Why Drone Is the Perfect Choice for Fleet Management

Whether you are a small auto parts store with two delivery vehicles or run a local courier or moving company with dozens of trucks, Drone is the perfect fleet management tool. Drone uses high-performance telematics technology to monitor the location and behavior of the vehicle it’s installed in. DroneMobile – the powerful web and smartphone interface – makes managing the information collected by Drone efficient, so you can optimize the operation of your company vehicles and increase safety.

Drone Fleet Management Packages

Depending on the specific needs of your company, Drone offers three tracking solutions for business owners. The Premium package logs individual vehicle trips, monitors for speed violations and includes four geofence and 10 point-of-interest alert options. You can look up a vehicle location in seconds using the DroneMobile app on your smartphone or the web interface.

Stepping up to the Premium Plus plan adds turn-by-turn and breadcrumb trail logging that updates every two minutes. Geofences and point-of-interest locations are unlimited on the Premium Plus and higher packages.

Finally, the Ultimate package increases breadcrumb trail logging to every 30 seconds and adds location-based alerts. All three options include Drone’s standard vehicle control features like locking and unlocking, as well as battery voltage and vehicle temperature monitoring.

The packages include maintenance reminders, and vehicle diagnostic trouble code information is also logged to help ensure that the fleet is operating reliably and efficiently.

Fleet Management — You can choose from three GPS-enabled tracking packages to provide the connectivity and information you require to manage your fleet.

How Fleet Tracking Saves Companies Money

As a business owner, understanding how your equipment is being used is paramount to your profitability. Ensuring that delivery routes are being followed can save money in reduced fuel expenses. Information about arrival time to each destination can be used to optimize itineraries to avoid traffic congestion or construction. Curfew alerts ensure that your vehicle fleet is being used for business purposes only.

Using the Trips feature (available on the DroneMobile app or at accounts.dronemobile.com on any web browser), managers can review up to six months of data for each vehicle and look for driving behavior issues like speeding, unnecessary stops and unscheduled detours.

The Activity Log function at accounts.dronemobile.com includes options to sort information by vehicle, date range and activity, enabling you to analyze operational status with impressive detail. Data from the Activity Log can be exported into a spreadsheet-compatible .CSV format with a single button-click to help create presentations and reports.

Additional Fleet Tracking Benefits

It’s been proven repeatedly that company drivers who know a tracking system has been installed on the company vehicle drive more safely and efficiently. Safer driving reduces fuel and vehicle maintenance expenses, and can also reduce insurance costs from reduced claims. Speaking of insurance, it would be worth asking your insurance company if they offer a discount for vehicles that have tracking systems.

Drone hardware can be upgraded with security features to add another level of protection to your fleet. The Firstech DAS-II sensor monitors the vehicle for impacts, glass breakage, towing and motion. Likewise, sensors can be added to tool storage compartments or cargo loading doors. These alerts are not only logged in the activity report, but notifications are sent directly to the driver’s smartphone so he or she can contact law enforcement if the vehicle is being tampered with.

Accurate Data Makes Asset Management Easier

As a company owner with a fleet of vehicles, managing their expense can be a daunting task. From fuel and regular maintenance to insurance claims and damage repairs – your overhead can be thousands of dollars a year. Knowing where and how your vehicles are used is the first step to implementing policies that ensure their efficiency and safety. Drone can provide that information.

Contact your local Firstech retailer today to find out how you can equip your fleet with Drone Fleet Management solutions. You can find a dealer here. To stay up-to-date with the latest from Drone, be sure to follow them on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

This article is written and produced by the team at www.BestCarAudio.com. Reproduction or use of any kind is prohibited without the express written permission of 1sixty8 media.

Can You Upgrade The Stereo in a Hybrid or Electric Vehicle?

Hybrid and all-electric vehicles are a great platform for stereo system upgrade. While your local specialist mobile enhancement retailer can’t tap into the main battery pack, the electrical system on these cars or trucks is more than adequate to power an amplifier to drive new speakers or a subwoofer. There are several options for upgrades and accessories that can transform your vehicle – let’s check them out.

