GPS Device Installation Checklist
A tracker that reports nothing looks exactly like a vehicle that has not moved. This checklist is about installing a device so that it works for the next four years, survives a workshop visit, and gets verified before the vehicle leaves the bay. The verification section is the one that saves the project.
The rollout went in over three weeks. Two months later somebody notices that six vehicles have not reported since installation, one is reporting the wrong registration, and a seventh has been reporting the ignition as permanently on because it was wired to a live feed rather than a switched one. All seven were signed off as installed. Nobody checked what the device did after the fitter closed the bonnet.
This is the standard telematics failure, and it is not a hardware problem. Devices are mostly reliable. Installations are not, because installation is where the physical work meets the platform configuration, and those two are usually done by different people who never speak. The fitter's job ends when the device has power. The platform's job starts when data arrives. The gap between them is where the six silent vehicles live.
Work through this in order and do not skip the last two sections. Everything before verification is preparation. The device is not installed until you have seen the vehicle move on a map with the right registration next to it and the ignition state changing when someone turns the key.
51 checks across 7 sections
Before you touch the vehicle
- Confirm the vehicle's identity — registration, VIN and internal asset number — and check they agree with each other before you start rather than after.
- Check the vehicle's electrical architecture, since a 24-volt truck, a 12-volt van and a hybrid all need different decisions about where power comes from.
- Check whether the manufacturer's warranty imposes conditions on wiring into the vehicle, and find out before rather than after.
- Confirm the device's SIM is active and the data plan covers the country the vehicle actually works in.
- Check the device firmware is current before it goes into a vehicle that will then be unavailable for six months.
- Have the accessories you need at the bay — harness, fuses, relays, cable ties, sealant, the right crimps — because a compromise made for a missing part is a fault in two years.
- Know what else is going on the vehicle. A fuel probe, a driver ID reader and a camera all change where the main unit should live.
Power and earth
- Take permanent power from a fused feed close to the battery rather than from whatever convenient wire is behind the dash.
- Fit the device's own fuse as close to the power source as practical, sized for the device rather than for the wire.
- Take the ignition feed from a genuinely switched circuit and verify it goes dead with the key out, because an ignition input on a permanent live makes every trip and idle report wrong forever.
- Do not take ignition from an accessory circuit that stays live during cranking or after key-off, since that shifts every trip boundary.
- Earth to a proper chassis point with a clean, unpainted contact, not to whatever earth block was nearest.
- Avoid tapping into safety-critical or CAN circuits for power under any circumstances.
- Solder and heatshrink, or use proper crimps. Displacement connectors corrode, and they fail intermittently rather than cleanly, which is the worst way to fail.
- Route cable away from heat, moving parts and sharp edges, and secure it at intervals so it cannot chafe against a bracket for two years.
Placement and mounting
- Mount the unit where it has sky visibility for GNSS but is not sitting in direct sun on a dash in summer.
- Keep the device away from heated windscreen elements and metallised glass, which will attenuate the signal enough to matter.
- Keep the GSM antenna clear of large metal panels and away from other antennas that will desensitise it.
- Mount it where a stolen vehicle's thief will not find it in the first thirty seconds, which usually means not under the steering column.
- Mount it where your own workshop will not disturb it during routine work, and where a subsequent fitter can still reach it.
- Secure it mechanically rather than with tape, and orient it correctly if it contains an accelerometer, because a device mounted at an angle reports harsh events that did not happen.
- Keep it out of standing water and away from anywhere that gets pressure-washed.
- Label the unit with the asset number so the next person into that panel knows what it is.
Sensors and peripherals
- Wire the fuel probe on its own supply and earth if the device supports it, since a shared noisy earth shows up as fuel noise you will chase for months.
- Calibrate the fuel probe against a measured fill at installation rather than promising to do it later, because later does not happen.
- Mount the driver ID reader where a driver will actually use it without leaving the seat.
- Check the CAN or OBD connection reads the parameters you expect rather than assuming the vehicle publishes them.
- Aim and test cameras with a person standing where the blind spot is, not by looking at the image alone.
- Confirm any temperature probe is in the load space it is supposed to measure and secured where it will not be knocked into a wall.
- Record which peripherals went on which input, because an undocumented wiring choice becomes an unsolvable data mystery.
Configuration in the platform
- Bind the device IMEI to the correct vehicle record in the platform before the vehicle leaves, not from a spreadsheet at the end of the week.
- Set the vehicle's identity, class, depot and fuel tank capacity, since half the reporting depends on fields nobody thinks of as configuration.
- Set the reporting interval for what the vehicle is for. Theft detection and harsh-event capture need a faster rate than a monthly utilisation report does.
