Tracker with Battery for Car

Markus2 months ago

Hey,

im looking for a GPS Tracker for my car. It should run with battery for at least 30 days (+-). (daily movement around 1-2hours)
The tracker should run a default sim (in this case a sim from netzclub). (4G)
And obviously it should communicate to my traccar server.

While searching for devices i ended up with the ST-915L, but the battery life is not that enough.

Thanks :)

Mictrack2 months ago

Based on your use case, you might want to try the Mictrack MT700.

Markus2 months ago

Looks interessting, so i looked at the modes and the battery lifes and got some questions.
If i choose MODE 7 or MODE 0, does the vibration triggers reliable when i start driving?
So i in my case the car is parked and now it just reports lets say every 12 hours. Now i start the car and drive, it will switch in the waked up mode and reports every 10 minutes, until the car stops. Is that correct? So would one of these two modes fits the best for me?

If i compare this to the battery life of MODE 2 with an interval of 10 minutes. The MODE 7 oder MODE 0 should have a longer battery life in this case, is that right?

Is it possible to get the speed inside traccar at each report? (i dont know if this is an value the tracker sends or the value is calculated inside traccar)

Mictrack2 months ago

If so, we recommend the "MODE,7,10,12" setting; the device will operate as follows:

  • When vibration is detected: The device wakes up and sends one report to the server. If vibration continues, it will report every 10 minutes.
  • When vibration stops: The device goes to sleep and wakes up every 12 hours to send one report to the server, then returns to sleep.

Given a daily movement of about 2 hours, the estimated battery life would be:

  1. Power consumption details for "MODE,7,10,12":

    • During 2 hours of vibration: Average power consumption is 5.58mA.
    • Reporting every 12 hours: Average power consumption is 100.21uA.
    • Sleep mode: Power consumption is 4.5uA.

    The total average power consumption calculation:
    ((5.58mA×2 hours+(100.21uA×12 hours+4.5uA×10 hours)/1000))/24 hours=0.157mAh

  2. Battery life calculation:
    7800mAh / 0.157mA ≈4968 hours, or approximately 207 days

Note: 1. This evaluation assumes stable GPS and network signals.
2. Considering the impact of self-discharge in rechargeable batteries, ambient temperature, and other factors, the actual battery life may vary.

Mictrack2 months ago

The device will reports raw GPS speeds directly to the server, so the Traccar server will need to handle the conversion, but I think Traccar should already manage this.

Markus2 months ago

Well that sounds perfect.
Thank you for the detailed calculation.

So would you say the vibration detection is accurate enough to detect the car is running?
I cant find any MODE 12 in your documentation (https://www.mictrack.com/downloads/Working-mode/MT700_Working_Mode.pdf), what does die MODE does?
And one more question, MODE 7 is an optimized version of MODE 0, but if i want to get an interval of lets say 1 minute instead of 10 minutes i should need to choose MODE 0. Is the power consumption roughly 10x higher? (or are there more optimizations?) So if i caluculated it correctly arround 69 days of battery life.

Mictrack2 months ago

Yes, the MT700 doesn’t support MODE 12

The device has a built-in 3D sensor, which can detect vibration without any issues. You can also adjust the vibration sensitivity as needed: https://help.mictrack.com/articles/how-to-adjust-the-vibration-sensitivity-on-mt700/

In your use case, MODE 0 (with 1 minute reporting interval) would indeed consume more power. Based on evaluations, this mode would allow the device to operate for approximately 60 days.

Markus2 months ago

Ok, overall thats sounds like exactly the tracker im looking for.
Now i checked the sim from netzclub (O2) and this dosnt support Cat M1 & NB-IoT.
I guess the tracker does not support the basic LTE right? (because of the power consumption optimization)
Or did you heared about users to run netzclub sim cards with this tracker?

If i know got a sim that supports both technologies, does the tracker automaticly choose correct one? (like when im going from one country (only Cat M1) to another (only NB-IoT))

Mictrack2 months ago

The MT700 supports CAT M1 and NB-IoT with a 2G fallback. For Europe, we recommend setting it to prioritize CAT M1 with 2G fallback, meaning the device will first search for CAT M1 and fallback to 2G if CAT M1 is unavailable. We recommend using a 1NCE SIM card for reliable connectivity across networks.

Markus2 months ago

I will take a look at the 1NCE SIM cards.
But what if i travel to a country that dont support CAT M1 and also dont support 2G anymore? Should i reconfigure it for this country or will this be done automaticly?

Mictrack2 months ago

If so you will need to reconfig the network settings as requested. https://help.mictrack.com/articles/how-to-config-network-or-bands-for-mictrack-devices/

Markus2 months ago

Ok so in this i should configure it so -> NWM,0,0,2
But what if i configure it like this -> NWM,0,2,0
Should this use all technologies i order CAT M1->NB-IoT->GSM?

And as i can see the config should be edited via a direct connection to a pc or by downlink. Is the downlink option possible with traccar? So i can change the config on the run via my traccar server and the just restart the device?

Mictrack2 months ago

We only recommend locking two networks (not three, e.g., NWM,0,2,0), as config it with three can increase the likelihood of network connection failures based on our experience.

The device supports downlink commands, so you can send the NWM command via the Traccar server to reconfi the network.

Mictrack2 months ago

By the way, the previously calculated battery life had an error. After adjusting the calculation, the actual battery life should be longer.

If you get a chance to test the device, please feel free to share the final battery life here! :)

Markus2 months ago

Ok, good to know.
I guess i will purchase the tracker soon.
And of course, i will share my experience.

Thank you for your help :)