Hi,
What would be the best way today to put together a bike tracker? I think the asset tracker particle had some time ago is discontinued. And the Tracker One and its SoM version look too feature rich for just a simple bike tracker.
Thanks for any advice!
Regards,
Pavol
The Tracker One is probably the best choice. While the old Electron asset tracker has been discontinued, you could build your own using a Boron, an off-the-shelf GNSS unit, enclosure, and battery, but you're basically just recreating all of the things in the Tracker One.
Tracker One is very bulky and has features that are not needed for bike tracking. Do you have some GNSS tutorials with particle/boron?
Is there a library in particle to work with GNSS?
Or, would you suggest the Tracker On SoM?
Does the LTE versions work in Canada?
You can use the Boron plus any number of GNSS units. The ones from Adafruit that support the PMTK protocol over serial work. You can put it in a Feather doubler to eliminate the need for loose wires or a custom circuit board.
The Boron LTE works in Canada, unless you live in Saskatchewan.
One like this? Adafruit Mini GPS PA1010D - UART and I2C - STEMMA QT : ID 4415 : Adafruit Industries, Unique & fun DIY electronics and kits
Sorry, I'm really a beginner in this. I need like step by step guide.... would you have some around?
That will work, but since the Boron does not have a QWIIC connector you may prefer the Ultimate GPS FeatherWing instead.
There is no tutorial since you're implementing the feature set of an existing Particle product, the Tracker One.
Hi, you can take a look at this one:
Thanks, that looks good. Some links dont't work. Is the oled part this one? Adafruit FeatherWing OLED - 128x32 OLED Add-on For Feather : ID 2900 : Adafruit Industries, Unique & fun DIY electronics and kits
Also, I don't understand how to connect them together, it is not explained there. There is code, and github has only svg files.
hey, there will be some reading to do, example:
Cheers
Perhaps unrelated to the direct topic at hand, but a bigger question about Saskatchewan coverage; we use the LTE Boron pretty extensively in Saskatchewan, and it seems to work well in the limited areas with LTE-M coverage (along major highways, cities, on the Rogers network).
It's my understanding that, though Particle's MVNO does not have an agreement with Sasktel, the Borons are still able to access their network by using Bell and Telus who use Sasktel's towers in the province and show the same LTE-M coverage on their own network maps.
Is this not the case?
That is correct. It does work in areas of Saskatchewan with LTE Cat M1 by roaming, but there are many areas where Sasktel has not deployed LTE Cat M1 yet.
This is different than, for example, AT&T in the United States where it LTE Cat M1 was rolled out to the entire LTE network.
Got it - that's very reassuring for future deployments to areas without Rogers LTE-M. The Sasktel (Bell/Telus) LTE-M coverage here... is extraordinarily poor. There are at least a few of us bothering Sasktel about it on a regular basis, so hopefully that will change some day soon.
The feather doubler or tripler connect relevant pins from the MCU (example: the boron) to the peripheral (example: the GPS), that simplifies how they work/connect with each other.
Cheers
Aaahh, the triplet works like if they would be stacked over each other....
Thanks, after soldering the head pins and assembling it, it worked. Just had to update the TinyGPSPlus lib to 1.1, the 0.9.4 that is in Particle libs didn't work (or that was loaded from the article).
Now "just":