u-blox customer honored with Connected World Value Chain Award

St. Charles, Illinois – June 14, 2012 – u-blox (SIX:UBXN), a global leader in positioning and wireless technology for the machine-to-machine (M2M), automotive and consumer markets, has been named as a technology enabler for their customer, Lat-Lon, who won  the Gold Fleet Management Value Chain Award from Connected World magazine. The Value Chain Awards honor the most successful corporate adopters of M2M technology and connected devices, as well as the solution providers that help make their technology adoption a success.

The unique application for which u-blox’s GPS technology was recognized is a solar-powered GPS tracking unit that attaches magnetically to railcars, trucks, containers and ships. The device, created by Lat-Lon, a Denver-based innovator in monitoring technology, lets freight managers know when a container, car or vessel was loaded, when it left the plant, where it is en-route, when it arrived at the distribution center, when it got to the customer, when the customer unloaded it, and when it was returned.  If a problem occurs, an immediate wireless notification is sent out based on event-based alarms via text or email.

The rugged solar tracking unit uses a patented solar powered system to constantly regenerate so there’s no downtime and no batteries to worry about.  Based on u‑blox’ ultra low-power GPS module technology, the unit provides extremely high sensitivity to GPS signals (down to -162 dBm) while consuming only 36 mW in powersaving mode.  The harmony of these systems, ultra low-power GPS module and Lat-Lon’s Smart Control Logic, allows the tracking unit to report as frequently as every 10 minutes when moving, or hourly while standing still.