THE CHALLENGEAsset Tracking Is a Power Budget Problem
A vehicle tracker has a battery and an alternator behind it, so it can report every few seconds. An excavator parked on a remote site, a container crossing an ocean, or a steel mould sitting in a yard has none of that. The hard part is reporting reliably for years on a single cell, reaching the network from inside a metal box, and tracking small tools that can never carry a GPS module. The answer is deep-sleep firmware, low-power radios, and a tag-and-gateway architecture rather than forcing a vehicle-style tracker onto a passive asset.
A component of the broader Telematics and GPS Tracking capability, often deployed with Container and Cargo Tracking.
WHAT'S INCLUDED
Trackers for Powered and Passive Assets
Construction and Heavy Equipment Tracking
Trackers for excavators, generators, compressors, and attachments, available as either a self-powered unit or a wired tracker that taps the machine battery and reads run-hours. You see location, utilisation, and unauthorised movement off-hours, which is how rental fleets recover idle and stolen equipment.
Container and Trailer Tracking
Sealed, self-powered trackers sized for multi-year service intervals so containers and trailers report through the whole journey and yard dwell without any wiring. NB-IoT and Cat-M1 reach out of a metal box far better than ordinary cellular, which is why they are the default here.
Long-Life Battery Trackers
Non-powered trackers built to run for years on a single charge. A lithium thionyl chloride cell, an STM32 or modem MCU in deep sleep at microamp draw, and a tight duty cycle are the three levers, tuned against your required report interval and service life.
Yard and Logistics Asset Management
Tracking for trailers, swap bodies, cages, and rolling stock across a yard, combining GNSS outdoors with gateway-based location indoors. The platform answers where an asset is, how long it has dwelled, and whether it has left the site without a job attached to it.
Tool and High-Value Asset Tagging
Tools, instruments, and high-value items carry small BLE tags that last a year or more on a coin cell, and a powered GPS gateway reports which tags it sees and where. You track hundreds of items without a SIM and GPS module in each one, at a fraction of the per-item cost.
BLE Gateway Architecture
The gateways that make tags useful. A gateway scans for nearby BLE advertisements, deduplicates and ranks them by signal strength, and forwards a compact report over cellular. Scan scheduling, tag whitelisting, and firmware updates keep a fleet of gateways healthy in the field.
POWER AND RADIO
Engineering for Years, Not Weeks
Every decision on a passive tracker comes back to the energy budget. The current draw of each state, sleep, wake, GNSS fix, and transmit, is modelled against the battery capacity, then the radio and duty cycle are chosen to hit your target service life.
Deep-Sleep Duty Cycling
The device spends almost its entire life in deep sleep at microamp draw and wakes only on a timer or a motion interrupt from an accelerometer. The fix and transmit window is kept as short as possible because that active burst is where the battery is spent.
Low-Power Wide-Area Radio
NB-IoT and Cat-M1 send small payloads efficiently and reach deep indoors and into containers. A short check-in that returns to sleep quickly costs a fraction of the energy of a full 4G session.
Battery and Field Validation
Cell chemistry and capacity are matched to the service life, with the real draw validated on the bench and in the field across temperature, because a datasheet figure and a winter-yard figure are not the same number.
TAG AND GATEWAY
Tracking Hundreds of Items Affordably
Cheap, Long-Life BLE Tags
A BLE tag is a tiny advertiser running on a coin cell for a year or more. It carries no GPS, no SIM, and no recurring data cost, which is what makes it viable to put on every drill, gauge, and pallet rather than only the most expensive assets.
GPS Gateways That Locate Tags
A powered gateway on a vehicle, in a yard, or in a building scans for nearby tags and reports them with its own position. Tags inherit location from whichever gateway last saw them, so the network of gateways becomes the location source for the whole tag population.
Signal-Strength Proximity
Tag sightings are ranked by received signal strength so the platform can tell which gateway a tag is closest to and flag when an item is loaded onto the wrong vehicle or has left its assigned zone.
Indoor and Outdoor Continuity
Outdoors the gateway uses GNSS, indoors it falls back to known fixed-gateway positions, so an asset is followed from the yard into the warehouse and back without a gap. The platform merges both into one continuous history.
FAQ
Common Questions
How do you get years of battery life from an asset tracker?
Battery life is set almost entirely by how often the device wakes. The MCU and modem stay in deep sleep at microamp draw and wake on a duty cycle, for example one position and check-in per day, or on a motion interrupt from an accelerometer. A high-capacity lithium thionyl chloride cell paired with NB-IoT, which transmits a tiny payload and returns to sleep quickly, is what lets a non-powered tracker run for years rather than weeks.
Why NB-IoT instead of 4G for asset trackers?
NB-IoT and Cat-M1 are low-power wide-area technologies built for small, infrequent messages. They reach deep indoors and into containers where regular cellular struggles, draw far less energy per transmission, and cost less per device on the network. For an asset that reports once or twice a day, NB-IoT is the right radio. 4G is reserved for trackers that need frequent updates or larger payloads.
How do you track tools and small assets that cannot carry a GPS tracker?
A BLE tag and gateway architecture handles this. Each tool or high-value item carries a small, cheap BLE tag that lasts a year or more on a coin cell. A powered GPS gateway, fitted on a vehicle, in a yard, or in a building, scans for nearby tags and reports which ones it sees along with its own position. The tags inherit location from the gateway, so you track hundreds of items without putting a GPS module and SIM in each one.
Can you track containers and trailers that have no power?
Yes. Containers and trailers are a classic non-powered, long-life case. A sealed, self-powered tracker with deep-sleep duty cycling and a battery sized for the service interval, often several years, reports through the whole journey and dwell time in a yard without any wiring to the asset.
How do you handle assets that move between outdoor and indoor locations?
GNSS provides outdoor position while BLE gateway or cell-based location covers indoors, where satellites are not visible. The tracker reports its best available fix and the platform stitches them together, so an asset is followed across a yard, into a warehouse, and back out without a gap in the timeline.
Track Your Equipment and Assets Reliably
Share what you need to track, where it lives, and how long it must run between charges to get the right mix of long-life trackers, NB-IoT, and BLE tags and gateways for your assets.
Schedule a Free Consultation