RF-V16 GPS locator

DCGOO · Mar 27, 2015

Today I was finally successful in getting AT&T to add the RF-V16 locater added to my AT&T Mobileshare account for $10/month. Before today, it was listed as generic Smartphone for $15/month, same as I pay for the iPhone 6'es on the same account.

The RF-V16 requires both a data and a voice plan (because you can call it and make it ring), but it operates as a GPS tracker, just like the Amber Alert tracker they sell for $100, plus a 2 year contract (my RF-V16 was $40 from an eBay seller). It was a struggle, but AT&T agreed that a GPS tracker should be $10/mo and no activation fee. They had to insert a fake IMEI instead of the one on the unit, to make their system recognize it as a tracker, and not a phone. It looks like the change actually took the rate, but it remains to be seen if they reversed the $40 activation.

$10/mo might not be the cheapest service, but it just appears as a line on the cell bill I already get, I can turn it off whenever I want, so it turns out to be very easy and convenient. Plus AT&T works nearly everywhere. No charge for the SIM card and phone number, and no activation fee (hopefully).

I am a big fan of the device. about an inch square and 27g. Plus it has a speakerphone on board. Besides all the GPS position related information exchanged by sending text messages to it, you can send it a command to place it in auto answer. Then call it, and see what it really sounds like at altitude! (not worth much, but bragging rights to your friends).

turbodronepilot · Mar 27, 2015

DCGOO said:
Today I was finally successful in getting AT&T to add the RF-V16 locater added to my AT&T Mobileshare account for $10/month. Before today, it was listed as generic Smartphone for $15/month, same as I pay for the iPhone 6'es on the same account.

The RF-V16 requires both a data and a voice plan (because you can call it and make it ring), but it operates as a GPS tracker, just like the Amber Alert tracker they sell for $100, plus a 2 year contract (my RF-V16 was $40 from an eBay seller). It was a struggle, but AT&T agreed that a GPS tracker should be $10/mo and no activation fee. They had to insert a fake IMEI instead of the one on the unit, to make their system recognize it as a tracker, and not a phone. It looks like the change actually took the rate, but it remains to be seen if they reversed the $40 activation.

$10/mo might not be the cheapest service, but it just appears as a line on the cell bill I already get, I can turn it off whenever I want, so it turns out to be very easy and convenient. Plus AT&T works nearly everywhere. No charge for the SIM card and phone number, and no activation fee (hopefully).

I am a big fan of the device. about an inch square and 27g. Plus it has a speakerphone on board. Besides all the GPS position related information exchanged by sending text messages to it, you can send it a command to place it in auto answer. Then call it, and see what it really sounds like at altitude! (not worth much, but bragging rights to your friends).

Hey DCGOO. .
do you mind describing the start up process you did to get the tracker to respond to your comands..
like 123456,sos1,5599999999#
I have a rf-v16 and a go phone sim and it dosent work in my rf-v16 but works in my tk102. .
The GPRS and caller id is activated. .
only thing I can think of is I might have inserted the sim in the rf-v16 while it was on..which it says in the instructions not to do..
anyway any suggestions would be appreciated. .
turbo. .

DCGOO · Mar 28, 2015

Cannot say for sure. Mine just worked according to the instructions. It is looking for a full international phone number though. In the US, that means country code (1) plus 10 digits. Does the tracker ring when you call it? It should. The RF-V16 requires provisioning for data + voice. Perhaps your SIM is not set up for it. How about the website, www.gps123.org? that should work too.

turbodronepilot said:
Hey DCGOO. .
do you mind describing the start up process you did to get the tracker to respond to your comands..
like 123456,sos1,5599999999#
I have a rf-v16 and a go phone sim and it dosent work in my rf-v16 but works in my tk102. .
The GPRS and caller id is activated. .
only thing I can think of is I might have inserted the sim in the rf-v16 while it was on..which it says in the instructions not to do..
anyway any suggestions would be appreciated. .
turbo. .

turbodronepilot · Mar 28, 2015

DCGOO said:
Cannot say for sure. Mine just worked according to the instructions. It is looking for a full international phone number though. In the US, that means country code (1) plus 10 digits. Does the tracker ring when you call it? It should. The RF-V16 requires provisioning for data + voice. Perhaps your SIM is not set up for it. How about the website, www.gps123.org? that should work too.

Ok..great. .I was wondering about the 1 ..I tried both ways. .
GPRS is the data part but I'm not sure what you mean by voice. .
I actually have two rf-v16 trackers and two different sims..none of which work...
I bought them from amazon. .should be good..
I sent one to a fellow droner who's way more tech savvey than me and we'll see what he figures out..
Im pretty sure it's not supposed to be this hard to get going. .
Thanks for your imput DCGOO. .
Turbo. .

sirnikolas · Mar 28, 2015

Great tracker. I've yet to put mine on!

turbodronepilot · Mar 28, 2015

sirnikolas said:
Great tracker. I've yet to put mine on!

