The Great Big SPOT Thread

Take it back where you bought it. That is one reason I buy stuff like this at REI. I just ordered mine online from there last night!

I've been using the SPOT for my motorcycle trips for almost 1.5 years. Its okay. My intended use may be different then others. I use it just in case I get into a situation where I need help. Thats not 'might need help' but need help. I'm a solo biker and I go off the beaten track. I carry full self support equipment. I've been doing adventure riding of this type for ten years.

I don't use my SPOT so my 'mother' knows I'm okay. This can be a problem depending upon who you ask to SPOT you. I don't use my SPOT to record my tracks. I have a very nice gps that does much better then the SPOT. I do offer my tracks as 'entertainment' to friends who are interested in seeing what crazy roads I'm on. I do have one or two people who I ask to be available if I hit the 'help' button and can be contacted by the 911 service. I've chosen 'not' to use the okay button as friends can quickly become 'mothers' and make poor judgement calls. I have lost friends this way. This leaves one condition that I continue to not have coverage for: getting hurt and being unconcious. For me, the roads I take are an adventure and I know the risks. I don't want friends to get overly concerned when there is nothing wrong so I prefer not to use the okay button as it is currently configured. I do, however, have a request to the SPOT folks about an improvement that should cost them nothing and make the OK button work the way it should. (see bottom of thread)

As to where I mount my spot. I'd rather have it on me then have to crawl to it if I'm hurt. Where do I wear my spot? in my camel back. It has a very nice pocket on the top which is normally about 20 degrees tilted off of horizontal, facing back. How good does this work? Great when I'm heading east,north and west in the northern hemisphere, not so good when I'm heading south, but a few tracks do get through.

Now, how can SPOT improve its overall performance of getting a messages through from a moving object? They should take a lesson from Deep Space Network architectures. Something called DTN has been in development since the Mars rovers hit the another planets surface. Delay Tolerant Networks have since been used for a multitude of applications, including battle field communications and sensor networks (after all, SPOT is just one global sensor network) Software could be easily updated to take advantage of DTN technology and if were include in SPOT, then all those tracks I lost while heading south, would get captured and all those OK buttons pressed to let Mom know everything is fine, would get through. SPOT, if you are reading this, I work in in sensor network technologies and would enjoy extending DTN technology to your current offerings
For those geeks interested, here is a link.

Drink SPOT responsibly...

A.G.

Just bought my 2nd gen SPOT in silver from an REI in Atlanta, GA for 149.00. Called ahead to confirm and picked it up with no problems.

Took it home, read through the user guide and this thread then activated it while it sat on the roof of my car. Good N,E,S view and my house was in the way of a W view. I sent an OK message and received it within 3 minutes of turning the unit on.

The next morning, I turned it on, sent an OK message before leaving the mothership and placed it on the dash of my car. I received a confirming message within 3 minutes. Turned on tracking and drove about 45 minutes to my office, sent an OK message and turned the unit off after getting the TXT message. That evening I logged into the website and reviewed the tracks, all looks good.

Not a real world test but at least I know it's performing as advertised.

Bike ride with it will be coming this weekend with trails, woods and ravines, we'll see. . .

Lot's of good stuff clipped:

I agree about keeping it close. Since I also plan to ride solo a lot, I don't want to biff and find myself hurt, too far from my bike to reach the spot and wishing I'd kept it on my body. But all the performance issues appear to be related to how it's oriented to the sky. I think I'd rather follow A.G.'s lead and not worry so much about tracks and OK messages but have it near at hand in the case of an real emergency. Thanks for posting this.


I send OK messages via TXT on my cell when I have a signal, I think using the SPOT for real SOS situations is a pretty good idea.


Just a Newbie buttin' in. . .

The SPOT-1 unit does implement a simple DTN concept (transmit the OK and Help messages 3 times). The SPOT-2 unit does something like that with the Tracking messages as well. What more could be done without eating more bandwidth (running up the cost), and running down the battery?

Well, if I understand correctly, the increase in data sent in tracking mode with the new unit means it must transmit a little longer. The extra data allows some error correction in the back office. Tracking reliability is improved, bandwidth and transmitter output power remain the same, but transmitter duty cycle is increased (with some nominal decrease in battery life).

Cheers.

That's what I get. Mine came with low batteries too. The red light started blinking after about 30 minutes of use.

