Snaptrack . . . .
Here's an excerpt from their literature on the Web:
"Performance. SnapTrack technology generally determines location to an accuracy of 5-50 meters, depending on the amount of blockage from foliage or large structures such as buildings. The system operates in a wide range of rural and urban environments and in attenuated signal areas like inside buildings, malls or automobiles with no external antennas. By contrast, network overlay systems perform poorly in these same environments because of an insufficient number or a suboptimal layout of receiver sites, or signal interference that seriously degrades accuracy.
"Accuracy.Emergency services demand a high degree of location accuracy, but value-added services such as dispatch, driving directions and location-sensitive billing require even more precise location determination."
[Emphasis added.]
A Yahoo poster said that to work in buildings, the SnapTrack system would need a signal booster. You can see from the italicized phrases there are a couple of kickers here. "Location sensitive billing" certainly sounds like a "Gillette razor blade" strategy. Not bad if it works. 5-50 meters, though, doesn't sound too good. How would you know what building to send the rescue team to?
I am not technically proficient here. Trimble has not been making fancy press release claims, but they do seem to have a good deal with TruePosition. Even the SnapTrack materials do not sound universally wonderful . . . say, in less urbanized areas. So I'm willing to wait and see right now. TRMB is definitely too low to sell, anyway. |
