GPS Tracking Mysteries: What Is Latitude?

GPS technology makes it possible to keep an eye on any person, asset anywhere in the world.

One piece of data that is collected is the latitude.

Latitude is measured from the equator in units called degrees.  It's often written as a positive number of degrees in the northern hemisphere and a negative number of degrees in the southern hemisphere. 

Latitude starts at to 0 degrees at the equator, down to -90 degrees at the South Pole, and up to +90 degrees at the North Pole

As interesting as this technology is, however, its usefulness is determined not by data itself but how the data is collected and used.

For this reason, GPS tracking and recording solutions read and take advantage of GPS data like never before.GPS tracking devices usually splits in to two categories
a.Active tracking devices
b.Passive tracking devices (Data loggers)

Active tracking units constantly collect data and send data to central tracking system (such as computer). Active devices are more expensive and consume more power. Passive tracking devices, on the other hand, simply store positioning data on a build in memory chip. Once the tracking device is recovered, data can be downloaded to some device for further analysis.

One of the examples of passive tracking devices are data loggers. Technically speaking, a data logger is any device that can be used to store data.. GPS Data Logger will record your track, time and location for viewing on application such as Google Earth. Applications include tracking vehicles, children and elderly, geo tagging pictures, recording travel/hiking routes etc

Data can be exported in standard HTML, EXCEL, Google Earth KML, and RTF file formats.   The data records the following parameters - Date, Time, Latitude, Longitude, Altitude, Speed.

You can write latitude correctly in a couple of different ways. For example: Las Vegas, Nevada is at +36 degrees latitude;  Rio de Janeiro, Brazil is at -22 degrees latitude.  The same example can be written specifying North or South instead of using positive and negative. 

Las Vegas, Nevada is at 36 degrees North;  Rio de Janeiro, Brazil is at 22 degrees South.

GPS technology  takes tracking/navigation to next level. If you have important assets to track to or simply Gadget lover GPS receivers surely promise to impress.