What this is

MyTrackers is a small GPS tracker -- cellular + GPS, battery-powered, small enough to clip onto a bag, a bike, or keep with someone who might wander -- paired with a tiny server that runs on your own hardware at home, not in someone else's cloud.

You buy the device once. There's no monthly fee, no app account tied to a company that can raise prices or shut down, and no third party holding a permanent log of where you or your family have been. The tracker reports its position, the server on your own hardware stores it, and you're the only one who can ever see it.

Why it's built this way

Most tracker products work by renting you access to their servers forever -- the hardware itself is cheap, the subscription is the actual product. That model means your location history, one of the most sensitive kinds of data there is, lives on infrastructure you don't control, governed by a privacy policy you didn't write, for as long as the company decides to keep it (or as long as the company exists at all -- plenty of tracker startups have shut down and simply turned devices into paperweights).

MyTrackers flips that. The tracker reports straight to a small home server (a Raspberry Pi) that you own and that sits on your own home network, reachable from anywhere only through a secure outbound-only tunnel -- no ports opened on your router, no inbound connection for anyone to attack. Your data never has to leave your house to reach you. One-time hardware cost, ongoing privacy, no recurring bill.

How it works, in short

• Unbox. Everything arrives ready to go, matched to each other, out of the box.
• Pair it once. A short guided step links your tracker to your own home server, for good. No password to remember, no app store, no cloud subscription -- just a one-time email link to claim your own address.
• Forget about it. From there it quietly checks in on its own schedule, finding its way home through whatever's available at the time, and shows up on a map that only you can open.

Who it's for

Anyone who wants to know a person, pet, or valuable item is safe without handing that information to a company as a matter of course -- families keeping an eye on an elderly parent or a young child, people tracking a bike or a bag, or anyone who'd simply rather not pay forever for something a one-time purchase should cover.