GPS tracker for an interstate move
My parents are doing an interstate move in a few weeks, and I want to get them a gps tracker that they can put in a box to help them track their stuff. The main goal is to provide them their own data if they get into the situation where the carrier and the trucking company are blaming each other for not knowing where their stuff is.
Tracki, Ameriloc, and LandSeaAir seem to be the big names, but there's very little signal and not much independent information. Also a ton of products on amazon in the <$30 range that seem indistinguishable.
Even several hundred dollars in cost is not a deal breaker here, considering the issue of their stuff, but I didn't really find a clearly better expensive option.
Whatever I get, I also plan to get two airtags as backup. Maybe that's enough by itself, but I like the idea of having an active option, even though I know they could all fail for different reasons.
Has anyone used one, and if so, what was your experience? What would you recommend using or avoiding?
Airtags are almost certainly enough on their own. I regularly read about journalists using airtags to track things in the same way you're trying to, often across the planet.
Unless you're expecting your parents stuff to somehow end up away from anyone with an iPhone, Airtags seem to have the edge in almost every way:
The one advantage a dedicated GPS device would have is real time information, but that doesn't sound like what you're looking for in the first place.
Perhaps look into what trucks or stuff like rental campervans use? A lot of those are removable devices and a bigger rental company will use something that works
Good idea!
Meta:
Shouldn't this be moved to ~tech? I don't have the moving privileges to do it myself.
As someone else mentioned, air tags are probably a much better solution for this.
GPS trackers have a lot of limitations. Their battery life isn't that good because they require both a gps receiver and some sort of cell radio to actually transmit their location info.
They also notably do not work well/at all indoors. Trucking/shipping companies typically take goods from trucks with metal roofs directly into warehouses with metal roofs. Its very difficult to get a gps signal through that. Usually, logistics companies put GPS and RFID trackers on the outside of shipping containers, or put antennas on the outside of vehicles to get around this.
The airtag sidesteps all of those limitations by just using the existing infrastructure of ios devices that exist worldwide.
I don't even have any apple devices and I'd still probably use an airtag for this.