Cliff Notes :) We have our'd mounted on the bike with the logo pointed up as in the owners Manual. There has been a bit of confussion as to Tracking vs Sending an OK messagee. To put the unit is Tracking Mode, the Unit needs to be on, then you need to hold the OK button down for at least 10 seconds. Both lights will flash green. If after 20 mintes or so, both lights are still flashing green, you are in tracking mode. Of only one is flashing you sent an OK and are NOT in tracking mode. Repeat holding the OK button down for ten (10) seconds. The rest is relatively self expalnatory. Good Luck
Just wondering.... what others experience with getting "Nearest Location" data. Do you get it consistently, sporadic or never? Does urban or rural make a difference? I have yet to see any "Nearest Location" data show up on my message page. I've used my Spot for several weeks over a 250 mile area near large cities and in rural area. Every thing else works fine. I got the following "its not our problem" response from SPot Customer Service. I would have appreciated a description of what is typical experience so I could determine if I have a problem beyond Googles 5 sec response time: The "nearest location" column is a free online service that SPOT utilizes as a point of interest for each message. It is NOT a core feature of our product. If we do not get a response from Google within 5 seconds, then the location is shown as "not known". We do not maintain the Google maps database and it is has also been known to be inaccurate at time. This field will only populate when Google is able to provide this information based on message co-ordinates they receive (within 5 seconds).
When I first got my SPOT (back in June), I would get occasional nearest locations. Then it got to where I would rarely see one if ever. Back about 2 weeks ago around Sept 5-6th when there was an outage on the shared page that many people experienced, I had about a day there that every single track that came in had a nearest location associated with it, but then it stopped again. I never knew it was coming from google maps. Kind of interesting.
Yes, the mapping is provided by Google (their logo is on the maps, I believe). Apparently the 'nearest location' info is also supplied by Google in a data transaction between Google and SPoT when a location message comes in. If Google doesn't supply SPoT with a 'nearest location' within 5 seconds, SPoT posts the received location without the nearest data, or at least that's my take on it. I suppose the idea is that the received location should be posted as soon as possible (without waiting for Google to supply information of secondary importance). Bear in mind that SPoT goes to some length to say that the shared page implementation is beta (i.e., a work in progress). Cheers.
I understand the shared page and work in progress. I was referring to the "Nearest Location" information on the account owner's SPOT Message tab not the shared page. So what's been your experience receiving the information?
Yes, you're right of course. The 'nearest' data is only posted on the owner's message page. I seem to recall fairly frequent 'nearest' postings back when I first started using the thing last winter. I'm not sure if I received 'nearest' data because I never really paid any attention to it other than being amused at the weird place names it came up with. Currently (well, the last couple weeks), I was hiking in Rocky Mt. Nat'l Park in Colorado and received 113 tracking messages. Of those, three had 'nearest' data. Curiously, both location messages I received on 5 September had 'nearest' data. (Things were weird in SPoTworld on the 5th.) I'm not sure why SPoT provides the 'nearest' data. I don't place any importance in it, and don't miss it when it's not there. Does anyone find it useful? Cheers.
Not really. It's just kind of fun to know you got a tracking message "near" Bucksnort, Tennessee. (Yes, it's a real place.) Might make it easier for someone to make phone calls to arrange a tow or some gas if you knew in what city to start.
Yeah, but who knows where Bucksnort, TN is? Or Bugtussle, AL, near me? Easiest way to locate someone would be to show their location on the map and skip the somewhat bizarre 'nearest location' indication. Cheers.
How would you show them a map? I'm thinking non-emergency. I need a tow or a gallon of gas. You have access to my shared map. Where do you start calling to send the tow truck? The nearest city. Dial information, ask for Bucksnort Towing, Taxidermy, and Live Bait in Bucksnort, Tennessee. I'm thinking it simipifies your starting point.
I agree with you that I think SPoT ought to forget about the "nearest location" data until Google has it working better. (It is a Google maps "beta" feature to begin with.) Here at the Axonn office, the "nearest location" reported is consistently "Waldheim, LA". We are in the city of Covington, LA (a small city, the Parish Seat of St. Tammany Parish). Waldheim is a tiny unincorporated community (consisting of a convenience store and about 2 farm houses) that's about 20 miles away. Not the most grotesque error imaginable, but not particularly useful and a little misleading. There's a music store in Mandeville, LA that I am a regular customer at and I've frequently sent an OK message from their parking lot, just playing with my SPoT. It consistently comes up with a "nearest location" from that parking lot that's around 150 miles to the west, near Lafayette, LA! That's bad. My advice is to ignore the "nearest location". Note that in each of these cases, the point presented on the MAP was dead-on-balls accurate ("My Cousin Vinny" reference). It's just that the "nearest location" reported was kind of goofy.
Here comes a hint: When you tell the SPoT setup page that the recipient is a Cel phone, it sends the Latitude and Longitude in the message, but as plain text, not as a clickable link. Some cel phones are smart enough to understand a clickable URL in their text message, and others turn it into hard-to-read garbage. Here's the hint: If you're positive that your cel-phone recipient has a phone that deals correctly with clickable links in text messages and you are positive you know their provider, "lie to" the SPoT setup page and tell it that it's an email address, not a cel phone. Then, use the email to SMS interface of their provider to send their cel phone an "email" rather than a straight SMS message. For instance, for AT&T it's number@txt.att.net, for Verizon it's number@vtext.com. Other email to SMS gateway addresses can be found here. This way, they'll get a clickable link to a google map in their text message! (Again, only if their phone is "smart enough" to support clickable links).
SPOTMAKER, question? Why does the "Tracker" count backwards or did I set or not set something up correctly during registration? I used that for the first time the other day and it counts down to #1 being the last entry not the first... :huh and keeps pushing the earlier track points up in numbers. Just asking, I can live with what it does. TIA
Sorry, I think I wasn't clear -- I meant look at the SPoT's location on the map (not the Nearest Location's location on the map), check the map for nearby cities and call around there for help. (No 411 operator is going to know where Bugtussle, AL is, or, as SpotMaker says, the Nearest Location supplied by Google may be way off.) Cheers.
The operator themselves may not know of it, but the database they key the info into in order to look up a number will.
Just someone's decision, somewhere within SPoT Inc. I kind of like it that way, actually. The first on the list is the most recent place I was. But, since opinions differ, a feature on the web site to choose "most recent first" or "most recent last" might be nice. In any case, as I've mentioned before, we make the hardware itself, and have no input at all into the web site. The folks at SPoT Inc. designed the web site.