Haystack location services | GPS asset tracking

We tackle low power GPS asset tracking head-on

We are not afraid to do mobile. Most LPWAN technologies boldly proclaim their suitability for fixed use cases like meter reading because it’s easy. But it’s rare to find a LPWAN vendor touting their mobile asset tracking capabilities, much less their support for GPS asset tracking or multi-year battery life.

Why? Mobile is just harder! Unpredictable RF obstacles and terrain, a wide variety of use cases, and situations where GPS isn’t always available. Combine these challenges with LPWAN technologies that cannot realistically support GPS or whose batteries fail in a matter of days, it’s no wonder LPWAN vendors stay away. Most importantly, mobile requires a networking stack that supports certain features required by mobile that may be less relevant in fixed use cases, like Automatic Repeat Requests for messages that don’t arrive at their destination.

We launched Haystack after spending years solving medium-range mobile asset tracking challenges for the defense sector and kept this at the forefront of our thinking when designing DASH7. Today we integrate DASH7 with the latest long-range radios and the most advanced low power GNSS/GPS receiver to enable the most convenient, high performing, and affordable mobile asset tracking solution in the marketplace today.

Our approach to real-time location also enables multiple approaches to real-time, low power geofencing and alerts. GNSS/GPS can radically simplify this task but RSSI- and TDOA-based approaches can also support geofencing, albeit with less location granularity.

How only Haystack can support real-time, low-power GPS asset tracking

• A-GPS provides “hot start” location acquisition – like a GPS cheat sheet – to endpoint, minimizing power draw.

• Haystack gateways multicast A-GPS  datagrams to nearby endpoints

• Location acquisition time is usually ~2-3 seconds with ~3 meters accuracy

GPS asset tracking server

Compare Haystack location capabilities

GPS asset tracking system comparison

Real-time, low-power geofencing

Asset tracking and other mobile applications in need of geo-based location alerts can take advantage of Haystack’s unique capabilities to deliver high precision geofencing while preserving multi-year battery life. Starting with Haystack’s innovative approach to implementing GNSS/GPS using multicasted A-GPS datagrams, we use signal strength indicators embedded in the DASH7 advertising protocol to minimize GNSS/GPS receiver operations. The result? Real-time geofencing alerts that preserve Haystack’s multi-year battery life performance.
Real-time GPS asset tracking

High-precision indoor location with Haystack

Achieving high-precision indoor location over radio technologies like LoRa® requires a fully bi-directional networking stack with multicast and peer-to-peer communications features. With Haystack, fixed battery-powered reference nodes (HayTags, for example) provide an affordable means of providing real-time indoor asset tracking. While we recommend GNSS/GPS in many cases, indoor location and some outdoor location use cases require the use of alternative location methods. Fortunately, Haystack supports Received Signal Strength Indictors natively as part of our approach to supporting GNSS/GPS. We are also continuing to develop our time-based location techniques over LoRa® , providing highly-synchronized Time Difference Of Arrival-based location for interesteddevelopers.
GPS asset tracking gateway

Haystack vs. LoRaWAN Indoor Challenge

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