SPoT for groomers

[drmiller100]

the more I look at SPOT, the more we need some.

Obviously for the safety of our operators.

What would be a cool dream would be to use the tracking feature, and somehow post the results to a website or something.

Idea would be our Chamber of Commerce would have a web site where all you goons could go click on a website and see a map where we groomed each night for the past week.

This would make the communication process automatic, so all you goons would quit bugging us for trail updates.

SPOT says I have to give my account name and password and credit card info out for everyone. That isn't gonna work obviously.

Anyone have any ideas???

 

[Mafesto]

My dog can't run the groomer.

 

[REDMAN]

Hey Doug what is spot, and how about a trail update.

 

[LSB]

can you not have radio contact with your groomers?

 

[catmandewe]

groomer report

But couldn't you have an admin server that had access to your spot, that would then update the groomer update page as it is updated?
If you could make it all automated, then it would be easy and only the admin server would need the spot access.

 

[Wade]

catmandewe, has the right answer. It all depends on how the GPS data is transmitted. I bet it's a simple KML data file (usually stored in a *.kmz file) they upload to you. But, they could be doing all the map generation on their server, and then just feeding you the google map results.

update:
OK, did some more research. There is a way to do it. But, it aint easy. Basically, you need someone to write some scripts that would log in the findmespot.com website, go to the "show me maps/google maps" section. Then you'd have to run a program called GMapToGPX, it's a bookmarklet script. This would suck the track data out of the google map, then put it into a gpx, then anyone could load the gpx file and see the current location.

That's the easier part, I think the really hard part would be presenting all this data in a way that made sense to the average person. Some track data won't mean anything. You'd need a program that parsed through this track data, and spit out something like "trail A to B, groomed 11:20pm 12/1/2007". That would require a little more data.

I have another idea, instead using the track progress featured, use the check in feature. When the operator was on a trail, he could just sent that at both ends, then all you have to do is parse the email. Much easier.

Oh, it sounds like they plan on making a guest login account, that way anyone could log in. I think a lot of people have asked them for this.

It would also be interesting to find out just how much of the trails up there can see a satellite. You might find out they don't work so well up around Warren or anywhere with mountains to your south.

 

[drmiller100]

Wade,

Are you married??? I want to have your children.

we plan for sure to do the checkin every hour into Dispatch. I'm ASSUMING I can give more then one email address for checkin.

Real world says it is 9 to 15 hours to Warren and back. If even struthers had a 12 little gps coords on the way to warren and back, he could figure out we groomed to warren.

Again, real world says we will be hitting the "checkin button" at specific locations. You remember stuff when you get ot a place in the trail. I'm thinking middle of the air port in warren is a possibility, bridge at Warren, Steamboat, eastern bridge in Secesh, Burgdorf Junction, Burgdorf, Secesh Summit, Upper Payette Lake Bridge.

For the rest of the routes we pick similar landmarks.

This is really cool of you Wade to help us build this web page!!!!!!!

We really appreciate it!!!!

doug

 

[Ex-Member]

If you have business radio communications between dispatch and hte groomers, might want to check out Can enter whatever you want into the callsign/nick field, then it'll dump you into Google Maps amateur APRS.

 

[Wade]

Yes animule, your right. If you already have radios in your groomers, you could buy a microcontroller board that converts NEMA (gps output data) to AX.25 radio packet data. Then just have a receiver on the other end pick up the packets, and update a map. You could send data, and reformat it as anything you want. google earth, or just mark time the trail was groomed. No user fees, and you could use it for other things, like tracking county vehicles.

These guys make some of the hardware for doing this sort of thing.
Link

Would be cool. But, I'm no web site designer. I think representation of the data is the hardest thing.

The other side of this is the human engineering questions. Do your groomer operators want to be monitored? Some groups have turned this stuff down, because they didn't want to be 'big brothered'.

 

[drmiller100]

we have radios, repeaters on top of mountains, and dispatch listening to it all.

But on the road to warren there is only a very few places where a radio works at all.

so we have 3 hour checkins.

someday we are going to breakdown 10 minnutes after our checkin. so 3 hours. plus 2 hours of "overdue time." plus 2 hours to rally the troups, plus one hour to drive in.

for 200 bucks in a program the size of ours, it is a no brainer to use SPOT for safety and communication.

the question is can we also use it for publishing our grooming to you all folks, our customers.

 

[Wade]

Like I said, you might want to get one, and just do some test messages with it. I bet money there's a lot of places that you won't be able to get a signal out. The satellites aren't polar orbit, so there's places they just might not see. Or, it could be several hours before you message gets sent.

I'm thinking about buying one. We could run some tests with it. But, I think your best option is to hit up Hinson, and see if the SPOT rep will let you demo one for a week. The local SPOT rep has been going around making sales pitches. I know Highmark Rec has talked to him.