Alves Soto, HCSS’s Telematics Support Specialist, onboards nearly every new Telematics customer. He has been a mechanic for half of his life, worked with the hardware and development side at HCSS, and he has been on the front line of dozens of HCSS Telematics customer implementations. He has witnessed nearly every kind of installation method our users have put in place, and has some best-practice installation tips to help you save time and money down the line, and extend the life of your hardware.

The vast majority of the installation issues that we see involve wired devices like the GNX5 and GNX3 units because they require the most involvement from the installers.

Here are 7 vital installation best practices to observe when installing or inspecting your current installation of these wired GPS units:

1. Wired units need to be inside their protective case.
2. For Devices with External antenna (GNX5 units), the antenna cable must not be pinched or kinked.
3. For Devices with Internal antenna (GNX3 units), it cannot be installed inside a metal box that will block the GPS signal.
4. Once the device is secured inside its protective case, the case also needs to be secured to a flat surface. This guarantees that the device will not move inside the case and that the case will not move either.
5. Even inside the case, the hardware is not water-proof or heat-proof. The device needs to be installed keeping this in mind.
6. The use of butt splice connectors that can be heat-shrinked is recommended
7. Cables should be soldered together when needed.

As a result of improper installation, we have seen early corrosion, exposed and dangerous wires and cables, early device failure because the device was not secured and was not installed in a protected box, and the most harmful effect: invalid data when integration is sent to Dispatcher, Equipment360 or HeavyJob.

We have several courses to help onboard HCSS Telematics users, and we are in the process of adding additional free online training modules to our HCSS Academy. These courses can be completed at the user’s pace. They cover topics like: Location and Equipment setup, Creating Alert and Theft Notifications, and Reporting and creating custom reports on Telematics data.

Here are some helpful sites to bookmark:

• Enroll in Free HCSS Telematics Academy Courses: Click Here
• Search our Support Help Articles: Click Here
• Find out Telematics’ site status in case you are seeing errors: Click Here

Our goal is to continue to provide easy solutions to help you on your journey to success. If you have suggestions for articles that you would like to read about, please email me at daniel.chee@hcss.com.