Trackem

From the tracker to the screen

I joined Trackem as a full-stack .NET co-op in May 2017, moved to full-time work in April 2018, and later continued as a contractor through February 2022. My work crossed the whole system: physical GPS and OBD trackers, the collector receiving their messages, the database and backend, and the web and iOS applications people used to find their vehicles.

Integrating hardware and decoding its protocols

Different trackers did not speak the same language. I worked on the collector and device parsers that turned TCP and UDP messages into usable vehicle data. That meant decoding binary and text packets, identifying the device, and interpreting timestamps, coordinates, speed, heading, ignition and power state. GPS, OBD and battery-powered trackers needed to report consistently even when their message formats and reporting behaviour differed.

Turning packets into events people could act on

A coordinate alone is not a fleet-management product. The event layer connected incoming positions and device state to route history, geofences, speeding and ignition alerts. I worked on the notification engine, fleet-client geofencing and the posted-speed-limit alerts used in WhereSafe. The result was information a customer could use: where a vehicle was, when it arrived or left, and what needed attention.

Optimizing the flow from thousands of devices

I worked on the path from incoming device traffic through parsing and storage so thousands of trackers could feed the platform. The work involved the collector, device and event processing, database migration and backend performance. Hardware reporting, stored history, maps and notifications all had to work together; improving one screen was only part of keeping the service useful.

A smaller server bill for the same business

In October 2020, I rebuilt the backend on Node.js and AWS. The monthly server bill fell from about $5,140 to $265: roughly $4,875 less each month, or a 95% reduction. Those figures come from my dated records from that month. Lower operating cost was a concrete outcome of the infrastructure work, alongside keeping the tracking service running.

One platform, different products

The work also supported products built around Trackem’s tracking platform. WhereSafe was its consumer GPS offering; STFU Tracking, at stfutracking.ca, was a white-label offering. These were connected parts of the same engineering story: hardware integration and event ingestion underneath, with product-specific websites and customer experiences above.

Work through Trackem

Products and client work connected to Trackem, each with its own story.

• STFU TrackingBuilt ForThe white-label tracking offering at stfutracking.ca, powered by Trackem. My work was on the shared hardware integration, collector and backend that turned incoming device data into usable tracking information.Trackem era

The services this involved