# Best practices when sending GPS location data \[HowTo\]

**URL:** <https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/forum/t/best-practices-when-sending-gps-location-data-howto/1242>\
**Category:** Application Development\
**Created:** [February 12, 2016, 3:34pm UTC](https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/forum/t/best-practices-when-sending-gps-location-data-howto/1242 "2016-02-12T15:34:44Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 11

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**Author:** ![arjanvanb](https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/forum/user_avatar/www.thethingsnetwork.org/arjanvanb/32/46626_2.png) [@arjanvanb](https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/forum/u/arjanvanb)\
**Post date:** [July 22, 2016, 2:47pm UTC](https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/forum/t/best-practices-when-sending-gps-location-data-howto/1242/11 "2016-07-22T14:47:51Z")

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> [@PaulG](#):
>
> will we be able to send back to the node a signal which can then be interpreted as “OK, wake the GPS up, now I want to know your exact location”.

Yes; after each uplink you can send data back to the node. And when only sending a ping once per hour and only responding when the pet is lost, that seems reasonable.

But a pet can run quite far in an hour, so you’d have to do some calculations about [how often you can send such ping](https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/forum/t/spreadsheet-for-lora-airtime-calculation/1190/16), or implement some geofencing to only send pings when not at home or when not close to the pet owner’s Bluetooth-enabled mobile phone. Also beware that both the uplink and the downlink might not be received (especially for a moving node), so the application might need to repeat the downlink if it still doesn’t get location data after it sent a downlink earlier. So one ping per hour might really be too few for this use case.

As an aside: for technical reasons, using downlinks will really need to be limited. The TTN Fair Access Policy [might only allow 10 confirmed uplinks and downlinks **per day**](https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/forum/t/limitations-data-rate-packet-size-30-seconds-day-fair-access-policy-nodes-per-gateway/1300) (and other operators should impose such limits as well; LoRaWAN is just not suited for downlinks very well). But I guess pets don’t get lost that often, so most pings would not need a response.

See also [Is anyone already working on the PetFinder use case?](https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/forum/t/is-anyone-already-working-on-the-petfinder-use-case/387)

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