satnav question

[okenemem]

hi all, im considering buying a tracker and I was wondering why we can't use oem factory car satnavs as trackers.

I'm sorry if it may be a stupid question,

I believe satnavs use gps to direct, so why can't we use the gps to find the car which it is assigned to??

[littleredrooster]

Essentially because the satnav is only a receiver, not a transmitter with a SIM card. You're thinking of something like Apple's 'Find My iPhone' system? It would need to be permanently live to work - may have implications for battery drain.

Wouldn't be difficult to engineer, mind you.

[SteBrown91]

Modern BMW’s have this feature the police can send a request to bmw to access the data

[Pica-Pica]

SteBrown91 said:

Modern BMW’s have this feature the police can send a request to bmw to access the data

Yes, and the sat Nav can transmit its location, automatically in the event of a sufficiently large collision, or manually by an emergency button inside a flapped housing in the roof, which can open a call to BMW.

[Pica-Pica]

SteBrown91 said:

Modern BMW’s have this feature the police can send a request to bmw to access the data

Yes, and the sat Nav can transmit its location, automatically in the event of a sufficiently large collision, or manually by an emergency button inside a flapped housing in the roof, which can open a call to BMW.

[okenemem]

SteBrown91 said:

Modern BMW’s have this feature the police can send a request to bmw to access the data

I've just looked into this , and as far as I'm aware with the bmw system its not the satnav that is used to locate the car its actually its the sos system which is a SIM card inside car. So technically its not the sat nav , its like tracing a mobile phone.