Limitations of Factory Sound Systems

As with most new cars and trucks, the limiting factors in the performance of the factory audio system are weight and cost. While companies like Harman, Bose, Bowers & Wilkins and Rockford Fosgate are more than capable of delivering listening experiences that can rival a live performance, they are limited by the budget for each vehicle and the amount of weight that can be added. Weight negatively affects the handling, braking, acceleration and fuel economy. That results in audio systems that sound acceptable, but not great.

Upgrading Hybrid and Electric Vehicle Stereo Systems

In almost every case, adding a subwoofer to your car or truck will make the biggest impact on the overall performance of the sound system. Right now, look at the bass setting on your car radio. Is it turned up? Even one or two notches require the factory radio and speakers to work a lot harder. Imagine if you could turn the bass down and dedicate an amplifier and speaker to reproducing low-frequency information. Your speakers will sound better and the overall system will be more lifelike, play louder and deliver better clarity.

Subwoofer systems come in all shapes and sizes, from compact solutions designed to fit into the corner of a cargo area to unique cylindrical subwoofers that fit inside a spare tire. These all-in-one bass upgrades offer great value.

Hybrid Stereo — This all-in-one subwoofer system fits inside your vehicle’s spare tire wheel and features an 11-inch subwoofer and built-in amplifier.

If a product isn’t already available for your vehicle, talk to your local specialist car stereo shop about building a custom solution. The salesperson and installation team can design a solution that uses one of the many shallow subwoofers available to create an enclosure that fits your vehicle perfectly and delivers amazing bass.

DSP and Speaker Upgrades

Modern audio systems often include incredibly advanced system tuning, and many vehicles include a center channel with an upmixer to ensure that the sound delivered to every seat in your vehicle sounds great. Understanding how to work with these systems and incorporating a digital signal processor requires specific training and experience. Make sure the shop you choose to work on your vehicle understands your needs and the complexity of these factory systems before they dive in.

Speakers are, without a doubt, the most important aspect of any audio system. Imagine spending thousands on a home audio CD transport, a stand-alone DAC and an amazing amplifier, only to connect a set of speakers that your uncle or cousin rescued from bulk recycling day. Upgrading the speakers in your vehicle with something truly awesome, then re-tuning the system with a signal processor to work with those new speakers, is a truly night-and-day experience.

Can I Upgrade the Radio in My Hybrid or Electric Vehicle?

In almost every case, the answer to “Can I upgrade my radio in a hybrid or electric vehicle?” is no. Does this mean you can’t upgrade the audio system? Not at all. Many companies make interfaces that are designed specifically to work with factory-installed source units to make adding amplifiers and new speakers easy and reliable.

Choose Your Installer Wisely

Upgrading the audio system in a hybrid or electric vehicle isn’t much harder than in a conventional gasoline or diesel-powered car, truck or SUV. With that said, be sure that you choose a mobile enhancement retailer who is knowledgeable about the requirements for your specific vehicle and has the training to deliver the results you want.

This article is written and produced by the team at www.BestCarAudio.com. Reproduction or use of any kind is prohibited without the express written permission of 1sixty8 media.

Is it Possible to Underpower a Speaker?

One common misconception about speakers is that underpowering them can cause damage. This fallacy is supported by minimum power ratings from several manufacturers, which adds to the confusion. Never fear, we’re here to explain why you simply can’t damage a speaker by providing it with only a little bit of power, and we’ll clarify how this myth originated.

What Damages Speakers?

Other than poking a dust cap or punching a hole in the cone or surround with a screwdriver, only two things will damage a speaker: too much power and too much excursion. Too much power will cause the adhesives that bond the voice coil winding to the voice coil former to fail, subsequently allowing it to unravel and get jammed in the motor. Too much excursion can cause the spider to be damaged or the voice coil former to smash into the backplate and become deformed.

Why Do Speakers Need Power?

