Imagine being able to find the things you lose with GPS technology. Personal transmitters are an exciting development in GPS devices, and Crutchfield carries one called the Zoombak Personal Locator.
We wanted to find out how the locator system worked, so we sent a few of our employees out to put the Zoombak through its paces, and see how effective it really was at finding things. Read on, as Ralph debriefs our team:
The Zoombak Personal Locator
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Ralph: Robert and Gabrielle, I understand you've been testing the new Zoombak Personal Locator. It's an evocative name...what is a Zoombak?
Robert: It's a GPS tracking device used to supplement your personal security program. Zoombak enhances its GPS capability with cellphone technology, which gives you some options you wouldn't normally have.
Gabz: I have to say, there are lots of different forms of GPS tracking technology, but none seem to give you the independence and flexibility that I've seen with the Zoombak.
Ralph: That sounds promising. So how would you use a Zoombak?
Robert: It's intended for dog owners, mainly, or for parents to put in their cars so that they can keep an eye on their kids when they're out and about. It has several other uses too.
Gabz: You can use it for pretty much anything you want to track. They come with accessories kits to make attaching the device more convenient, but you're not limited to the suggested uses. You could, for example, zip-tie it underneath a bicycle seat, or tuck it into a laptop case.
Ralph: Ok. This sounds like it's a very small thing — something you could put in your backpack, is that correct?
Gabz: Oh, it's tiny. It's just a little black box about half the size of a pack of cards —
Robert: About the size of a cellphone.
Ralph: How accurate is it? You're talking about being able to track valuable things like a computer or helping keep track of your kids, but could this be used inappropriately to track people?
Robert: That's a very real issue and it's one that the developers seem to have thought about. While the technology is very accurate at determining the device's location, the information you get as the "user" is not so specific — you get a range of about a block. So you can't pinpoint exactly where it is, but you can get a pretty good idea from the map.
Ralph: So is it the same concept as Googlemaps and other services? GPS technology is such that the military can read the headlines of a newspaper lying on the ground, but that level of resolution isn't available from Googlemaps.
Gabz: You don't see satellite pictures. Instead, you're looking at a map —
Robert: —It looks like the same set of maps you'd see on a GPS navigator in your car.
Ralph: Ok.
Gabz: It does pinpoint the transmitter's actual location, you just don't get a lot of specific detail to go along with it. The Zoombak'll tell you it's in a specific city block. So let's say you know there are three houses in this block. Remember, you're looking at a map, so you won't see the houses, but if the pointer's smack in the middle of that block, you can reasonably assume the transmitter's where the middle house is sitting. In other words, you can make educated guesses — enough to know where to look. If you wanted definitive proof, you'd have to actually go to that block and look around.
Ralph: So, no reading license plates from outer space.
Gabz: [laughing] Oh no! Nothing like that.
Ralph: Ok, so this isn't video surveillance. I think that's probably the number one thing people worry about with stuff like this. What about its tracking capability?
[Editor's Note: Tracking laws vary by locality, so be sure to check your state and local regulations.]
On TV, they've got a map of the city, and there's this glowing blip that continually moves as the tracked object travels. Is that something you can see with the Zoombak? How often does it report back?
Gabz: Err..kind of, but it's not as high-tech as what we see in on TV, and your results depend on what you ask it to do. It's designed to give you only enough information to find what you've lost — say, just enough to lead you to your dog, but not enough to clue you in on each and every move the dog makes while it wanders.
Ralph: So, if you wanted to stalk your ex, it's not going to be that helpful.
Gabz: No. On the other hand, if you're working late and want to see whether your teenager made it home ok with the car, you can program it to give you an hour's worth of tracking. That's usually enough get an accurate idea of the route he's taken, and about how long it's taking him to reach each checkpoint on the route.
Robert: Hopefully you'd let your teenager know the car has a tracking device but that's up to you as a parent. Once you've installed the transmitter in your car, you can keep tabs from your computer, using Zoombak's site.
Ralph: So it tracks "real time" but not like what you see on TV?
Robert: Correct. The interface won't let you get too specific, so you're not going to get a "real-time", second-by-second map like in a spy movie.
Ralph: So tell us about your experience with the Zoombak. Gabrielle?
Gabz: One of the neat features of the Zoomback interface is, you can tell it to do an automatic, continuous track for up to an hour. I think this feature would be particularly attractive for someone who, say, had a dog with a penchant for running off.
Ralph: So if the dog got loose, they'd have a general idea of where that dog was, right?
Gabz: Right. Every five minutes it takes a reading and plots it on a map, so you can see where it's going. I wanted to see what the transmitter's range was like, so I talked my husband into taking it to a show. His band travels pretty far away for most of their gigs, and I know he's dead tired by the time he drives home. I usually spend those nights waking up every time a car passes the house.
Ralph: So he volunteered to be your "dog"...[laughs] and then you tracked him?
Gabz: [laughs] Yes! And it had no trouble tracking him, even though he was three hours away from here. I don't know that I'd use this feature all the time though.
Ralph: No? Why not?
Gabz: This type of auto-tracking has to be set up manually every time you use it, and only lasts for an hour. At the end of the hour, you'd need start a new tracking session. I liked the cool map at the end, but watching it plot isn't exactly exciting. I think they do that on purpose, to discourage obsessive tracking.
I held out for about half an hour — enough time to establish Zoombak did track the way it said it would — then I set my alarm for the time when when he would have been on the road and went to bed. When it went off, I texted Zoombak to see where he was. Using the Zoombak locator was nice because I didn't have to bother him on the road, and because I was able to predict when he'd come home, I got a good night's sleep.
Ralph: Hold on — you texted his location? How does that work?
