Bad Tracking Day!

[mrberrie]

What is going on? Today has been an very bad tracking day. The entire weekend has been unreliable. I was with the phone and know it did not move yet I got alerts that it did. However, if you look at 5/30/07 between 5 & 6 PM you will see that the travel that is indicated and the time frames is impossible. It has to be more accurate than this. Please help! Tks. mrberrie...

[ATSupport]

I can assure you that our servers have been running 100% normal and no changes have been made on the server side. Another user has posted earlier having a bad phone that runs abnormally, which gives false positions and alerts. Is yours like this: viewtopic.php?t=1010

[mrberrie-?]

I am using the i415 provided by you guys. When I first got the phone, it was working great. Now I get all of these strange alerts. I am not the expert. I don't know what is wrong. I am paid in full for the remainder of the year but, it still has to be reliable. Please let me know when it is fixed so I may start back monitoring. Tks! Mrberrie.....

[ATSupport]

Please email me your username and the details of the problem so I can check that.

[mrberrie!]

mrberrie

5/30/07

4 - 5 PM

[ATSupport]

ok here is the summary of your data, fence and alerts:

1) You have one fence "eagle" set at -86.23048, 32.32537 with 500 feet radius.
2) You have the following data reported:
4 2007-05-30 16:32:55 -86.23016, 32.32524 164 1 N
3 2007-05-30 16:31:50 -86.22984, 32.32404 45 5 SE
2 2007-05-30 16:30:15 -86.23016, 32.32501 114 1 S
1 2007-05-30 16:19:43 -86.23037, 32.32534 88 0 -
Data record 3 above triggered the fence.

Record 3 is a GPS signal drift of about 430 feet and is within the accuracy range:
http://support.accutracking.com/kb/article/000043

I put your settings and data on a diagram to illustrate this:


Please note just like DirectTV, the satellite signal drifting is mainly caused by environment: clouds, trees, reflections from buildings.

I'd recommend you increase the fence radius to 800 feet if see more alerts (btw while I checked your account I saw a few other fences with 100 feet even 50 feet radius, this is highly NOT recommended as it'll almost surely trigger false alerts. Please see http://support.accutracking.com/kb/article/000028 for details).

[mrberrie!]

I am so sorry. I gave you the wrong timeframe. Can you please plot a similiar chart for the following timeframe?

mrberrie

5/30/07

5 - 6 PM

[ATSupport]

Checked your data. It has basically the similar reason as above...you get the idea... here is the diagram:

[mrberriee]

A lot appear to be outside the 500 Foot radius. Did not have this kind of inaccuracy in the past. Is there any way to make it more reliable? If I set my fence to anything more than 500 feet, I might as well stop tracking. Please help! Any suggestions. Rishgt now as we speak on a very clear and pretty day I have a weak signal and the phone is at its base/primary location and on electrical power. Frustrating stuff!

[ATSupport]

If you mean low phone signal bars by saying "weak signal", it's the cell tower signal issue; If you mean low GPS reception, it could be an outdated almanac data on the phone and you'll see "No fix" message on the AccuTracking screen. This can happen even if your phone has been installed in the same place where it used to work perfectly. For more tech details, please see http://support.accutracking.com/kb/article/000049

If I set my fence to anything more than 500 feet, I might as well stop tracking.

These are 2 separate issues, the fence setting won't "stop tracking" - setting the fence bigger only lowers the alert sensitivity. I'd still strongly recommend you use bigger fences, particularly when I see you have some amazing fences with 50 feet radius. Also, when creating fences, carefully choose the fence center close to the center of the GPS data cluster (see the above diagrams).

[mrberrieee]

The point is that it use to work perfectly when I had the free service and when I first got the pay service. I am sure you have done everything you know to do but, I am not happy.

What if I pay for another phone, you load the software and send me the phone only. I will attach it to the car so if both phone track I will know it is true. I already have the battery connection that was provided when I order the first phone from you at the premium price.

I don't want/expect to pay $80.00+ dollars. I expect to pay approx. $30.00 for the phone and the the software installed and working on my existing site.

I will use the same account so that should not cost me anything either.

That will resolve the reliability issue.

What do you think??

[ATSupport]

I understand it used to work perfect but for your original question of "excessive geofence alerts", as I checked your data and explained, ~500 feet GPS signal drifting does happen to all phone GPS receivers due to the accuracy, though less than 5% of time (also explained in our knowledgebase article: http://support.accutracking.com/kb/article/000043 ). This is normal for all phone GPS. You didn't experience ~500 feet signal drift before only because it's a low chance event. It's not about the free or paid service, nor about the specific phone. So increasing your fence radius to 1000 feet is the best solution, which won't hurt the tracking & alert purpose as you might think, and will surely reduce the excessive alerts.

I hope this clarifies the problem and if you have any more questions please don't hesitate to email our support. Thank you.

[Pegtech]

I too experienced occasional false alerts with my fences set at 500 feet. This is perfectly normal and to be expected. These are GPS errors and have nothing to do with Accutracking. Accutracking is doing exactly what it is supposed to be doing by sending you an alert when the GPS data shows a location outside of your 500 foot fence. I have never received a flase alert with my fences set at 1000 feet. I have not experimented with settings between 500 and 1000 but Im sure that with some experimenting, you could find exactly the minumum setting that would eliminate false alerts. I always use 1000 feet now.