this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2023
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Does anyone selfhost a tracker for a dog or cat? A reputable company charges 5€-13€ per month for it. I'm not sure I want to pay that for more than 10 years

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That’s not how GPS works.

It’s basically a radio signal your device listens for. Power consumption is tiny for that purpose. My smartwatch can go weeks with GPS active. Hell I have a 20 year old Garmin GPS for my motorcycle that will go several months on a couple AA batteries, and that tech is ancient by todays standards.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

To be fair, GPS itself is ancient by today's standards too. It has been operational for 30 years and first started development another 20 years before that.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Sort of. It is iterated upon and improved. The satellites up there now are quite advanced from the early ones, and another refresh is coming.

https://ts2.space/en/the-evolution-and-future-of-gps-satellite-technology/

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

No honey, that IS how GPS works. Triangulating your position via GPS requires connecting to no less than three satellites. Your smartwatch does not have GPS active 99% of the time. It's getting location data by mostly by looking at cell towers and WiFi networks nearby, and only uses GPS very sparingly. If your GPS was constantly active (which is what you would want when trying to catch a lost dog) then your smartwatch battery would be dead within hours, not days.

Your Garmin runs on AA's for weeks because it's not TRACKING anything, it's just showing your location on a map, locally. It's ONLY using GPS and not using any sort of data connection. The energy required to constantly check GPS and constantly report back a device's location via LTE is actually quite a lot, even if you only check in every five minutes. This is why GPS trackers only last a couple days unless they have a big battery. And this is why AirTags are popular; they last a long time because they don't use GPS and they don't need a data connection.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The fact that you keep saying “connect to GPS satellites” shows you don’t know what you’re talking about. There is no connection. And your response also has several other inaccuracies, but I’m going to end this conversation due to your aggressive tone.