Spot Tracking - show a planned route?

[ScotRoutes]

I've played around with the "official" Spot tracking page and then with the spotwalla alternative. What neither seems to offer is a way of showing your planned route as well as your actual. I guess I'm just a bit surprised that nobody (or not enough other folk) thought this would be a good idea.

I was going to fire off an enhancement request to Jason at spotwalla but thought I'd best check that (a) I haven't missed something and (b) I'm not alone

[ianfitz]

I've not tried myself. But the tracking for the HTR has the gpx route shown on there. It can't be hard to add it and would be handy to be able to.

[Ian]

I'm with you on this one. Something I've thought would be a good addition. Just upload a GPX and see your points overlaid on top to others can see your overall progress.

Also, while you're at it, the ability to show multiple Spot feeds on a single map, ala Trackleaders, would be great. Even if this is a paid for service it would be ok I reckon. There seems to be no competition in this field at all.

[mountainbaker]

I'm just in the early throws of building a new route planning/viewing site, using OpenLayers I reckon. Perhaps the ability to add spot trackers to this would be a good thing. So many possibilities with all the APIs out there, it's just pulling them all together into something that looks good, is easy to use, and has a broad feature set

[Zippy]

Throw some of the things that 'social hiking' website has like linking to your twitter/Instagram etc. And it puts on the map where you did the tweet/photo live, based on just the timestamp.

[kbrembo]

I know the Manager for SPOT UK

Drop me a PM and I will pass on any questions/requests etc...

Ta

[ScotRoutes]

Reply from Jason

The next release of SpotWalla will support "Tracks" which will the allow the user to create a detailed route/track either manually, importing or from previously acquired location data. Trips will be configured to display to zero or more tracks.

I hope this release will be go in before the end of November.

[ianfitz]

Did anyone have success getting this to work?

I had a quick play the other day but couldn't get it to upload a gpx

[ScotRoutes]

Haven't tried it yet. Will report back tonight.

[mountainbaker]

I'm a javascript/node developer, and this is something I've been looking into recently. I've been exchanging a few emails with the guys at SPOT, and got a clear understanding of the limitation of their APIs (very limited).

The google maps side of things, and loading a gpx etc, is relatively straightforward. Then to add spots to track youd need to add the 'share' page IDs for each user. The server then needs to poll the spot API and save the tracking points locally, as spot's api only shows the last 7 days of data. This is basically what trackleaders does.

I'm in early stages of developing the serverside API polling for this, as that's the most complex data source to handle and store. Once that's done, some user login, 'event' set up etc, should be pretty straightforward.

I'd like a basic version working to go on my own blog while I'm racing Tour Divide this summer, and beyond that I'll actually try to get a public product out there. Once i have something ready for a few people to test, I'll post up here, and get some invites out. Trackleaders is good, but ugly, and I'm sure things can be done better with newer technologies, and be made more accessible.

[ScotRoutes]

Did anyone have success getting this to work?

I had a quick play the other day but couldn't get it to upload a gpx

I've uploaded a GPX as a track and created a trip that should show both the GPX track and my current location (after switching the SPOT on to tracking, obviously). The Trip show my Track OK but not my current location. Could be something to do with being at home and therefore in the Privacy Zone though.

Edit: doesn't work with Privacy Zone off either....

[ianfitz]

Did anyone have success getting this to work?

I had a quick play the other day but couldn't get it to upload a gpx

I've uploaded a GPX as a track and created a trip that should show both the GPX track and my current location (after switching the SPOT on to tracking, obviously). The Trip show my Track OK but not my current location. Could be something to do with being at home and therefore in the Privacy Zone though.

Edit: doesn't work with Privacy Zone off either....

That's more than I managed. It wouldn't upload my gpx of the cairngorm loop when I tried...

[ScotRoutes]

Oh - it worked!

https://spotwalla.com/tripViewer.php?id ... acc629fad4


Must be quite a time lag between findmespot and spotwalla

[Brothersmith]

I've played around with the "official" Spot tracking page and then with the spotwalla alternative. What neither seems to offer is a way of showing your planned route as well as your actual. I guess I'm just a bit surprised that nobody (or not enough other folk) thought this would be a good idea.

I was going to fire off an enhancement request to Jason at spotwalla but thought I'd best check that (a) I haven't missed something and (b) I'm not alone

Not done it but Social Hiking (http://www.shareyouradventure.com) allows you to do this. I use it because you can also add tweets and pictures to your current track map and then share it to FB

[ianfitz]

I've been trying to get this set up in spotwalla. managed to import the gpx on get it to display on the mapping, but no location data is coming through. my spot is on tracking mode sitting in the garden and i can see the locations on my findmespot page.

does any one know how long they take to come through to spotwalla?

advice gratefully received

[ScotRoutes]

I take it you are within the time window of your spotwalla trip?

[ianfitz]

I take it you are within the time window of your spotwalla trip?

Pretty sure yes. I'd set up a test route that I've just ridden but it was not showing my spot location at home.

Guessing it's not smart enough to only show you on the route?

[ScotRoutes]

I don't think it's that clever - in fact I'd hope it wasn't. It definitely won't show locations recorded outwith the trip start/end times though