Gabz: You can set up your cell phone to work with Zoombak's interface online — I could have just gone online and checked my tracking map, or I could have used the Location History feature, but that would have meant getting out of bed. [laughs]
Ralph: Tell me about the Location History feature. What is it?
Robert: It lets you get an on the spot update: every few minutes, you can ask Zoombak to give you an update, which it will plot on a map. If you hit the website and say, "Where's my device now?" it'll give you a reading based on when you asked that question, as many times as you hit the button.
Ralph: So it sounds like you two put this Zoombak through it's paces. What about you, Robert? Tell me about the experiment you did.
Robert: I gave the Zoombak device to one of our co-workers and told him to get lost, basically — to go for a drive. I went to Zoombak's website and got ready to trace it using one of the "real-time" options we told you about. In advance of that, Gabrielle set up Crutchfield as a"safety zone".
Ralph: Now what is that?
Robert: A safety zone is an area that you designate for monitoring, using Zoombak's website. You could, for example, set your house up as a safety zone, and program Zoombak to text you, or send an email whenever it detects the Zoombak device has entered or left that designated area.
Ralph: So if you were out for the night, and you had a teenager, and you asked him, "Please be home by 10pm", you would know if they actually got home by 10pm.
Gabz: More like, if you were out for the night, told you teenager to stay home, you'd get an alert if he took the car somewhere. All safety zones do is tell you whether it detects the device is within the zone, or not. Now, in your example, you mentioned clocking a kid by zone alerts. That's fine, but be aware that the Zone Alert feature is a lot more dependent on cell phone technology, and that can change how the information is gathered and presented.
Ralph: Really? How so?
Gabz: If you live in an are of spotty coverage (like we do), you may find the zone alerts don't always come through, and the time isn't always accurate — the notification system time stamps on when the cell tower sends the GPS notification. Depending on the safety zone, and the area you're in, you could easily have a situation where say, your car (equipped with a Zoombak device) got home at 6pm, but because the cell message was delayed, you receive the alert time-stamped for 8pm.—
Robert: — so if you're not aware of this, you could very easily misunderstand it to mean the device got home at 8 o'clock when in fact your child's been there all along, since 6 o'clock. At least for our area, I found the Safety Zone feature worked better when I limited it to a specific schedule — that way I had a better idea when it was actively monitoring, and when we were having transmission issues.
Ralph: Let me make sure I understand: if you tell it to monitor your house from 2-5pm every day, it'll do that, but the rest of the day, it won't be monitoring your house?
Gabz: Exactly. Now, as long as it's actively monitoring, it should also tell you when the device actually enters and leaves a safety zone, but like I said, we've found this is very dependent on your cell phone coverage and reception.
Ralph: Now here's a question: At least where I live, cell phone service is really spotty — If I've got bad reception, is it still going to be able to track?
Robert: The short answer is yes, because it's a hybrid of GPS and cell phone techology, it should track you a little better than either one could do on its own. But it's still limited by what either technology can pick up, so it'll be more reliable in some areas than in others.
Ralph: Robert, tell me more this co-worker you left wandering around.
Robert: Well, we basically played hide-and-seek. I sent my guy out, and while he was out going to mysterious locations, I got online to the Zoombak site and tried to find him.
Gabz: Robert started the continuous tracking feature as soon as our buddy hit the door. We could tell he stayed within the safety zone for about 20 minutes after he left, and even with the map showing a big blank space where Crutchfield's campus is, we were familiar enough with the area to figure out whether he was inside or out, and sometimes, what part of the building he might be in.
Robert: [laughing] It really was cool. I'd ask the site, "Ok, where is he now?", it would do its search, and after 30 seconds or so, give me his current location. After he left the zone, he called in and said, "Ok, I'm somewhere, can you find me?." I pinged the site, and when I got a response I asked "are you on Timberwood Blvd?" and he said "Well, yes, I am." Once I knew what street he was on I could guess "Oh, you must be at the grocery store" and as a matter of fact, he was sitting right in front of it.
Ralph: Ok! So now that you've done the experiment, what's your impression of the Zoombak GPS Locator?
Gabz: I like the fact that it does interact with your cell phone. Again, to go back to the dog example, if I was out walking, and my dog got away from me, I could use my cell phone's texting feature to ping the Zoomback site, and it would come back and tell me, "Ok, the transmitter's at the 500 block of Water Street." So I could figure out whether the dog's a few houses down, or she's gone down a side street. And that gives me a better chance of finding her.
Ralph: Nice! So you enjoyed using it?
Gabz: Oh I thought it was cool — this is technology I can really get enthusiastic about. It's just fun to play with, and I can see so many uses for it. Not just now, but down the road.
Robert: I agree completely. It was a lot of fun to play with and just use for a couple of days. As soon as I didn't have it any more, I thought of dozens of different uses for it. The thing I like most about it is it'll monitor whatever it's attached to (which could be your car, or your kid, or your dog) without having to call up your kid or your spouse all the time and say "where are you? Are you there yet? When are you coming home?" You can get that peace of mind without having to call them all the time.
Ralph: And it sounds like they've struck that fine balance between privacy of the individual, and the parent's "need to know."
Robert: When we started this, the privacy issue was a real concern — this device really does seem to do a good job of giving you just enough information for peace of mind, and allowing you to find what you've lost, without giving you the super-high level of information the police or a search and rescue team might need.
Ralph: You guys also documented your experiment on video right?
Gabz: Robert did a video review of the Zoombak and I've blogged about my experience with the Zoombak, so if you want to find out more, it's all here at crutchfield.com.
Ralph: In other words, you don't need a Zoombak to find out the information we have on the Zoombak Locator —
Robert: — But you do need a Zoombak.
