find that in areas where satellite communication is difficult (mountainous terrain, dense forrest) that you never achieve a positional fix or that you have to wait for one or two minutes before you can achieve one – again this is a normal side effect of asking your device for more precision and you should adjust your device accordingly.

Assess your own situation and the accuracy of data that you would like to collect and adjust your settings accordingly.

Google Earth is a great application even if you don’t use a GPS device with it. You can look at the landscape and explore the world with a birds-eye view of some excellent and very current earth imagery.

I decided that since I use the application a lot that I would upgrade to the Plus version of Google Earth which has a price-tag of a reasonable $20 annually.

Since my GPS is not of the Magellan or Garmin brands I can’t do the real time GPS tracking that Google Earth Plus would allow me to do. I really don’t have the need to do this real-time tracking on Google Earth, but it would probably be fun to play around with for an hour or two. I’m totally satisfied with importing my data and storing it for later use.

The Plus version of Google Earth doesn’t seem to offer any new features to the program besides the real-time GPS tracking and the ability to print higher resolution maps from the program. Google says that with the $20 subscription you’ll have preferred access to the data servers. To be honest I haven’t really noticed a difference with map data download speeds and Google tells you that the map data is the same for everybody anyways. With no way to confirm that my $20 somehow gives me preferential access rights I’ll just have to trust Google on that one.

While I don’t see much of a difference between the Plus and Free version of the Google Earth program, I’m content in the thought that I made a small donation to Google and that one day my small donation will somehow help them if they ever decide to push MS out of the marketplace.