Glad u got it all worked out mate!!
Turbo. .

DCGOO · Mar 28, 2015

turbodronepilot said:
Ok..great. .I was wondering about the 1 ..I tried both ways. .
GPRS is the data part but I'm not sure what you mean by voice. .
Turbo. .

The RF-V16 is provisioned as a regular smartphone, meaning you can actually call it and make it ring and answer the call. It also needs a conventional data plan because it uploads its coordinates to a website. The text message it sends back upon request, contains a URL for that website. So the device must be provisioned as smartphone, because it needs conventional voice and data, but it is billed as a gps locater.

It sounds like you need a different SIM. Did you try one from your phone? I first pulled the SIM from my iPhone 6, and it worked fine. So I knew the device was okay.

Inspirepr · Mar 28, 2015

Can you guys provide pics of where you mounted? Does it affect the cog of the drone?

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

gwhiz2k · Mar 28, 2015

This thing was actually not that hard to set up. It might not be configured properly for data though. Until I did that, the GPS accuracy was not so great, and it kept sending me to the chinese website to see the map. After I configured the proper APN as per the settings for the service provider, it took me to Google Maps with really accurate location.

So you need to set apn,your_apn_name.apn#

Also, I turned tracking off with goff#

I've had it sitting on for about 3 days now, and the battery is still reporting 100.

I noticed at the beginning, everything was in chinese, so I had to change the language to English with lag,2#

Note that the device is very sensitive to the proper format for texts. A lot of phones like to capitalize the first letter of a text, which won't work.

Push-to-call feature is a little annoying though, I used up a bunch of minutes accidentally pressing the "1" key, which called my cellphone, but pushing it again doesn't seem to hang up. I had a 10 minute message on my voice-mail. You can turn that feature off, which I just haven't gotten around to yet. If I ever decide to use it for my son (he's only 10 months, so that's a ways away), it could come in handy.

Now, if someone could just show me how to mount it to the Inspire (provided I ever get the Inspire working again...)

DCGOO · Mar 28, 2015

All of the setup information is covered in little booklet of instructions that came with the RF-V16. Short, but surprisingly complete. Beware, if you use the goff# command, you lose a lot of the GPS precision. I suspect that reverts the unit to cell site triangulation only. I know mine was way off the mark unless I set it to update (gon#) which is the default. I did not have to make any change to the APN.

As far as mounting it is concerned, I bought one of small shelf brackets from Blade Strike, and velcro'd it to that shelf. Easy to wrap a rubber band around it too if you are so inclined, though with Velcro, it is not going anywhere. You could just velcro it to the back, or even on the bottom, under the battery. The shelf does not interfere with getting the AC back in the case, nor should the bottom location. The rear shelf provides the easiest access though.

gwhiz2k said:
This thing was actually not that hard to set up. It might not be configured properly for data though. Until I did that, the GPS accuracy was not so great, and it kept sending me to the chinese website to see the map. After I configured the proper APN as per the settings for the service provider, it took me to Google Maps with really accurate location.
So you need to set apn,your_apn_name.apn#
Also, I turned tracking off with goff#
I've had it sitting on for about 3 days now, and the battery is still reporting 100.
I noticed at the beginning, everything was in chinese, so I had to change the language to English with lag,2#
Note that the device is very sensitive to the proper format for texts. A lot of phones like to capitalize the first letter of a text, which won't work.
Push-to-call feature is a little annoying though, I used up a bunch of minutes accidentally pressing the "1" key, which called my cellphone, but pushing it again doesn't seem to hang up. I had a 10 minute message on my voice-mail. You can turn that feature off, which I just haven't gotten around to yet. If I ever decide to use it for my son (he's only 10 months, so that's a ways away), it could come in handy.
Now, if someone could just show me how to mount it to the Inspire (provided I ever get the Inspire working again...)

gwhiz2k · Mar 28, 2015

DCGOO said:
All of the setup information is covered in little booklet of instructions that came with the RF-V16. Short, but surprisingly complete. Beware, if you use the goff# command, you lose a lot of the GPS precision. I suspect that reverts the unit to cell site triangulation only. I know mine was way off the mark unless I set it to update (gon#) which is the default. I did not have to make any change to the APN.

From what I've read, the gon# and goff# commands only turn off/on the "tracker" feature, which sends the data to their Website. Turning that off does not disable GPS or data. I had mine since the beginning, following the advice on Sams's Blog, which stated you don't need that. Mine was accurate to a couple meters. Mine only used triangulation if GPS wasn't available, or if data was off and it couldn't use assisted GPS.

turbodronepilot · Mar 28, 2015

Inspirepr said:
Can you guys provide pics of where you mounted? Does it affect the cog of the drone?

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

I've posted some pictures under 3d printed accessories. .
don't worry about cog ..
I have a flashlight that weighs 334 grams and the inspire handles it with no problems. .
turbo. ..

