What’s the situation would cause the GPS tracker dead?
As a GPS tracker supplier, do you often receive frequent call from customers asking the product’s issue even at midnight? As a GPS tracker retailer, do you often receive slow response from supplier because of the time difference, and feel very disappointed? The purpose of writing this article is helping both of you to release the pain. Except some professional technical issue, we actually can solve the common issues by ourselves if we knows the reason, when you carefully read the below listed common issues and solutions, you will find things are so simple.
There are two main reasons cause the GPS tracker dead, either device hardware issue, or platform software issue. Such as device lose signal, PCBA burnt, cable connection issue, SIM card no GPRS credit, firmware hung, platform server crashed or program bugs.
Let’s trying to fix one by one.
- Device lose signal.
We have to pay attention to this issue when we are installing the tracker to vehicle, make sure the GSM signal won’t be shielded by metal or affected by other signal, and place the GPS antenna or the built-in antenna towards the sky so to receive satellite signal. If the issue happens when tracker have worked smoothly for some time already, we need to check if the vehicle with tracker installed is staying beside skyscraper, under roof or big tree, or under bad weather which may affect the signal. If tracker lose GSM signal, it will stop sending data to platform, while usually device has the flash memory to store blind zone data and resend to platform when signal recovered, if tracker lose GPS signal, it will sending data to platform without coordinates, you will see the vehicle online in platform while no location. In this case, we will need to check if GPS antenna is broken or covered.
- Device’s PCBA is burnt.
Sometimes, the PCBA of tracker is burnt because of circuit short, seeped into water, or high temperature. When device’s PCBA is burnt, it won’t power on, obviously, the LED indicator in device would turn off or blink abnormally, and GSM module won’t work, if you call the SIM card phone number, it won’t get through or would remind you device powered off.
- Cable connection issue or battery runs out.
Besides the PCBA issue, it may be powered off because of the cable connection loosen when you call the SIM card phone number in tracker but didn’t get through, if it’s wireless device, you may need to check the battery status also.
- SIM card no GPRS credit
If you have checked the tracker LED status and it’s blinking normally, while device is still dead, we should consider whether the SIM card GPRS credit is enough. Try to refresh credit to check the status again. Some of telecom operators would stop all the features when there is no credit in SIM card, some still keep the GPRS working while only limit the flow rate, in this case, tracker is still online, but it won’t upload the data as per the preset interval, and won’t response any command from platform.
- Device firmware hung.
Firmware is the program loaded into device to fulfill each features. Because each supplier may have different research ability, program developed by them may have bugs which would cause the device dead. Usually when the device firmware hung, the LED indicator would blink abnormally. We can use SMS command to restart the device, or manually restart it. If restart won’t work, we may request supplier update over the air or load firmware again through PC.
- Platform update and maintenance
When you tried above 5 points, and find out that the tracker’s LED blink well, it reply SMS, preset parameters are correct, and call can get through, we will have to consider the issue from the platform software. We need to check with supplier if they are updating platform or maintain the server.
- Platform server crashed or program bugs
If you find tracking platform cannot load in computer, it may because the server is crashed. If the platform remind error, it may because the program bugs, if the platform shows all trackers are offline, it may because the server network issue or program bugs. All these issue will need professional engineer to solve.
At last, when you eliminate all the errors one by one and the tracker is dead finally, you may just send them back to supplier for repair and don’t waste your time any more.
