Tips & Tricks – Battery Management and Intervals

by Christian Hansen

18. July 2024

In this article, we will look at how GPS trackers work and why. This should help you understand how certain situations arise when using the device that you may not have expected.

Energy management

We’ll start with the most important topic: battery management. To ensure you get the longest possible battery life, optimal use of the battery in the GPS tracker’s data processing is a top priority. The battery is a virtually finite resource and therefore has a major influence on the decisions the GPS tracker makes. This is because whenever the GPS tracker is active in any way (even in standby mode), energy is consumed. Energy consumption rises and falls with the complexity of the tasks that need to be completed. For example, evaluating the motion sensor is not as energy-intensive as transmitting position data or status messages. Intervals play an important role in energy management.

Intervals and operation modes

The intervals determine when the GPS tracker next contacts the server and also how it uses its resources between intervals.

In order to make optimal use of the available battery capacity, the GPS tracker is left to decide when to contact the server to exchange data. Why is that?

Maintaining a connection to the server means increased energy consumption, as the communication module would have to be switched on all the time. Even if no messages are being transmitted. Since the available energy is limited to the current charge capacity of the battery, care is always taken to reduce unnecessary energy consumption of individual electronic components to a minimum.

This is the reason why new settings are only adopted by the GPS trackers when the set interval has expired. This is therefore a compromise solution that enables a longer battery life by excluding permanent accessibility.

To further extend the battery life, the GPS trackers are in different working modes depending on the set interval.

Active mode

At short intervals of up to three minutes, the GPS tracker is always on standby so that data can be transmitted at any time.

Smart mode

At an interval of between three minutes and one hour, the GPS tracker switches to standby mode as long as it is not moved. In standby mode, the GPS tracker does not process or send any data. The GPS tracker is only activated again when there is a pulse from the motion sensor.

Periodic mode

If an interval is set longer than one hour, the GPS tracker will only report when this interval has expired. Only then will it attempt to determine a position, which will be transmitted if successful. In the time between intervals, the GPS tracker is in sleep mode to save as much energy as possible.

Alarm mode

Various of the functions provided (e.g. notification of movement/standstill) are associated with emergency situations. When such a situation is detected, the GPS tracker is put into alarm mode. In alarm mode, the GPS tracker is permanently active and transmits data every 10 seconds. Alarm mode can be ended via the app. If the GPS tracker is in alarm mode, it will automatically continue after recharging until it is deactivated via the app. This mode causes increased energy consumption; however, at this point, some kind of emergency situation is assumed.

Location determination

Determining a position is not particularly energy-intensive under optimal conditions. This changes when the conditions for determining a position are impaired. If the reception quality is not good, the attempt to determine a position can lead to high energy consumption. For this reason, the GPS tracker attempts to determine a position for a maximum of 15 minutes. After that, it waits for a certain amount of time and then makes a new attempt under possibly better conditions.

Summarized

This article has explained to you that the battery management of the GPS tracker is designed to give you the longest possible battery life. Even if this means that setting changes cannot always be applied directly. We have also seen that the GPS tracker works differently depending on the interval set. Again, with the premise of making optimal use of the battery capacity and at the same time offering you the most individual usage options possible.

Are you ready to explore GPS tracking solutions for your business or personal use?