- Configure the inputs to match what you actually wired, and check the labels rather than trusting the defaults.
- Enter the fuel calibration table for this specific tank rather than copying the one from a similar vehicle.
- Assign the vehicle to the right groups and geofences so alerts reach the depot that owns it.
- Set the odometer offset from the real dashboard reading, so the vehicle's distance history is continuous with its life before the device.
Verification — before the vehicle leaves
- Confirm the device has appeared in the platform under the right registration, and that it is the only device claiming that vehicle.
- Turn the ignition off and on and watch the state change in the platform. This one test catches the single most common installation fault there is.
- Drive the vehicle around the yard and confirm the track is on the road rather than fifty metres inside a building.
- Check the reported speed against the vehicle's own speedometer at a steady speed.
- Confirm the fuel level reported matches the tank's actual level rather than a plausible-looking number.
- Trigger each peripheral once — swipe the ID tag, check the camera, open the door — and confirm each one arrives.
- Leave the vehicle for the period your standard specifies and confirm the device sleeps rather than draining the battery.
- Do not sign the installation off on a green LED. The LED reports that the device has power, which is not the same as the platform having data.
Handover and records
- Record the IMEI, SIM, firmware version, mounting location and every input assignment against the vehicle, because the next fault will be diagnosed from this record.
- Photograph the installed unit, the wiring route and the fuse position before the panels go back on.
- Tell the workshop where the device is, so the next person behind that dash does not disconnect it to reach something else.
- Tell the driver the vehicle is tracked, what is recorded, and why, since finding out by accident poisons the whole programme.
- Set a health alert for this device so a silent unit raises itself rather than waiting for someone to notice an empty map.
- Check the device again after seven days of real work. Vibration and heat find the joints a bay test does not.
How to use this checklist
- Run the verification section as a gate, not as a formality. A fitter's sign-off should be impossible until someone has watched the ignition state flip in the platform. Every silent-device story starts with an installation signed off from a green light.
- Do the platform configuration at the vehicle, while the fitter is still standing at it. Configuration deferred to a spreadsheet at the end of the week is how a device ends up bound to the wrong registration.
- Fit ten vehicles, then stop and check them a week later before fitting the other ninety. A wiring habit that produces a subtle fault will produce it a hundred times, and finding it at ten is a morning's work.
- Keep the wiring record. In three years somebody will ask why input two on a truck reports something odd, and the person who wired it will have left.
Frequently asked questions
Somewhere with a reasonable view of the sky, away from heated or metallised glass, clear of heat and moving parts, not under standing water, and not the first place a thief would look. In practice that is often behind the dash on the passenger side or in a body cavity, and the exact answer depends on the vehicle. Two constraints get forgotten: mount it firmly and in the correct orientation if it has an accelerometer, and put it somewhere your own workshop will not disturb during routine work.
It depends on the manufacturer and on how the installation is done, and you should check the specific terms rather than take a general answer from anyone including us. What is broadly true: a competently fitted device on its own fused supply, using proper connectors, not spliced into safety-critical or network circuits, is a normal accessory installation. A device chopped into a CAN bus by someone in a hurry is a different conversation, and it is also the installation most likely to cause a fault the manufacturer will legitimately decline to cover.
Overwhelmingly it is the installation rather than the device. Vibration works a poor crimp loose. A cable routed against an edge chafes through in a month. An earth taken from a painted bracket is fine in the bay and marginal once it corrodes. A device wired to a circuit the vehicle cuts in sleep mode goes silent when the vehicle stands over a weekend. Occasionally it is a SIM issue or a genuine hardware failure. This is why the seven-day recheck is on the list, and it is also why device health alerting matters more than any of it: a silent device that raises its own alarm is a job, and one that does not is an empty space on a map.
Yes, and plenty of fleets with a competent workshop should. The physical work is within the ability of anyone who can wire an accessory properly. Two things trip up self-installation. The first is the platform side — binding, calibration, input mapping — which is not the fitter's usual job and is where the errors cluster. The second is consistency: a rollout done by four people over three weeks produces four different installations unless the standard is written down and the verification is a gate rather than a habit.
A basic tracker on a straightforward vehicle is a short job. Add a calibrated fuel probe, a driver ID reader and a camera and you are into most of a day per vehicle, because the probe has to be cut to depth and the tank has to be drained and filled in measured increments to build the calibration. The mistake fleets make when planning a rollout is budgeting the tracker time and then discovering the probes. Plan the fuel work separately, and plan for the vehicle to be off the road while it happens.
Run this checklist automatically
GPS Fleet Tracking Software turns these checks into scheduled, assignable work with a full audit trail.