Over a decade into the 21st Century… and while we still don’t have flying cars, there is no shortage of gee-whiz goodies out there. In fact, with all the devices packing on more and more features, you can pocket some truly james-bond-like technology for a few hundred bucks (and a two year user subscription and data plan).
Link to photo album for this review
One of the newest entries to the high-tech fray is the Garmin Tracking Unit (GTU-10), but unlike most bright and shiny touch-screen doo-dads, the GTU is a rather small and almost featureless device with only one button, one light and a single mini-USB plug. The GTU really only does one thing, and it does that one thing well; the GTU allows you to access the Internet from any computer and see its location in near real-time - and of course you can also find your GTU via one of the aforementioned Android or iPhone smart phones.
So let’s take a look at how it performed in the field… Setting up the GTU is a snap, the unit is supplied with a USB cable that charges the GTU from your computer’s USB port, and this cable also acts as the communications link to the GTU. Once you have the GTU plugged in, you can register it at the my.garmin website. If this is your first Garmin device, you will need to make an account and download a small piece of software that allows for the discovery of your new device.
Once the GTU is charged and turned on, all you need do is simply click on “locate” on your Garmin account page… and viola, you are looking at a map of your area and an icon showing the location of your GTU. The map interface is standard fare for Internet maps; you can zoom in and out, drag the map around and choose between a traditional “road map” view, or an overhead picture. Access time for the unit usually only took maybe 20 seconds or so, and the accuracy was very impressive.
I set the GTU on a cobblestone pad in my yard, and in the brief time it took me to walk back inside and click the locate button, there was a little bulbous icon setting next to my house… zooming in on the overhead picture view showed that the little icon was maybe one meter off of where the GTU was actually sitting. So, on to the next thing…
The GTU comes with a small zippered pouch, a carabineer style clip and a piece of velcro tape - this is the extent of mounting options, but these few accessories will cover about any situation you can imaging. The pouch is designed to be clipped to something via the little carabineer, or can be fit to any strap that is less than an inch wide, the pouch is contoured to strap directly to a dog collar. For a more permanent installation, you can use the velcro tape to stick the GTU to something - say the dashboard of a car. For the first few days of testing, I stuck the GTU in the pouch and clipped it to a small pack I carry about everywhere to test out one of the more interesting features of the GTU: geofences.
Once you have your my.garmin account activated, and the device registered, you can set up geofences anywhere you like on the map - this creates virtual boundaries around areas in which you wish to monitor the comings and goings of your GTU. Setting up a geofence is as simple as a few mouse clicks, and then you can select weather you want to know when the GTU enters or exits one of these areas. You can also select how you want to be notified, by email or text message. The geofence feature works quite well and is one of the unit’s strongest features… I can see the GTU being used to monitor all manner of things: vehicles, kids, pets and fidelity to name a few.
Of course the bread and butter of the GTU is the ability to go to your my.garmin account (on your smart phone or computer) and pull up the current location of the GTU with remarkable accuracy… and that (as promised) is it, that is what the GTU does. So let’s take a look at how it does it.
Obviously the GTU gets its location via the conventional GPS satellite and receiver system, so how does it get that information back to you? Here is where some of you will sort of groan and mumble “I knew it, I knew there was something” - the GTU uses AT&T’s cellular GSM network to talk back to the subscriber service… remember in the first paragraph, where I said there is always a subscriber service? I am not going to get into the merits and shortcomings of one cell phone carrier over another… suffice to say that you know the GTU uses cellular service through AT&T and no one can tell you if that is going to work out for you, but you.
That said, we took the GTU on a little excursion down the US/Mexico border and it was pretty reliable… there were a couple of times that the GTU could not be located on the first try, but it never took more than maybe five minutes of trying to get a location. The area it was in is shown as a “coverage” area on the AT&T website, but it is also an area that is known to be pretty sketchy for using cell phones. I also drove the GTU all over Tucson and outlying areas, it was put in the trunk of a car, on the floor in the back of a hatch-back, and in a gun case laying on the floor in front of the back seat of a sedan… in every case, I was able to get a location on the GTU almost every time I tried. Bottom line, the GTU seems to be a no less reliable than any standard cell phone that uses the same carrier - that should be the standard that you use to decide if it is going to work for you.
Okay, so about that user service… you get the first year free with the purchase of the GTU, after that it is $49.99 a year to continue the service. There is an optional upgrade service that gives you more than the 10 geofences and 10 location track history that is included in the standard service… this extra service runs $4.99 a month. Grand total for full-meal-deal service works out to $59.88 for the first year, and $109.87 a year after that.
The GTU itself is 3 X 1.3 X 0.8 in (7.6 X 3.3 X 2 cm) and only weighs 1.7 oz. (48g), it is waterproof to the IPX7 standard (submersion to one meter for 30 minutes) which means you could stash the GTU in your beer cooler and track its every move with on your iPhone… if you really don’t care that people would know that you actually do stuff like that.
The GTU can be set in different duty cycles to check its location, from every 30 seconds to every 15 minutes; in the 15 minute setting, the GTU reports that its battery will last for 5 days… it did not, but it was pretty close. I cycled the battery once, then fully charged it at 0700 on a Saturday morning… then we were off. The GTU covered a lot of miles in vehicles, back packs and just clipped to a belt; it spent time outdoors, in a car, in an industrial building and at home on the kitchen counter. At about 0330 on Tuesday morning, it sent a low battery message, later that day at about 0800, it logged entering a geofence, and just after 1200 on Tuesday, it could not be located. The GTU gave a solid 36 hours of reliable tracking, which is pretty impressive really.
So, where does the GTU belong? Well, it belongs clipped onto anything that you want to keep track of… the possibilities are somewhat endless, but the obvious includes: pets, children, vehicles and other personal belongings. It seems it would have a place tracking fleet vehicles and I am sure that more than a few private investigators are already in line to get one. You could track your team in a relay race, keep an eye on your working dog, or get a message every morning when your child has entered the geofence around his or her school… again, the possibilities are endless.
And where does it not belong? It seems the common knee jerk reaction here is the GTU’s reliance on the cell phone network – but that is most likely a pretty small concern. Think about it, how often do you not have cell phone service? If you can honestly say you are without service nearly all of the time, then the GTU is not for you… but most people really can’t say that. The concern that “the device could leave the coverage area” is quickly countered with “and it could just as quickly come back in”.
The bottom line here is this, if you are heading off to the Alaskan Wilderness or the Apurimac River, the GTU is not what you want to take as an emergency locator, there are a lot better choices for those trips… but, if you spend the majority of your time where you can enjoy such luxuries as cellular phones, and you have something that is worth about twelve bucks a month to know where it always is, the Garmin GTU is what you are looking for.
I want to thank the folks at Garmin (www.garmin.com) for making another fine product… and I would like to especially thank Joe Strohman at Strohman Enterprise for getting a GTU in my hands to actually test – rather than just parrot the info from Garmin’s website. Strohman Enterprise is the authorized distributor for Garmin products to military, law enforcement, emergency services and other professional risk takers – if you are looking for anything from Garmin, make sure to visit them at www.strohmanenterprise.com