Yacht GPS Tracking Gadgets Needed

savageseadog

savageseadog

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I've used Yellowbrick, great things, satellite connected and a web page for all to look. The problem with them is that they don't provide regular enough updates for examining possible infringements and tactics. I was looking at the idea of having the fleet issued with a standard tracker that could be handed in after the race and uploaded. Our requirements would be around 1 second position update and a self powered battery life of 24 hours. Any ideas?
 
A lot of handheld GPS receivers have a tracking capability, for example the old Garmin Etrex series. Battery life may be a limitation though, maybe lithiums might meet the 24 hour requirement. I expect there might be industrial container trackers too.
 
I may be wrong but I thought with Yellow brick it's possible to set the frequency of position/speed/COG updates, the limitation on a long race being that increasing the number of updates will reduce the time between charging. Worth checking with them if you have not already done so.
 
Yellowbrick have tracked all sorts of inshore round the cans events. I remember being glued to the king of cowes event a few years back. You just need to change the poll rate to suit.
 
Two issues. Yellowbrick costs money to buy and run and doesn't it cost more to increase the data rate? We don't need remote tracking.
 
If these are yachts, wouldn't some sort of mobile phone app work? Surely it's reasonable to assume that competitors would have access to a suitable phone, and a means of keeping it charged for 24 hours?
 
There are several apps that could be run on phones to track 'after the event', cost a few quid.

In gliding we use sealed gps flight trackers that log at least once per second and are used to check on airspace infractions etc. Expensive though.

There are several cheap gps loggers about that will both do live tracking provided there is a gsm signal ( inshore only ) and recording for around £100.

Just a thought but some of the gps enabled car dashcams record gps location and data along with video. You'd have to keep races under a couple of hours though.
 
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Not a cheap option but pro-starts let you do this and are obviously actually useful to the sailors as well - they even provide a program to upload and analyse all the boats tracks post race as well.
 
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