If you want to produce sound, you need to send some amount of power to your speakers. How much power you send determines how much sound is produced. More power is fine, up to the physical or thermal limits of the speaker design.

If you feed a speaker with 1 watt of pink noise, it will play pretty loud. Depending on the size and design, a pair of conventional coaxial speakers getting 1 watt of pink noise can easily produce more than 95 dB of output in a typical vehicle. From a theoretical standpoint, an additional watt of power will increase the output to 98 dB, and doubling the power again to 4 watts produces roughly 101 dB. The process continues until the speaker cones can’t move any farther or the driver fails.

Going the other way, those same speakers will provide 92 dB with 0.5 watts of power, and 89 dB with 0.25 watts. With only 0.125 watts you get 86 dB, 0.0625 watts would be 83 dB and 31.25 milliwatts produces 80 db. That’s about the same noise level as a modern sedan cruising at 65 mph. Power and output levels continue to decrease at a logarithmic rate until you simply can’t hear the music. Clearly, less power won’t cause any damage to your speakers.

A chart showing the increase or decrease in output of a speaker rated at 95 dB efficiency relative to the amount of power supplied from an amplifier.

What About The Myth of Not Having Enough Power?

The myth about not having enough power and damaging speakers is based around what happens when you drive an amplifier into clipping. Let’s say you have a radio with a 20-watt amplifier rated at 1% distortion. You “can” get a lot more power out of that amp, but it will include a LOT of harmonic information. If you were playing a 1 kHz tone at a total output level of 30 watts, you would hear significant 2 kHz, 4 kHz, 8 kHz and 16 kHz energy being produced. This addition of high-frequency energy can strain the thermal capabilities of the tweeters in your system.

Underpowered Speakers — A graphical representation of how an amplifier behaves when driven into distortion. You can see significant harmonic content alongside the 1 kHz fundamental frequency.

If you don’t have a powerful enough amplifier to reach the volume levels you want, you can damage the speakers by feeding them too much high-frequency energy by driving the amplifier into clipping. It’s the extra power in these harmonics that damages speakers.

Choose the Right Amp for Your Speakers

If you’re considering upgrading your car stereo system, visit your local specialist mobile enhancement retailer so you can audition different speakers for your vehicle. Choose speakers with a smooth and accurate response and an amp with excellent noise and distortion specs and that can produce as much power as the speakers are rated for. This combination, when installed and configured properly, will sound amazing and last for years.

This article is written and produced by the team at www.BestCarAudio.com. Reproduction or use of any kind is prohibited without the express written permission of 1sixty8 media.

How Does the Drone Vehicle Smartphone Control System Work?

Drone is the world-class vehicle telematics system from Firstech – the manufacturer of Compustar security and remote start systems. Drone will let you remote start your vehicle, control the door locks and trunk release, pinpoint the GPS location, monitor driving behavior and much more using the DroneMobile app on your smartphone or their website. How all these features work may seem like magic, but it’s actually quite logical. Let’s look at how the Drone system works.

A Look at the Drone Telematics System

In terms of hardware, Drone is a small computer module that a professional technician can integrate into your vehicle to provide remote control functionality. The module includes a cellular data radio to communicate with your smartphone. The vehicle hardware works with the DroneMobile app on an iOS or Android smartphone or the accounts.dronemobile.com web interface to send commands to and display information from your vehicle.

How Drone Works — The compact Drone module is mounted inside the dash of your vehicle and serves as a high-speed interface between your smartphone and your car or truck.

What Can Drone Do?

Remote control functions like remote start, door lock control, trunk release and auxiliary output activation are just one aspect of the Drone solution. Each Drone module includes a GPS receiver that receives information from several of the 32 GPS satellites that orbit the earth at any given time. Tapping on the map button in the DroneMobile app sends a command to the vehicle module to report its location. The longitude and latitude are relayed back to your phone and overlaid onto Apple Maps (in iOS devices) or Google Maps (on Android smartphones). Accuracy is usually within several meters, so you will always know exactly where your vehicle is located.

