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I'm a fucking idiot.... This is the obvious answer to my problem lol.
I have several old androids I could toss a cheap SIM into and just pay like a flat fee for a year service.
Thank you for pointing out the most obvious thing that I will be punching myself for not thinking of lol.
I'm like actually disappointed in myself for not having that thought cross my mind once. Haha
The comparably low battery life of phones could become a problem.
I can install a barebones OS and basically disable everything except GPS. Im sure I can get at least a day or 2 out of it. Worst case I just add another solar battery pack and wire it up to that.
If you are going the phone way and care to make the battery last longer, you can also install an app that keeps waiting to receive a keyword by SMS, upon receiving which it turns the GPS on, locates itself and sends the location back by SMS. It has dual benefit of not needing a data pack and making the battery last longer since the GPS or data is not on constantly. On the down side it'll be tough to do live tracking by this approach.
https://www.theonespy.com/features/track-location-with-sms
https://youtu.be/FknRti6n_F8
These are just two links that came up using a basic search to do this. There are multiple listings on f-droid to help you not just get location but control the phone remotely over SMS.
Find My Device (FMD) (Locate and control your device remotely) https://f-droid.org/packages/de.nulide.findmydevice/
Simple sms remote (Control your device by sending text messages) https://f-droid.org/packages/tranquvis.simplesmsremote/
Finder (Remote mobile phone searching via SMS requests.) https://f-droid.org/packages/ru.seva.finder/ Cheers!
You might want to keep WiFi on, it might help you get a location fix with less battery use than just GPS;
So Lineage on an old phone will easily go 5 days without charging.
If I were to disable a bunch of stuff, and force low battery mode (or lowest possible with location sharing still working) it would probably go longer, closer to 8.