Indoor tracking, for the places GPS cannot reach.
Vehicle tracking ends at the door. Inside the warehouse, the hospital or the shop, a different kind of tracking takes over. This guide explains how it works, which technology suits which job, and what it takes to offer it to your clients.
Mesh, BLE and RFID · Teltonika hardware · the Trackerserver platform
The short version.
A GPS tracker listens for satellites. A roof blocks them, so a tracker indoors either reports nothing or reports a position that is wrong by the width of the building.
Indoor tracking does not listen to the sky. It works from radio signals inside the building itself. A small tag on the thing you care about is heard by fixed devices whose places are known, and software turns what they hear into a place on a floor plan.
Three technologies do this in three different ways, and a real project usually needs to know which one it is asking for.
Three ways to know where something is.
A mesh inside the building
Battery tags are located continuously by anchors on the walls. The result is a moving dot on a floor plan. This is InSight Mesh.
A beacon heard in passing
A beacon on a piece of equipment is heard by a vehicle's tracker or by a listener in a yard. The result is which vehicle has it and where it was left. This is InSight BLE.
A label read at a door
An RFID label is read when an item passes a reader. The result is a record of where and when it was seen. This is InSight RFID, in early access.
What your client ends up looking at.
Whatever the technology underneath, the person using it sees their own building: its floors, its rooms, and the things they asked about, by name.
On Trackerserver that view sits in the same portal as their vehicles, under your brand.
- Floor plans and a 3D building
- Zones with names people recognise
- History and reports
Read on
Asked first.
Why can a GPS tracker not be used indoors?
It needs signals from satellites, and roofs and walls block them. Indoors a tracker reports late, wrongly or not at all.
Is indoor tracking one technology?
No. Mesh positioning, beacons and RFID all count as indoor tracking and answer different questions. This guide covers all three.
Who is this guide for?
For tracking, security and fleet businesses that want to add indoor tracking to what they already offer their clients.
Ready to offer indoor tracking?
Describe the building and what has to be found in it. We reply with the technology that fits, the hardware it takes and the platform that shows it.