DIY Arduino GPS Tracker (No Monthly Bills, Seriously)

GPS trackers are cool, but the subscription fees? Not so much. If you're tired of shelling out 20 to 50 bucks every month just to know where your stuff is, it's time to go DIY. We built a fully functional GPS tracker using an Arduino Uno, a SIM800L GSM module, and a NEO-6M GPS module, and guess what? It works great.

This thing grabs your real-time GPS coordinates and shoots them to a web dashboard we built called GeoLinker. No apps, no hidden charges, no weird data collection. It’s just a clean interface that shows exactly where your device is, how fast it's moving, where it's been, and how far it’s traveled. All of this, powered by a 2G SIM card and a power bank. Total hardware cost? Around $25 to $35.

Even better, we wrote a lightweight Arduino library called GeoLinker Lite to handle all the heavy lifting. It’s optimized for the tiny 2KB RAM on the Uno and keeps everything running smoothly without crashing your board every 5 minutes. You just plug in your APN, your GeoLinker API key, and your device ID, and you're off to the races.

We tested it by driving around with the tracker in our car, and it updated location live on the map every 20 seconds. You can track cars, bikes, pets, even projects strapped to drones. It’s that flexible.

Here’s the full tutorial with circuit diagram, code, and all the good stuff: DIY Arduino GPS Tracker Tutorial