Any command or request from the app is sent from your phone using WiFi or a cellular data connection to the Drone servers. Drone uses Amazon Web Services to host their servers because their service is one of the fastest and most robust Cloud connectivity solutions available. The command, which includes security authentication information, is checked by the servers, then forwarded to the Drone hardware in your vehicle using a cellular data connection. The Drone module receives the command and activates the appropriate function, or returns the requested information. In most cases, the entire communication process takes only a second or two.

The beauty of Drone is that there are no range limits. If your vehicle is in range of a cell-phone tower and you have access to the Internet, you are in complete control. You could be in your house, an office building, or lying on a beach in Mexico – you are still connected.

Drone Security and Vehicle Tracking Features

If you have chosen a Compustar, Arctic Start, FTX or iDatastart security system or upgraded a remote starter with security features, alerts from the vehicle will be sent to your smartphone and displayed as notifications. Firstech’s DAS-II sensor will monitor your vehicle for impacts, tilting (if someone were to jack up the vehicle to steal a wheel or the catalytic converter), glass breakage and motion or acceleration. The X1-MAX has the features of the DAS-II built into the unit. You can also configure Drone to send notifications when the ignition is turned on or off, or when the remote starter is activated. Speed limit warnings, curfew alerts and geofence notifications are also available.

Easy and Fast Remote Control from Almost Anywhere

If you are shopping for the easiest-to-use, fastest remote-control system for your vehicle remote starter or security system, look no further. We can demonstrate the features of this amazing product and let you know what it will take to upgrade your car or truck. For more information about Drone, visit their website. You should also follow them on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Their YouTube channel contains hundreds of videos that offer in-depth explanations of specific Drone features and technologies.

This article is written and produced by the team at www.BestCarAudio.com. Reproduction or use of any kind is prohibited without the express written permission of 1sixty8 media.

Smartphone Versus Built-in Navigation – Which Is Best?

There’s no denying the convenience of having a navigation system in your vehicle, whether it’s smartphone-based or built into your radio. With the nearly instant popularity of Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, smartphone-connected radios are quickly replacing built-in navigation solutions as the upgrade of choice. The question is, which is the better navigation solution? Let’s look at some of the benefits and drawbacks of each technology.

What Is Built-In Navigation?

If you are purchasing a new media receiver for your car or truck, there are options from Kenwood, Pioneer or Alpine for units with built-in GPS-based navigation systems. When we talk about built-in nav, we’re referring to a solution where the navigation software and mapping are built right into the radio.

What Is Smartphone Navigation?

When we discuss smartphone navigation, we aren’t talking about sticking your phone on a mounting bracket on the dash. While that is functional, it lacks the true integration features that make systems like CarPlay and Android Auto so desirable. For iPhone users, Apple CarPlay allows you to use Apple Maps, Google Maps or Waze to navigate to the destination of your choice. Most Android Auto users use Google Maps or Waze for directions. Motion X GPS and iGo Navigation are some additional alternative navigation software solutions. Media receivers with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are available from Sony, Kenwood, Pioneer, JVC and Alpine.

What Does Smartphone-Integrated Navigation Offer?

There are three significant benefits to using your phone with Android Auto or CarPlay for navigation. First and foremost, the map data is always as fresh as possible. As long as you’re connected to the internet, you have instant access to the latest map information used by Apple Maps, Google Maps or Waze and you never have to purchase an update. In-dash systems require updates that typically involve purchasing new mapping.

The second benefit is the voice recognition interface. If you want to go to a specific address, you can tell the system where you want to go using conversational English commands. The programmers at Apple and Google call this technology natural language processing, and it’s based on rudimentary forms of artificial intelligence. Don’t worry, Skynet isn’t active, yet.

While some built-in nav systems will accept voice commands, what you say and how you say it needs to be very specific. You might be able to say, “Navigate to 100 Main Street in Anytown USA,” whereas your smartphone will understand “get me directions to,” “help me find,” “take me to” or “plan a route” and then the address.

