Tracking a person
Let me start off by saying, that I am a complete noob when it comes to electronics. I am a software developer by day and geek by night, but electronics is not my field by any means. I hope I am on topic here, as I found the forum by googling for forums about RFID.
My stepdaughter has a severe degree of autism, and is unable to take care of herself. On several occasions, she has managed to run away from us or her schools/institutions, and it has taken us up to 3 hours of intense search + police help to locate her again. All kinds of bad things can happen to her while she is gone.
I want to be able to track her easily, if she runs away. Now here is my idea - it might be utterly useless or impossible - but it will get you an idea about, what I am looking to achieve.
I am thinking, we give her a bracelet with some kind of transmitter (RFID?) that has a range of at least 3-400m, that she cannot take of (that means waterproof is a must). Then as soon as we find out, that she has run away, we get out a receiver/tracker of some sort - and we would be able to cover the entire area she might be in within 20 minutes in a car. As soon as we pick up her signal, we should then be able to pinpoint her location by some sort of directional tracking (not sure if that is the correct term).
Is something like that possible? What would it require? Am I overlooking a much better idea?
Real time gps tracking would be perfect, but I think the issues of battery life + size rules that out. Am I wrong?
I hope for your assistance and advice.
Thanks in advance
Klaus
from what I recall, several cell phone providers offer such services for tracking children. This might be different in your area.
Most RFID systems only have a range of a few cm, they are really intended for product identification where they can be 'scanned' at short range.
If the bracelet can be made so batteries can be changed easily, you could use a short range RF transmitter with a nearby receiver to validate the signal. I'm thinking along the lines of license free 433.92MHz modules which are small and inexpensive and have a range of a few hundred metres (yards if you are not metric!). You would have to encode the signal so it could be distinguished from key fobs, car locking systems and wireless weather stations but that is very easy to do.
Based n a similar system I designed a few months ago, I would expect a unit with a small 'coin' battery to last for about 6 months. Mine actually used 'D' cells but was transmitting continuously 24/7, in your case it only needs to transmit once every minute of so. The range would be somewhat dependent on the surroundings but you could use multiple receivers to cover 'blind spots' and raise the alarm if none of them picked up a signal for more than a few minutes.
Brian.
Hi,
I think too, that its a good application for cell phone services, dont mean that the person a cellphone to use has_ only must have on her hand or cloth a "mobile box"...
Otherwise I would "install" by her a wifi or similar system transmitter_but you must try than self a search i.e. with triangulation_not the simplest to do as in such criminal or "007" films
Maybe has your regions police a similar personal search service too as some mobile provider?
K.
There is a global sattelite system for this sort of thing but I dont know if the public are allowed access to it.
A UK supermarket was trialing it to track were DVD's people bought went to.
Apparently node count is totally unlimited.
jack
The Everstealth software allows you to view a complete list of all the incoming and outgoing calls made on a particular mobile phone. An Employer would find it useful in determining if a phone was being used to make personal calls at the company expense.
A GPS and Mobile modem can also do the job. You can request the position by sending a SMS which will reply with the co-ordinates. You no need to rely on others to find her
The easiest thing it came to my mind is, when you said "you'll make he wear a bracelet with RFID" Why cant we think of installing a radio collar which is trakable Kms apart with yagi antenna on the move. May be the collar may be fitted to her bag or even belt and can be locked so that it cannot be removed easily. GPS is another idea but a bit sophisticated and more expensive.
Hi Van der Brooke,
It sounds like you have a challenge on your hands. GPS (global positioning system) is one path to consider. Basically a GPS receiver can locate itself anywhere in the world relatively accurately. If you attach a receiver to someone it will know where it is whenever the person is outside. Inside is is another ball game. Now the problem is for someone else to be able to monitor the GPS link remotely. That means some sort of radio link and the system gets more complicated and has more opportunity to fail. Garmin has a system that you might consider, Astro. Here is a link: https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?pID=8576 Please do not be offended by the usage of this particular system, I am not drawing any parallel to your loved one. One point to ponder, you mentioned that you are in Europe. The Garmin product is licensed for use in the US and may be incompatible with your location. I would anticipate that there are alternatives.
Another possibility to consider is a tracking enabled smart phone. I had a Blackberry Bold for a while and there was an applet available to report my position to anyone with a similar phone. I am too paranoid to set up that kind of monitoring on myself but it does exist. Many phones now have location features built in for e911 location requirements. Something along those lines may be helpful if it could be passively enabled and not depend on your stepdaughter for activation.
I agree that an RFID is probably not a good choice because of the limited range. Tracking the tag would also be complex.
The biggest headache in all of these is making sure that the batteries are charged and that the tracker is working when you need it. I would vote of a GPS based solution.
Good luck with this. I don't know if this is the right forum either but who cares, maybe we can assist you.
Thre are similar gps based systems for tracking pets (eg lost dogs)
The pet wears a special collar with small battery powered gps rx and network trx that can link to nearby cellular services and send a gps location every so often.
Buy PawTrax PATmicro
dogs, cats, children, politicians ... sounds like a good idea to me
jack
Hi Van der Brook,
Just for curiosity, I took a look at the PawTRAX mentioned above. It looks like a reasonable solution. The difference between the Garmin and this is primarily that the link from the collar is via a cell phone rather than an independent radio link. How well it works is likely to be a function of the cell coverage.
A caution, you probably do not want a device that tracks and stores the positions for review later. These are generally described as "loggers" and do not provide real time tracking, your objective.
Any mobile device will have a battery life issue. I liked the PawTRAX feature of complaining to the user when it gets low. The size was not too bad either. It looks like it is European, so that would help you as well.
Good Luck.
Hello, I am currently using one of these GPS + GSM tracking systems, called "Geopoint" (from CTE International, but there exist many from other brands as well).
You could be interested in the function usually called "geofence": basically you define a circle around a target point, and when the object goes beyond that circle, you periodically receive an alarm message with the position. This is used as anti-theft mechanism, but it could be good in your case as well.
Hope this helps
Giuseppe
P.S.: forget about RFId. Using active tags and UHF you can arrive to 50-100 meters, but the system is very expensive and requires huge antennas to work
I noticed this banner add on phone tracking. You might be interested.
Em Finders
I did not look beyond the URL. Good Luck.
Take a look at this buyer's guide from a few years back for some ideas about GPS-based methods: The Ultimate GPS Child Tracking Buyer's Guide (GPSmagazine.com). This may also be of interest: LoJack SafetyNet GPS personal locator bracelet for people at risk of wandering.
Here's a nice song to listen to while reading all this stuff: YouTube - Cha?ne de KrissNR.