Actions

Actions allow you to control devices remotely by sending commands to them over-the-air to alter their behaviour or retrieve diagnostic information.

Simple but powerful

Most tracking devices have the ability to receive and act on remote commands. These commands can instruct the device to make a change, such as switching an output on or off, respond with diagnostic data, or take some other action.

Although each type of hardware usually supports a different set of commands, we expose this functionality as a set of standard actions, which means you don’t have to worry about the details.

Actions can be sent via SMS or GPRS where supported by the hardware. SMS commands can be helpful for diagnosing communication problems where a device is struggling to establish a GPRS connection to the service.

GPRS commands can provide an immediate response when devices maintain a persistent connection to the service.

Schedule automated actions

Actions can be scheduled to be automatically broadcast to a set of devices at specific times of the day or week. This can help disable plant equipment out of hours to prevent unauthorised use, even if someone has access to the ignition key.

Scheduled actions have a back-off mechanism, where if they haven’t been successfully received by a device within a given timescale, it will be cancelled. This helps avoid a device that’s out of network coverage unexpectedly being immobilised when it later moves into an area with satisfactory connectivity.