The Great Big SPOT Thread

that URL displays just about nothing for me...I hope this isn't one of those "you must have IE version 3.7 and Windows 98 SP3 to view this site" numbers.

Works fine for me on IE 7.0 and FF 2.0 (both on Vista Ultimate). And it's pretty darned cool as well. I wonder if they can be convinced to support SPOTs that aren't purchased directly from them, even for a fee.

Here is Spots Responce :) Nice and Quick

Hi Marvin,
1. The unit does float.
2. I will let the developers know of your interest in a username/password save option.
3. The developers are already working on a way to be able to allow your friends and family view messages of your choice publicly.
4. They are also working to expand the profile options.
5. I will let them know of your Google Earth interest as well.
6. You may activate Help and 911 at the same time.
7, 8. I will let them know of your suggestions.
9. GMT to local is one of the features they are improving with the next release of the website, soon.

Regards,
Stephanie

SPOT USA Customer Service
866-OK1-SPOT
www.findmespot.com

OK, so I wonder if it's "sorry, Windows only"....I'm running MacOS X and Firefox. And there's about zilch for me. Zilch with Safari too.

Reguarding the guest tracking idea, here is an email answering my request for the guest service:

Hi Terry,
Our developers are working to allow you to make your tracking public without compromising your account. We plan to have it available later this month.

Regards,
Stephanie

SPOT USA Customer Service
866-OK1-SPOT
www.findmespot.com

A friend got the same answer to his latest inquiry. Seems they've gone from "we'll look into that" to "soon" to "later this month"

Good news

Glad to see that they're responding fairly quickly.

SPoT saved 4 lives over the holidays. 3 in one incident and one in another.

Press releases here and here.

Congratulations guys, it's pretty clear this is a pretty incredible device, and I thank you for working to get it to market.

Here's one for you all. My wife and I are getting the same results with the following:

While in Tracking mode, it seems that sending an OK msg cancels the tracking feature. We tried this seperately two times each. Same results.

Anyone else experience this? Any info out there to explain this.

Spotmaker, do you have one, maybe?

Otherwise, the unit has already shown its value.

Thanks everyone.

It's working as designed. Here's a link to the manual:

http://www.findmespot.com/downloads/SPOT_UsersGuide_2007_10_16.pdf

Check out pages 11-12 about SPOTcasting, it states "SPOTcheck must be inactive for SPOTcasting to be activated.".

Basically, when you put it to the OK/Check mode, it needs to take it out of tracking mode so it can send those 3 redundant OK messages over the next 20 minutes. You can be in either OK/Check mode or Tracking mode, but not both at the same time.

When I want to switch back and forth between the two, I find it easiest to just power the whole thing down, turn it back on, and put it in the chosen mode. But keep in mind if you do this sooner than 20 minutes after you sent an OK message, there's a chance, however small, that the OK message may not have gone through already.

Thanks! That's exactly what we suspected...though it's funny how neither one of us found that covered in the manual.

Actually, pressing the OK/check button when in tracking mode (and holding for 3 seconds IIRC) cancels tracking. (LED blinks red a few times to indicate that tracking mode is terminating when you do this.)

You would then have to press the OK/check button again to send a check-in message. (Short press for check in message, 5 second press -until the LED begins to blink- for track mode.)

The time is in GMT. As of right now there is no way to change this, but I thought I saw a post somewhere from someone who spoke to tech support, and they had mentioned that a website upgrade was in the works and converting from GMT to your local time would be one of the added features.

No problem for those of us who live in a GMT zone! (in fact only a few miles away from Greenwich here).

...well no problem untill we enter daylight saving time!

Yes, I posted a email from them that said they were going to make this local time to where you clocked in at

Marty's post.

read somewhere, possibly earlier in this thread that there was some sort of power supply coming out for these and that we might be able to power them from the bikes.

Anyone heard any more about it?

Have you seen the new feature?

Now, under the message tab on your SPoT account website, there are buttons to download the selected track points in GPX, CSV, or KML format!

Now, all they need is a "guest" login any I think they'll have addressed 99% of the requests for website enhancement.

Oh, and by the way: We have a third report of a 911 save for SPoT!

Cool! It's a great addition, but 99% means SPOT only has 1% to go on that site, and there are still a whole bunch of improvements that folks are looking for:

- guest tracking (as you mentioned).
- conversion from GMT to local time
- multiple message profiles
- remembering login information if a user chooses to
- auto-refresh of new track points on map view with a settable logout timer if necessary

I saw that there's a new option to enter emergency contact numbers under message profile, but I wish there was a way to enter more than 1 for each of the two individuals; it would be useful to be able to give both cell + landline rather than having to choose between the two.

For guest tracking, I hope that there are some usability tests planned to make sure it's dead-simple for friends to see the tracking, rather than all of the clicking and choosing that is now necessary. I'd like to have a checkbox on my account that says "enable" or "disable" guest tracking, and then give a specific URL to my friends/family that they could click on and immediately see a map view of my trackpoints for the past 24 hrs. At that point if they want to select additional points or deselect points to modify what is shown on the map, great, but I'd imagine many wouldn't ever feel the need. If instead we are given the ability to set up guest accounts (with another userid/password), that could work as well, but I'd still hope that upon login they are brought immediately to that map with my trackpoints already listed on it.