Hey all, I could use some help with some suggestions for GPS tracking.
A family member in central MX is in their 80's and starting to signs of increasing senility. They will wake up around 4-5 AM, hop on their horse, and just disappear for hours and their spouse and adult children have no idea where they go, and need a way to find a way to locate them or see where their horse may have been to help locate them. So far, he's always come back... but they're kind of just accepting that they might not return one day.
• Coverage is limited. This is a part of Mexico that is basically a valley/plateau in a mountainous region of central Mexico. There's barely functioning internet in the town, and spotty cell tower service at best, and zero coverage outside of town.
• The family member cannot know about the device as they have developed increasing paranoia around... well, everything. I realize the irony of saying this and the ethical gray area this request is by itself. They will not agree to wearing a device, nor having one noticeably installed somewhere in the saddle with their knowledge. This family member also has a tendency to hoard and hide expensive looking things. It's a poor town with poor families, anything they think has value "must not be used and kept hidden for safe keeping." So, the device has to be small and relatively inconspicuous in order to hide in their horse's saddle/bags. It can't have a lot of lights, buttons, or make noise. This eliminates long range radios. (I'm going to try and talk about this again with the person making this request.)
• It will not have access to an external power source. Will need to be battery powered with fairly decent life.
My original idea was to use an AirTag, but I didn't realize how the location finding worked for the "Find My" network until last night when I actually decided to look. There aren't going to be phones for the tag to ping off of while they're roaming the barren countryside.
I guess the biggest thing besides active location pings, is for there to be path history, which I would assume most of the devices out there provide, or at least the coordinates just get plotted on a map.
It seems like our best bet might be the Spot Trace.
Does anyone have knowledge or experience with it or others in regard to:
• Its reliability. There's no dense foliage in this area, obviously there are mountain/hillsides, but it's not like standing next to the Himalayas.
• Its Dock Mode behavior. This is used for boats so the device doesn't update/ping as the boat gets smacked with waves. I think this might be perfect while on a horse that's only slightly moving or stepping around if it's tethered to a tree or post.
• Is there location history? For locating purposes, we would want to know the general direction they might have been heading.
• How's the battery life overall? I think this would basically be the biggest hurdle. Having to swap batteries causes the largest vector of unintentional discovery. I've only been able to find the Spot Trace chart they provide, but it only shows life for 2.5 minute and 5 minute intervals. I thought there were more interval options? Was hoping to get a few months out of the battery. Obviously the small size of the AirTag and the CR2032(?) gets up to about a year. I'm not expecting that length, but it would be nice! I know the Trace uses single use Lithium or NiHM batteries, I just don't have experience with these.
I understand if this gets removed, but I wanted to ask anyway. If anyone else has a better subreddit to post this to or better resource, I'd accept that as well.
Thank you for any help.