The third benefit is access to real-time destination information. You can search by address, by a company name or even a category. Ask for a Korean BBQ restaurant, a gas station or a hospital – whatever you need, whenever you need it. Best of all, the information is stored in the cloud (which we all know is just someone else’s computer) and never needs to be updated. Built-in navigation systems rely on destination (called Point-of-Interest or POI) databases that are stored alongside the map data. Just like the maps, these need to be updated frequently to remain accurate and useful.

Drawbacks of Smartphone Navigation?

Well, one potential drawback of using your smartphone for navigation is that it will consume some amount of data. Depending on whom you ask, Google can use between 0.6MB and 2.2 MB of data per hour. That’s pretty low. Waze, thanks to its simple interface, is even lower and Apple Maps is a little higher. If your cellular plan has limited data access, it’s something to keep in mind, but not obsess over. If you travel over the border between Canada and the US or into Mexico, be sure to take potential data roaming charges into account.

One option for overcoming this limitation is to download the map data you need directly to your phone while you’re connected to the internet at home or work. Within Google Maps, you can choose how much map area you want to download. Something worth noting: You have to download enough map information to cover your entire route. For example, if you download downtown Buffalo and downtown Detroit in separate files, the system can’t plan a route between the two without internet access. Nevertheless, it’s better than nothing.

Benefits of Built-In Navigation Solutions

No matter where you are, your navigation system is ready and willing to help you reach your destination. You never have to worry about internet connectivity or additional cost to use the solution you already own. There are never problems plugging things in because of damaged or low-quality cables or connectivity issues because of software updates from Google or Apple. In fact, you don’t need to remember to plug in your phone, or even take your phone with you to get where you want to go.

Drawbacks of Built-In GPS

Navigation solutions built into your radio rely on map data stored on an SD or microSD card. Companies like TomTom and Google (which create and own the map data) see the dissemination of this information as a profit center. The company that developed the navigation software in your car radio (Garmin or NavNGo, the maker of iGO) needs to include a license for the map data contained in the system. If the map information isn’t accurate, then you’ll need to purchase an update from your supplier. You’ll need a computer and likely a memory card and reader to complete the update. Quite simply, if your maps aren’t up to date, then the route the system plans man not be accurate, or even possible.

Choose the Navigation Solution that Meets Your Needs

Where you drive and how often you need directions will determine whether or not you choose a multimedia receiver with built-in navigation, with CarPlay and Android Auto or both. Your local specialist mobile enhancement retailer can help you choose one that works perfectly for your needs and fits nicely into your vehicle. Drop by and check one out today!

This article is written and produced by the team at www.BestCarAudio.com. Reproduction or use of any kind is prohibited without the express written permission of 1sixty8 media.

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Why Drone Is the Perfect Choice for Fleet Management

Drone Fleet Management Packages

How Fleet Tracking Saves Companies Money

Additional Fleet Tracking Benefits

Accurate Data Makes Asset Management Easier

Can You Upgrade The Stereo in a Hybrid or Electric Vehicle?

Limitations of Factory Sound Systems

Upgrading Hybrid and Electric Vehicle Stereo Systems

DSP and Speaker Upgrades

Can I Upgrade the Radio in My Hybrid or Electric Vehicle?

Choose Your Installer Wisely

Is it Possible to Underpower a Speaker?

What Damages Speakers?

Why Do Speakers Need Power?

What About The Myth of Not Having Enough Power?

Choose the Right Amp for Your Speakers

How Does the Drone Vehicle Smartphone Control System Work?

A Look at the Drone Telematics System

What Can Drone Do?

Drone Security and Vehicle Tracking Features

Easy and Fast Remote Control from Almost Anywhere

Smartphone Versus Built-in Navigation – Which Is Best?

What Is Built-In Navigation?

What Is Smartphone Navigation?

What Does Smartphone-Integrated Navigation Offer?

Drawbacks of Smartphone Navigation?

Benefits of Built-In Navigation Solutions

Drawbacks of Built-In GPS

Choose the Navigation Solution that Meets Your Needs

Customer Reviews

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