Last weekend, I was fortunate to be given some slots to manage during the PIKOM Fair, at the MCMC’s booth. I had eight slots and among that I invited to speak was friends from JOMWEB community.

I make sure that I have one slot reserved for Katsana GPS. Katsana is a product developed by Pixelated Sdn. Bhd. Their team comprises for fairly young dads I supposed. But  they have developed an interesting solution for end-user car GPS tracking.

So far I know that their lead developer, Mior Muhammad Zaki is a top-notch PHP programmer, a top Github user, top contributor to the Laravel framework and also the creator of the Orchestra Platform. I also know that Katsana is developed with Orchestra Platform. Katsana also won a spot in the first round of the Teraju’s SUPERB grant, which gave them an extra RM500,000 in grants.

And I also know… hmm… wait! That’s pretty much it. So during the talk by Syed Ahmad Fuqaha, who is the CEO of Katsana, also a really tech- and business-savvy guy, I made sure that I paid attention.

katsana-pikom-skmm Here are the 10 things that I learned about Katsana GPS that I didn’t know before.

  1. They uses regular GSM telco service to notify the server where you location is. But even when there is no coverage, the data is also stored in the device’s storage and will be sent to the server the next time GSM service is available.
  2. You can hide your tracker device almost anywhere in your car. It can be in your engine, inside the door, in your car boot, under the seat…
  3. Katsana sends your vehicle location to the server every 5-10 seconds. So you can see exactly where you vehicle is, the route it takes and how far it is traveling.
  4. Katsana also tracks the vehicle speed.
  5. For enterprise clients, you can track multiple vehicles in a single account.
  6. For enterprise clients, you can set policies for your cars to trigger warning when the car is
    1. outside a certain area parameter
    2. driven over a certain speed limit
    3. moving outside a certain time period
  7. You have the option to make your car location appear public, in case you want to share you car info with the police, with private investigator, with social friends who can help find your stolen car, etc…
  8. Katsana supports international tracking, if you are willing to spend for roaming charges, which is RM18 per day. I guess this depends on what type of business you are running.
  9. Like #1, even if without GSM roaming, the movement of your car will still be tracked and stored in the tracker, and reported back to the server when you are back in the country. So you will still know where you car went and the route it took in the foreign country.
  10. The tracker can store location info for up to 2 weeks when it cannot transmit data over to the server.

Actually there are a lot more to tell about Katsana. For example, the 11th thing I learned about Katsana is that they do not rely on GPS solely but also GLONASS satellites to determine the location of your car. And at any one time, Katsana has access to 15 to 19 satellites.

katsana-pikom-skmm-2

Of course, I am not much of a car enthusiast. I do not know what the GPS tracking market is like and the type of competition that Katsana faces. But from the technology stand point, looking at what they have built, I would say that it is pretty impressive.

In the local start-up and tech company, this would be one that I will keep my eyes on. I bet it is going to be interesting to see what new things they will roll out and how this little company will progress in the future.