Opinions on SPOT

[adventureduo]

I have a loaner Spot that my company loans out to customers or media and we found a problem. One of our customers drove cross country on back roads to write up the experience for a magazine. The Spot tracking would drop out repeatedly, so he called Spot for advice. They told him that it wasn't intended for vehicular travel and if one travels more than 300 miles or so with tracking on, one needs to remove the batteries and hard reset it every day. I called Spot and they told me the same thing. Problem is- you don't know WHEN tracking stopped working during the day unless you go check the web site. Not easy when driving.

If Spot offered a stripped down service with just the 911 function, they could compete against PLB's- the initial cost is lower and the service costs won't add up so fast. I just checked on what it costs to have my PLB serviced and batteries changed and it's pretty steep. The Spot has user- serviced batteries.

I've never heard this before. We've logged thousands of miles with ours and never pulled the batteries once. We have also traveled more than 300 miles in one shot and never had a single problem with it tracking. Also, we've had the same batteries in our unit since 2007.

 

[ThomD]

... They told him that it wasn't intended for vehicular travel and if one travels more than 300 miles or so with tracking on, one needs to remove the batteries and hard reset it every day. I called Spot and they told me the same thing. Problem is- you don't know WHEN tracking stopped working during the day unless you go check the web site. Not easy when driving.

I've been doing a lot of ready about SPOT this week and I've never heard about the 300 mile limit. You do have to restart tracking every 24 hours. That's pretty well documented.

I hope that the next version improves the user interface. Right now it is too easy for a new user to send one OK message when they meant to turn on tracking. The only way to know if you've made that mistake is to wait 20 minutes to see if the flashing lights turn off.

 

[jsmoriss]

I hope that the next version improves the user interface. Right now it is too easy for a new user to send one OK message when they meant to turn on tracking. The only way to know if you've made that mistake is to wait 20 minutes to see if the flashing lights turn off.

Press on the OK until the green light turns off, then you know tracking is on.

js.

 

[ThomD]

Press on the OK until the green light turns off, then you know tracking is on.

js.

Yeah, I know. But if you pick up the unit 1 minute later you cannot tell what mode it is in. Two flashing lights in unison can mean "I'm sending one OK message" or it can mean "I'm tracking". Unless I've missed something, which would be good.

 

[adventureduo]

Well usually only one person operates the unit, so its not hard to know what mode its in, since that's the person who depressed the button. I guess if you have a group of folks using the unit then that's where the complications begin. Doesn't seem like a problem to me. If someone doesn't remember what mode they selected then they probably shouldn't be operating the device If you have a group of people operating the device, notify whoever of what mode you're operating.. or wait 20 minutes and you'll see the lights stop blinking (in ok mode). Seems simple to me.

 

[02TahoeMD]

.....They told him that it wasn't intended for vehicular travel and if one travels more than 300 miles or so with tracking on, one needs to remove the batteries and hard reset it every day. I called Spot and they told me the same thing. Problem is- you don't know WHEN tracking stopped working during the day unless you go check the web site....

I too wanted to chime in on this as I used my Spot during my recent trip West. I spent up to 16 hours a day traveling by truck and the Spot kept track of me just fine, with the Spot held to my driver's A pillar with a Ram mount. I started each day with an OK and ended it with an OK and kept tracking active in between. And it worked fine. I kept an extra set of batteries with me just in case it would have needed them but I did not. A couple of times I had the chance to talk to friends when I was on the road, in good cell signal, and they were back here on their laptop, watching my progress in near real time. Which was pretty coo! And all my friends who watched my Spot adventure page could see where I had been by the end of my day, I lost track of the compliments I got on the Spot Tracking when I got back home. I believe that everyone who was on my "OK" notification list got notified every time I pressed the OK button too.

Now, for my daily use I sent an OK after turning the unit on, while breaking camp. Once the green light had stopped flashing under the OK button, which was usually about 20 min or so after activation, I would then turn on the Tracking function, and never had an issue. Once I had reached my destination I would usually turn the unit off to shut down the Tracking, turn it back on, and then send my OK.

The only "problem" that I have with the Spot Adventures page is that they require you to log into your account at the end of the day to save that day's track into your Adventure Page. Now, considering that most of us would be using the tracker in an area that is far from technology, much less the internet, that strikes me as counter-intuitive program design. I guess for any future trips I am gonna have to have people working back here as "tech support" to make sure the account stays saved. It was extremely frustrating to find that information had vanished upon my return, but oh well, live and learn.

Overall, the peace of mind my family and friends had being able to see that I was fine while flying solo is well worth the subscription cost.

 

[MuddyOval]

It's possible their tech support just gave us both the same blow-off answer because I called to see if there was a limitation after the guy doing the drive told me of the 'issue.' His tracking would drop at some point during the day, just about every day of the trip. I didn't believe his explanation which prompted me to call. This was quite a while ago.
I've been using mine without an issue, however.

 

[jerdog53]

I need some help, i cant get this shared page thing to work. I have been helping my buddy out with his and the we have messages on the login/findmespot page but when i select all of the messages and set the select action tab to show messages on shared page it will unselect all the boxes and reload the page then when I go to the shared page i get nothing but an error message telling me the server is busy try back later.

 

[adventureduo]

Did you try another browser? I had that happen one time when i was using Safari on my mac and when i switched over to Firefox it fixed it.

 

[jerdog53]

Firefox at work and Explorer at home with the same results