Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board SPOT ADVICE/HELP

Hi All,

got a spot for Christmas and I know I have a few friends here that have spot have a couple of easy questions.

#1 SPOT history last 7 days is there a way to download the page that tracks the hike to save for my trip reports.

#2 Just walked the dog and hit the OK button a couple of times and didn't work. Any advice does the device need to be on the entire hike or can I hit OK and turn off?

#3 Tracking(boot) button seems to be looking at Richard's site an automatic 10 min interval cannot just randomly hit it then hit OK few min later??

Thanks for your help,

Yeti

RTFM Scully!

1. You can download your trackpoints in a few different formats from your My Account page.

2. The device needs to be on until the OK light goes off and it isn't guaranteed that your message will get out. It depends on where the SPOT satellite is. If it's not in "view," you get nothing transmitted to your contacts.

3. Don't know what you're asking, but I don't think you can send OKs any more often than 20 minutes.

you can get up to 30 days out of that History - click Set Filter and change the Date Received radio button to 30 days. Not great, but better than 7 days if you're on a longer trip and can't download the data.

as for data received - I never used the OK button, just the tracking package, and that either works somewhat reliable - 10 mins apart, sometimes 20, then there's an hour without signal, even in a locationw here the last signals all made it out. It's not something I would want to rely on, and I tell everyone NOT to call for help if my tracking stops, because it is far more likely that the device died or Globalstar lost another satellite, than that I am in real trouble.

Hi Jeff,
I use a site that automatically permanently saves the SPOT tracks. www.spotwalla.com

This is the SPOT track from my whitney summit this september.
http://spotwalla.com/tripViewer.php?id=1eb14c7e72bbf06a4

You can set up multiple trips where the SPOT tracks from certain dates and times are logged.

Tom thanks that's cool. I'll take an hour walk at lunch tomorrow then try it out using the spotwalla site. If I have any questions i'll PM you. Thanks again, nice job on Whit your site was cool...

Yeti..

Hey Jeff,
cool, I'll help in whatever way I can.

One note, I think you have to set up the spotwalla hike before you actually do it. I think it goes out and polls the SPOT site for the real time data and ignores past data. Not sure about that, but it is my understanding.

The new Spot works better than the old one. I have them both, and like the improvements they have made. I know they had a problem when they initially launched the updated version, but after a recall they seem to be back on track.

I put my spot in the top bag of my backpack pointed at the sky on last summers trip from OV to WP and it worked very well. It was on tracking the whole time and it is fun to see the progress we made and remember the trip. I did the trip with nine Boy Scouts and their parents were at home watching us the whole time. When I got home there was one parent who told me he watched all morning while we summited Whitney. Any time I go out camping/hiking with the boys, my wife insists that I take it along so she knows where we are.

I have the new SPOT and it worked great. I used velcro to affix to the top of my pack or shoulder in the case of my day pack. (I also had a short lanyard....just in case).

Thanks Tom. I remember you posting about this a while back, but it took the recent post to finally get me to look at the Spotwalla.com site. Pretty cool.

Richard,
were you able to set up the dates post-hike and then have spotwalla grab the data to create the track?

Tom

Yes. I just clicked on Create a Trip, specified the Start Date and Time and the End Date and Time and clicked on Create. Pretty easy.

I also think that you can use Spotwalla to do a "live" display of your track points, but haven't looked to closely at that feature yet.

ahhh, cool....and yes, you can use it for "live" display of the tracks.

Tom I got this page up:

http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0btn5zC2k3FmtvSmAOO6VbQb5d2RgTsvz

Also just tried the spotwalla like Richard did but trip didn't load right away. Spotwalla says it takes a few so I'll check later.

Jeff

Tom and Richard,
Thanks this was really hard for me i have no patience with anything related to tech stuff......Think I've got it see below.

http://spotwalla.com/tripViewer.php?id=24c04d238ac94ac3c

Yeti

Nice job, Dude. Looks like you got it and we made it to Zahniser.

Jeff,
yup, it looks like you got it to work. Spotwalla was a pain the first time I set it up. Now it's pretty straightforward.

Nice job!
Tom

"Set Filter" (as described by Fishmonger) appears to temporarily change what you see when you're logged in. Is there a way to change the length of the history displayed on your public shared page?

Bob,

You can select the length of history in your public share page ONLY when you create a shared page ("Share GPS locations from the last:" option). It won't allow you to change this option once the shared page is created, which is ridiculous. And of course if you create a new shared page, it gives you a new link.

You're right, Mike. Unfortunately, the maximum time for a shared page is only 7 days. Ridiculous again! The SPOT is a nice unit, but their website is crap.

Greetings:

As has been discussed in other threads here and elsewhere, there's been an increase in bogus SPOT emergency activations (and other satellite gizmos). Sequoia Kings posted an advisory here:

Sequoia Kings SPOT advisory

George