I would not presume to know the bandwidth although it should be possible to estimate the payload of a single track point at 21 or 22 bits for lat and the same for lon and no more then 8 bits for relative time and an id of no more then 8 bits, total payload of 60 bits worst case. It is probably dominated by sync bits and redundancy bits so that chunks of data can be missing and SPOT can still reconstruct (extraordinarily weak signals are very data lossy). The additional 9 or 10 bits for, say, delta compression (how much lat and lon has changed) to send the most recent 6 locations is likely to be double the payload but provide 6 times the information (this is a store and forward DTN concept) and sending the id's of the most recent 4 OK or continually sending the id of HELP (until reset by the user) is not likely to increase the data payload very much. Ids are probably on the order of 8 bits each. A 200 bit payload with store and forward data would significantly reduce data loss and improve the quality in real life scenarios. ( for non geeks, 200 bits is less than 25 bytes or 25 characters in this message XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX ) Perhaps newer versions will have a receiver for an ACK (acknowledge) which requires almost no bandwidth at all and would allow data payloads to be trimmed.

AG

Gordy,
I called Energizer and they are going to send me a coupon for $10.00 and they want to see the old batteries. Just to test things out I put a ultra cheap set of batteries (Ocean State Job Lot) in the unit and it has run for several hours without the red light coming on.

I don't think I will go through the hassle of sending batteries back, but it is amazing that you can buy a DVD player (or some other junk) that came from China and then sat on a shlef for a year and the batteries always work fine. Supposedly the messenger was just manufactured. They must have bought a bad lot of batteries.
It's really no big deal if the thing works as advertised......I'm happy.

Energizer is sending a prepaid envelope and all I will have to do is put the batteries in it and drop it in the mail. They said the batteries have a shelf life of 15 years and they were not aware of any problems. They want to check the batteries out. Sending the batteries back is not a prerequisite to receive the coupon. Not getting free replacement batteries means I just paid $10.00 more for the SPOT.

I bought a new headstock tuner for my guitar a few months ago. It came with a dead battery :huh I took it back to the store and they tested the tuner with a new battery. Rather than just give me the battery, they gave me a completely new tuner with a new battery and tested it before I left. Some places believe in good customer service.

That is cool, but Spot or your retailer should do that for you, but then, that is even more hassle. Good tip!!

Hardware issues with that. They've always made a big deal about not wanting to build another receiver into the SPoT box (other than the GPS receiver). I think the reasoning is cost, simplicity, size and battery life, not to mention the additional load on the satellites. (Even the much pricier PLB/EPIRB/ELT hardware doesn't contain a receiver.) The system is a simplex 'bent pipe' so any acks would need to come back from a ground station -- and, guess what? -- since I presume SPoT signals heard by the satellites' receiver are relayed to earth on a different band, there's no transmitter up there to send an ack back to Mr. SPoT.

Remember that SPoT uses GlobalStar's simplex data service, and the satellites' capabilities are limited. So we make do with some simple time domain FEC-type(?) redundancy to improve reliability. Yes, reliability might be increased by transmitting even more data...at the expense of battery life and congestion at the satellites' receivers. It's a balancing act. This is a $100 box -- in my opinion, while it's not perfect, it's amazing that it works as well as it does, and represents good value if you inject reality into some of the marketing claims.

Cheers.

This is a useful app I developed for anyone with a SPOT messenger and a Blackberry. It allows you to check your Shared Page map and SPOT GPS locations directly from a Blackberry app when on the move. This can be really helpful for making sure your SPOT is tracking as you expect before you leave cell coverage or return to it. Especially useful when you don't have access to a computer at the time. It also generates bearing and speed information between track locations and you can track other peoples pages too.

http://www.spot4blackberry.com

You know, it'd be great if you came in here offering some advice and maybe some guidance to the unwashed masses before you try selling something.

just fired up my spot II for the first hour to make a few test tracks, etc. I got the red light already. bad batteries. bummer, but if a simple call to SPOT won't fix it, then it's not worth the hassle to mess with it.

Looks to me like the program he's created speaks for itself. If I had a Crackberry, I'd buy his program for the $5 or $6 he's asking.

lighten up "Gordy" if you don't want to buy it then don't. geeeez, some peopels kids.

cyclepath

1st post on ADVrider and it's .

There are over 1600 posts in this one thread alone talking about the product and all we get is a sales pitch from someone who actually seems to know a lot about it.