So I finished the installation last weekend, and finally had a chance to set up & test the Arrowtrack GPS unit. I installed the GPS unit in the front trunk and ran its wires to the battery concealed inside ribbed plastic tubing tie wrapped to the trunk frame.
I fished the ignition lead through the opening used to route the copper heater tubes into the passenger compartment. I also concealed this wire with ribbed tubing, and protected the wire where it contacts the firewall with some thin walled rubber tubing. I did this so vibrations wouldn’t cause damage to the wire.
I took Shadowman’s advice on the fuse location, and used a 3 amp fusible link to connect to the circuit that senses voltage when the ignition switch is turned on.
Today, I got a chance to see how the unit worked when I started & moved the car. The device allows you to set up alarms for about 10 parameters (e.g., high speed alert, “geo-fence”, low voltage, “sleep alert”, motion, etc.). Set up is done by logging on and putting in email addresses and cell phone numbers where you want alerts sent, and for which events you want to be notified of.
You are allowed 2 ‘geo-fence’ options – I chose one as my home address (any movement of the car beyond the latitude/longitude of my house will set off an alarm), and will set up the 2nd later. The second geo-fence can be set up as a “mile-radius” from an established point (e.g., 10 miles from a street address). When the GPS unit detects crossing the selected radius, alerts are sent.
I had set up my cell phone and email account to be contacted anytime the GPS unit senses motion. Sure enough, when I had driven the car two houses way from mine, I got a text message and an email. Later, when I moved the car out of a restaurant parking lot, I got similar messages. Each message showed the approximate address of the location where the motion occurred. The GPS unit goes into a sleep mode after a certain length of time with no ignition or motion. It sends an alert to the website (but not your devices) when it enters sleep mode.
The software on the ArrowTrack GPS website has a “locate your vehicle” command which will display on a street view map. It also will let you get directions from your car’s location to another address input by the user. Each time you use a command, it “costs” you 1 token. When you buy a new unit, you have 500 tokens of credit. More tokens can be purchased once you’ve exceeded your allotted free tokens.
So far, I am satisfied. The installation was relatively easy, and the alerts are easy to setup. The only bug I see so far is that the street view map can be slow to load, even on a cable modem connection.
I will set more alerts up and see how the speed alerts work.
