The Location Engine cloud infrastructure is a critical part of 'Edge' range of devices - handling a variety of tasks key to the overall device performance.
Edge devices send 'raw' GNSS, WiFi and Cell Tower data - which the Location Engine resolves in to lat/long positions. In order to achieve this data is sent to a variety of lookup providers. The specific ones used can be configured via the OEM Server UI by DM Support. A future update will provide this option to partners.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Location Engine Charges
The charges which apply to the Location Engine are on the DM price list - contact your sales team for a copy.
Examples -
Edge device reporting to Telematics Guru Only-
TG Classic OR TG PPM per device
+
Lookups including LE-GNSS, LE-WIFI Premium or WIFI Value, LE-Cell-Pro.
Edge device reporting to 3rd party platform Only-
LE-Device per device
+
LE-Forwarder per end point/server (cost scaled across all active Edge devices)
+
Lookups including LE-GNSS, LE-WIFI Premium or WIFI Value, LE-Cell-Pro.
Edge device reporting to TG and 3rd party platform. -
TG Classic OR TG PPM per device
+
LE-Device per device
+
Lookups including LE-GNSS, LE-WIFI Premium or WIFI Value, LE-Cell-Pro.
+
LE-Forwarder per end point/server (cost scaled across all active Edge devices).
LE-Device
This is the charge per active device.
An active device is a device which has a Location Engine Connector set for a period of greater than 24 hours during a calendar month.
Telematics Guru LE connectors are not billed for.
The threshold of 24hrs allows for some testing/provisioning to occur without attracting charges. This allows for quick testing or firmware updates prior to later deployments. Be sure to set your connector to None once testing is complete, or if you are no longer using the device if you want to avoid billing.
Lookup Charges
Each lookup provider charges a fee per lookup (each time raw data is sent to them to be resolved). To provide the best possible value for partners, this charge is passed on in a usage-based model. It means if a device is only getting 1 location per day, the charges are lower.
If you configure your device for 1 position update per day, you can expect around 30 lookups per month. If the device is mostly outdoors, expect mostly LE-GNSS lookups, if mostly indoors, expect mostly WiFi lookups. It is hard to predict exactly ahead of time, a few weeks of testing generally clear up any questions around this.
LE-Forwarder
A forwarder is an out-bound queue that will push data (in time order) to a customer endpoint.
So in the OEM Server UI
- A Connector is set on the device, to push data into the Location Engine for processing
- A Forwarder is configured on the Connector – the Forwarder sends data out of the Location Engine, and into the partner’s endpoint.
See Forward Edge Device Data to my Endpoint (Cellular) for an overview of the above.
Most partners have 1 single endpoint for device data, and as such will only have one Forwarder, so on their invoice the charge will be 1 x Forwarder charge - no matter the number of devices active. System forwarders (i.e. Telematics Guru forwarders) are not billed for.
A dedicated server queuing resource is created per forwarder (which has costs). This keeps each queue partitioned, so that failure on a single external system does not affect or hold-up processing of other systems.
The LE Billing Report
In order to view the number of each type of lookups per device, they LE-Billing Detail Report can be run from the OEM Server.
- The user will need the Billing Detail permission to access this report.
- The report can be run from the tool bar in OEM. If you can't see it, contact DM support to have the Billing Detail report enabled
- To avoid excess clutter - only the last 12 months are shown in the Billing Detail List. However previous reports can be accessed by navigating to the report URL manually. E.g. if you enter https://www.oemserver.com/Dashboard/LEBillingReport?date=202005 into your browser - it will take you to the May 2020 report. Entering Date = 201911 will give November 2019.
Example output:
