What do the different wire color indicate for the vehicle tracker?

What do the different wire color indicate for the vehicle tracker?

Early on during the design phase of the tracker, a decision was made to color the wires for the vehicle trackers according to the following scheme:

  1. Red - Ignition sense.  This wire is used to tell the tracker when the vehicle is running or turned off.  It looks for a transition of 0VDC to +12VDC (indicates ignition on) and +12VDC to 0VDC (indicating the vehicle has been turned off)
  2. White - +12VDC constant.
  3. Black - ground.


Occasionally an installer will incorrectly tie the red wire to a constant +12VDC.  This prevents the vehicle tracker from sensing ignition off and entering its low power standby mode after one hour.  This can cause the vehicle battery to be excessively drained.


The one hour of power typically allows a remediation technician sufficient time to deploy/retrieve an asset at a customer location without having to keep the vehicle running.

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