From a family workshop and Motorola bricks to a white-label platform used in over 100 countries.
The foundation of all our creativity, and the technological DNA that defines the company today, came from a family workshop run by my father, an inventor and born self-taught engineer. At a time when commercial technology was limited or out of reach, the answer was not to buy but to create. From pioneering autonomous lighting systems to building our own machinery, such as an automatic coil-winding machine with micrometric precision, the workshop taught a fundamental lesson: real engineering starts from the foundations.
My first contact with logical computing did not happen in a classroom but in front of a ZX Spectrum. Programming in BASIC and learning binary logic and technical English intuitively, the fascination with code soon evolved into Assembly language development. The goal was clear: use software to give life and control to physical hardware, starting with illuminated signs driven by Z80 microprocessors.
In the late nineties, vehicle location was an emerging technology. Google Maps did not exist yet, and we took part in founding a pioneering GPS company. An exclusive contract with a private investor provided the capital needed to mass-produce the CellPager device and to complete the industrial development of our GPS units.
The innovation meant getting our hands dirty at radio-frequency level. We reverse engineered the iconic analog Motorola "brick" phones, managing to control them with digital pulses to transmit NMEA frames at 1200 bps over analog voice channels on the AMPS network. We built our pioneering first GPS units and an advanced model, integrating LCD screens and interactive menus long before the smartphone era.
As the hardware evolved, so did our need to visualise the data. We developed the CoyoteSP monitoring centre, integrating an ultra-high-speed vector map engine with raster cartography digitised from military topographic maps. In the same year the Canadian company PowerLOC acquired our miniature GPS location technology (MML), built with u-blox modules.
That technical mastery took us to the United States. In a high-impact demonstration for the Lake Jackson Police Department we brought back to life an idle CDPD wireless mobile data network and integrated it successfully with DeLorme cartography. Later we were selected as an official delegation in Mexico, opening international distribution channels and showing that technology developed in South America could compete on a global scale.
The telematics market suffered from a critical problem: proprietary hardware limited customers. CarTrackGPS was born with a disruptive vision: migrate services to 100% web platforms with an open, modular architecture. Through universal protocols and RESTful APIs we achieved hardware agnosticism, allowing the integration of GPS devices from any international manufacturer under a single ecosystem.
Today we also build our own firmware and the iTrackPro HUNTER device family, and our white-label platforms serve partners in more than 100 countries.
2010 was the turning point: we created our first advanced platform entirely by hand, in an era without AI-assisted coding. Every line was designed, written and tested by our own engineers. We adopted high-performance corporate web architectures using Java, JavaScript, MySQL and Apache servers, and adapted our platforms to the massive shift of mobile data from the old 2G networks to the early adoption of 3G and beyond.
All of our customers came after 2010, and the platform is what won them: today more than 200 customers in more than 100 countries. They include Mazda in Ecuador (5,000 devices installed on its production line), Hertz Costa Rica, Al Mariah United Group in the United Arab Emirates, ICCESS in Saudi Arabia (a security company with more than 1,500 vehicles installed), KenTrac GPS in Ireland, the leading dairy company La Holanda in Paraguay through our partner Tracker Paraguay, a ministry fleet in Nicaragua, the municipality of El Progreso in Honduras, and partners such as Totaltrack (Chile), Xerko (Colombia), Sigma (Panama) and Servicios Múltiples Elso (Mexico). Our systems are also in use in Spain. A BMW vehicle test was also passed with 100% success.
Drivers can only unload at authorised sites. The system authorises or blocks unloading remotely by radio control when the truck is at the exact point, with e-mail alerts for unauthorised zones and speeding at building sites.
Tracking and control of road-building and heavy machinery through a local partner.
Over 100 vehicles across the country with panic buttons, speed alerts and geofences, now adding fuel control and effective distance per vehicle.
A fleet of over 100 trucks cut operating costs by restricting vehicles to assigned routes and strictly controlling fuel consumption.
ICCESS, a security company, installed our system in more than 1,500 vehicles.
Long-distance transporters cannot be licensed in Europe without proof of when animal loading ramps open and close. Our application satisfied the Irish Department of Agriculture; the same system now runs in Northern Ireland. On 1 Sep 2014 a van stolen in Dublin at 1:45 am was followed to the spot for the police.
More than 300 vehicles for Al Mariah United Group: calibration standards, speeding, geofencing, over-revving, emergency button, GPS and speed-sender disconnection, harsh acceleration, seatbelt violations, driver reports and contractor compliance audits.
ANKLE electronic-monitoring devices for house arrest programmes, and satellite asset tracking for vessels, containers and mining machinery in remote areas.
Today our platform manages thousands of units in real time. We have expanded our reach by developing native iOS and Android applications, and by automating global B2B prospecting processes with Python and the official WhatsApp Cloud API from Meta.
Software, hardware and operations are designed by the same people, which is why we can adapt any piece of the system to what a partner's market needs.
More than 25 years of uninterrupted work as a software engineer, full-stack developer and telematics pioneer in Latin America, covering the full product life cycle: AVL platforms, advanced GIS systems, mobile apps, process automation with Python and the internationalisation of B2B business. Co-founder of the GPS company where the first units were designed and manufactured (lead Assembly programmer for Microchip PIC microcontrollers, units built on Rabbit RCM2300 modules, RF protocol design with pulse-width modulation, and commercial director for the 1999 investment that funded series production). Since late 2006, CEO and lead developer of CarTrackGPS.
Technical skills: Java, JavaScript, Python, Visual Basic, C++ (CUDA), Assembly (PIC/Z80), HTML/CSS; Android and iOS development; Apache, MySQL and PostgreSQL; REST APIs and the WhatsApp Cloud API; OpenGTS, MapInfo, vector and raster map engines, NMEA decoding and DGPS telemetry; PIC and Rabbit microcontrollers, RF modulation, analog and digital circuit design, EEPROM/I2C memory; data analytics and in-house digital marketing.
The passion for solving complex problems does not stop at telematics. Our research culture extends to high-performance algorithms: from optimising elliptic-curve (ECC) algorithms through parallel computing in CUDA (C++) kernels, to everything that pushes hardware to its limits.
From hand-soldered boards in a family workshop to cloud ecosystems operating worldwide, our history is a testament to adaptation, deep engineering and the relentless search for the next technological frontier.