OM, you slay me. S L A Y M E E E. And I felt odd simply ordering electrical gadgets from
Eastern Beaver....
Went out on a 90 min ride to one of the forest trails near my house tonight, and took my cell phone and my SPOT II with me to see how they compare. If you have cell phone coverage, running
Trackr.eu's software was pretty awesome. It sends out a tracking signal every 15-60 seconds, enough to capture lots of detail about your route. Though it eats battery life like a surburban housewife eats potsticker samples at costco, you can see how accurate it is *IF* you have cell coverage. It tracked the route and even some side detours I took off road (see nub at upper left):
At the same time, I had the SPOT II on its tracking mode, which sends out a message with your location every 10 min. I also pushed a few of the non-SOS custom message buttons to test out the ability to send messages. Here's what I saw when I got home:
So far, none of the custom messages I sent have showed up, even though the SPOT indicated they had been sent. I may not be using the SPOT correctly, since every time you press a button, it cancels the activity of the previous button you pressed. Below was the kinds of terrain I was in at the worst point (and when I pressed the SPOT message buttons); heavy tall trees and about 5 miles back in the forest.
I was only slightly disappointed by the SPOT vs. Trackr on my cellphone, but in fairness, they are complete different devices. SPOT did track me way back on the forest road (#4 in the SPOT map above); if I did not have cell phone coverage, SPOT would have given my family a good sense of where to look for me. However, if the messages I sent were received, they would have known exactly where I was. With Trackr, assuming I've enabled my family to see my location, they also would have seen exactly where I was (provided I had cell coverage).
The bigger difference is that SPOT tracking lasts 7 days or more, mostly because it only sends out a message only every 10 minutes in tracking mode, whereas Trackr sends out more frequently. Also, clearly SPOT worked without having to need cell coverage. Finally, I am lucky to get 4-5 hours using Trackr on my cell phone and Trackr is useless without cellphone coverage.
I'll have to resolve why my custom messages did not get sent. I suspect it might be user error, as the tracking seemed to have stopped when I pushed the message buttons, and did not resume when I pushed the tracking buttons again. I'll have to play around with the SPOT to better understand the message buttons. I did send one out later as a test, and it was received.
All in all, I am reasonably satisfied that the SPOT does what it claims to do.
