Solar-powered indoor / outdoor position tracker

Background

The conventional GPS trackers using primary (non-rechargeable) battery require periodic battery replacement. Also due to the size of the battery used, compactness and weight reduction of GPS trackers have always been a problem. When using a tracker as a sensor logger for logistics or as a monitoring devices for elderly people, children, and pets, there were also a demand for not only logging the acquired location information, but also constantly monitor and possibly manage it. For that purpose, there was a need for a system that could constantly acquire location information from both indoors and outdoors.

Solutions

A real-time maintenance-free tracking device has been realized by combining solar cells with high power, high capacity EnerCera battery and ultra low power RE MCU from Renesas Electronics. In addition, we have realized a tracking device that can be used anywhere, by using Wi-Fi as a method of acquiring location information indoor, or installing a system that can acquire location information from GPS outdoors where Wi-Fi is not connected. By using LoRa for communication via the cloud, it is possible to constantly manage information on PCs / smartphones, etc.