DCGOO · Mar 29, 2015

gwhiz2k said:
From what I've read, the gon# and goff# commands only turn off/on the "tracker" feature, which sends the data to their Website. Turning that off does not disable GPS or data. I had mine since the beginning, following the advice on Sams's Blog, which stated you don't need that. Mine was accurate to a couple meters. Mine only used triangulation if GPS wasn't available, or if data was off and it couldn't use assisted GPS.

I can't say for sure. All I know, when I turned mine off, (goff#) my location was depicted thousands of feet off. Turned it back on, and it came right back on the dime. Beats me.

Ascender · Apr 1, 2015

I found this page helpful:

http://blog.sam-thompson.info/rf-v16-gps-tracker-guide/

Also, mine arrived in Chinese language mode. I had a bit of trouble translating the texts I was getting.

Finally figured out that I needed lowercase letters along with the # symbol to send a command.

Love my lil tracker now.

sirnikolas · Apr 3, 2015

Does her a$$ look big in this?

Just with velcro for now until I receive the bracket from blade runner.
I'm quite impressed with the RF-V16 tracker.

DCGOO · Apr 4, 2015

I received the bill from AT&T today. The RF-V16 was mostly correct. It added $10/mo to my existing AT&T bill. There is no Activation fee. But as I suspected might happen, they billed me for an activation when they incorrectly provisioned it as a smartphone for $15/mo. But neglected to credit me back for the activation fee, . But got that reversed with no trouble.

The key to getting this right (at least with AT&T) is to identify it correctly. I kept calling it a "GPS Tracker" But that is incorrect. AT&T refers to it as a "Smart Locater" If I would have used that terminology, I suspect it would have been right from the beginning. BTW, it comes with its own plan, separate line item from my cell phones. Smart Locator, unlimited voice, unlimited data and unlimited text. $10/mo. No activation.

Oh yeah, I pulled the SIM from it and tried it in my iPhone. But alas, it doesn't work. The iPhone boots with it, show the phone number assigned, but nothing works, no voice, data or text. Oh well, I was just curious anyway.

DCGOO said:
Today I was finally successful in getting AT&T to add the RF-V16 locater added to my AT&T Mobileshare account for $10/month. Before today, it was listed as generic Smartphone for $15/month, same as I pay for the iPhone 6'es on the same account.

The RF-V16 requires both a data and a voice plan (because you can call it and make it ring), but it operates as a GPS tracker, just like the Amber Alert tracker they sell for $100, plus a 2 year contract (my RF-V16 was $40 from an eBay seller). It was a struggle, but AT&T agreed that a GPS tracker should be $10/mo and no activation fee. They had to insert a fake IMEI instead of the one on the unit, to make their system recognize it as a tracker, and not a phone. It looks like the change actually took the rate, but it remains to be seen if they reversed the $40 activation.

$10/mo might not be the cheapest service, but it just appears as a line on the cell bill I already get, I can turn it off whenever I want, so it turns out to be very easy and convenient. Plus AT&T works nearly everywhere. No charge for the SIM card and phone number, and no activation fee (hopefully).

I am a big fan of the device. about an inch square and 27g. Plus it has a speakerphone on board. Besides all the GPS position related information exchanged by sending text messages to it, you can send it a command to place it in auto answer. Then call it, and see what it really sounds like at altitude! (not worth much, but bragging rights to your friends).

PetePerrim · Apr 5, 2015

Just to throw my 5 cents worth into the ring, I went through a whole load of testing different trackers a year ago after my original Phantom disappeared. Obviously the price of the Inspire spooks a whole lot of owners into wanting to know exactly where it is 24/7 but I have found that mine is 99.9% reliable so the additional cost combined with reduced flight times and a whole **** load of other complications mean that I wont be attaching a tracker to my i1. Have some faith my friends.

Karl · Apr 5, 2015

PetePerrim said:
Just to throw my 5 cents worth into the ring, I went through a whole load of testing different trackers a year ago after my original Phantom disappeared. Obviously the price of the Inspire spooks a whole lot of owners into wanting to know exactly where it is 24/7 but I have found that mine is 99.9% reliable so the additional cost combined with reduced flight times and a whole **** load of other complications mean that I wont be attaching a tracker to my i1. Have some faith my friends.

Yeah but it's 0.01 % I'm Worried about

sirnikolas · Apr 5, 2015

PetePerrim said:
Just to throw my 5 cents worth into the ring, I went through a whole load of testing different trackers a year ago after my original Phantom disappeared. Obviously the price of the Inspire spooks a whole lot of owners into wanting to know exactly where it is 24/7 but I have found that mine is 99.9% reliable so the additional cost combined with reduced flight times and a whole **** load of other complications mean that I wont be attaching a tracker to my i1. Have some faith my friends.

Pete you're probably right but! There's nothing wrong with a little device that provides piece of mind.