Concox GT06N

The GT06N is a hardwired vehicle tracker from Concox (now Jimi IoT). It matters out of proportion to its own sales, because the GT06 protocol it introduced has been adopted by dozens of other manufacturers — a large share of the cheap trackers sold on Amazon and AliExpress are GT06 devices under a different name.

Get this one working and you have effectively learned a whole category.

Geoblip support

Supported. Geoblip runs a GT06 protocol listener, so a GT06N connects directly — no bridge, no separate server to maintain.

Point the tracker at:

ingest.geoblip.com : 5023

Because the GT06 protocol is shared by dozens of manufacturers, the same listener accepts most of the unbranded trackers sold as “GT06”, “GT06N”, or “TK” units. If your device speaks GT06, it should work even if the name on the box is different.

Everything below also applies if you point the device at Traccar or any other GT06-capable server — the configuration is the same.

How registration works

Hardware trackers register differently from phone apps, because a GT06 device cannot be given an API key. It only knows how to announce its IMEI when it connects.

1. In Geoblip, add a device of type GPS tracker and enter the 15-digit IMEI printed on the unit. It is validated as you type, so a mistyped digit is caught immediately.
2. Send the tracker the SERVER SMS below.
3. It appears in your dashboard on its first successful connection.

An unrecognised IMEI is rejected and the connection closed. Geoblip never creates a device automatically from an incoming login — the IMEI has to be registered to your account first. This matters because the IMEI is the only credential the GT06 protocol has, and it is printed on the box. See IMEI for what that means for security, including why a cheap 2G tracker is the wrong tool for anything genuinely sensitive.

The connection is plaintext, because these devices do not support TLS. That is a property of the hardware category rather than a choice we made, and it is worth knowing before you use one for something sensitive.

Before you buy: check 2G

The GT06N is 2G only. 2G has been switched off entirely in Australia, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Switzerland, and across most US carriers.

In those countries this device cannot work, and no configuration changes that. Check your own operator before ordering — see GPRS for the wider picture and what replaced it.

Setup

1. SIM card. Needs a data plan, not just SMS. Disable the PIN lock first by putting the SIM in a phone — a PIN-locked SIM will never connect, and this is the second most common setup failure.

2. Power. The GT06N is hardwired: positive, negative, and an ACC line to the ignition so it can detect when the vehicle is running.

3. Set the APN. This is the most common failure of all. Without it the tracker registers on the network, answers SMS, looks entirely healthy, and never sends a single position:

APN,internet#

Replace internet with your operator’s APN. Some networks need credentials:

APN,internet,username,password#

See APN for why this breaks so many setups.

4. Point it at Geoblip:

SERVER,1,ingest.geoblip.com,5023,0#

The 1 means a domain name follows; use 0 if your unit only accepts a raw IP. Prefer the domain — a tracker configured with an IP needs a fresh SMS sent to it individually if the server ever moves, which is genuinely painful once units are fitted in the field.

5. Check status. Most GT06 firmware responds to:

STATUS#

with signal strength, GPS fix state, battery, and IMEI.

Command syntax varies between clones. These are the documented Concox commands. Units sold under other brand names using the same protocol sometimes use different syntax, and sending the wrong command to some firmware requires a factory reset. If your unit shipped with a command sheet, trust that over any web page including this one.

What the protocol looks like

Useful if you are building against it, and it explains the constraint above.

Every packet is framed as:

0x78 0x78 [LEN] [PROTO] [BODY…] [SERIAL:2] [CRC:2] 0x0D 0x0A

Key message types: 0x01 login carrying the IMEI, 0x13 status, 0x10/0x12 position, 0x22 position with cell-tower data. The server must acknowledge login and status packets echoing the same serial number, or the device decides the server is dead and reconnects in a loop — burning through its data plan.

Coordinates are unsigned 32-bit values divided by 1,800,000, with hemisphere carried in flag bits rather than a sign.

Common problems

LEDs on, SMS works, no positions. APN not set. This accounts for most “faulty tracker” reports.

Never gets a GPS fix. Check the antenna orientation — it needs a view of the sky. A unit under a metal dashboard or inside a steel body may never fix, and will fall back to cell tower positioning, accurate to hundreds of metres.

Positions are hundreds of metres out. Same cause: it is reporting LBS rather than GPS.

Connects then drops repeatedly. The server is not acknowledging login packets correctly. Against Geoblip this should not happen — if it does, the IMEI is most likely not registered to your account, which closes the connection by design.

Nothing at all after moving countries. Roaming is not enabled on the SIM, or the destination has no 2G.

Whether to buy one

If you are in a country where 2G still runs, the GT06N is capable hardware for the money and its protocol is supported by essentially every open-source tracking platform.

If you are buying today for the long term, look at an LTE Cat-M1 or NB-IoT tracker instead. The 2G shutdown is a fixed cost you will otherwise pay twice.

For tracking a person rather than a vehicle, a phone is usually the better tool — see GPSLogger or OsmAnd.