Detecting Non Communicating units

As a courtesy to our clients, on occasion we spot check databases to see if there are any non communicating units, otherwise we have no means of knowing if any units are not working. Please note that it is your responsibility to let us know if any tracking units or the tracking system is not functioning as expected.

When a vehicle is classified as not communicating, its color is set to black. A vehicle is considered to be not communicating if one of the following conditions is true:

• The most recent communication indicates that the vehicle is moving and the last contact was more than 10 minutes ago; or
• The most recent communication indicates that the vehicle has stopped and the last contact was more than 24 hours ago.

There are 2 main ways you can find  out if any of your units are non communicating:

1. GuardDog Report- Dashboard: This report and dashboard is available to all our clients. You can find this under your Dashboard view under Dashboard & Analytics. From there you will see the Guarddog Report – DASHBOARD. This will show you a chart with a break down of your units that have not communicated. Clicking on the chart will download an excel file with more details. If you do not see the dashboard, please contact us and we will enable it for you.

2. Vehicles list on Map view: In the map view of your system, you will find a list of vehicles that have been activated. If you do not see any vehicles, make sure that you have selected them by clicking the arrow beside the search bar and selecting all. If you scroll down to the bottom of that list you will find the list of units that have not communicated:

You can take the following steps to investigate a non-reporting unit. You will need a known working vehicle. It will only take a few minutes to do the investigation.

1. Please do a visual inspection that the device is plugged in, and make sure the vehicle is in an open area with sufficient access to the sky for GPS reception
   • Also make sure the GPS unit is not covered by metal objects
2. Turn on ignition and see what lights come on: It should be 3 LED lights – Red, Green, and Blue – turn solid within 30 seconds. (Proceed to the next step only if you don’t see the 3 solid lights)
3. With ignition off, remove and re-insert the device into OBDII port: LED lights will flash briefly and hear 6 beeps
4. Turn on the ignition, and check if all 3 LED lights on unit light up. The device will beep as each one of the LEDs lights up (Please note in a properly functioning unit the LEDs will remain solid)
   • The red light indicates power and that the device is working
   • The green light indicates cellular network connection
   • The blue light indicates GPS latch
5. If problems persist, swap the malfunctioning unit with a unit from a known working vehicle
6. Please keep track of the last four digits of the serial #’s of the malfunctioning unit and reference the swap unit(s) by both the vehicle name (or former vehicle name) and the serial # and new vehicle name. For example, “I took malfunctioning tracking unit 1A9C from vehicle Fred and put it into vehicle Sue.  I took functioning tracking unit 2B7G from vehicle Sue and put it into vehicle Fred”.

If you need help, we are available to walk you through the steps between 9:30am- 4:30pm EST.