Tracking a group of friends on the road

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PeteXXX

Cake or ice cream? The choice is endless ...
Location
Hamtun
Hi there, thanks. would that give a "live" update though of where we are?
If you use a Wahoo, it does, via a message you send to the person you want to track you. The timeframe can be set for what you want.
Others here will help with Garmin options.
 
OP
OP
Simon_m

Simon_m

Guru
WhatsApp- Share location for upto 8 hours
does it use much power, what options do you have as don't use whatsapp, I use Signal. From your Contacts list, you just select the ones you wish to track? If phone signal goes, they just jump to the next point it reconnects? thanks for your help
 

Milkfloat

An Peanut
Location
Midlands
Max I have shared via WhatsApp is 6 hours and it did not use noticeably more power. Then again, it was just shoved in the back of my jersey and I was not actively using it.
 

Sixmile

Veteran
Location
N Ireland
Another WhatsApp live location user here. Usually though, it's so the dinner can be timed for my arrival home.

Strava does have a live location but as far as I know, only one designated person can view your location. Maybe of use for other reasons... See Sense lights have a location alert feature in case a cyclist falls whilst on their own. The lights will then send geo co-ordinates of the location of the fall (if the person lies down for 30 seconds or so) via the Bluetooth on the phone. If you fall and pick yourself up again, the message doesn't send.
 

tom73

Guru
Location
Yorkshire
does it use much power, what options do you have as don't use whatsapp, I use Signal. From your Contacts list, you just select the ones you wish to track? If phone signal goes, they just jump to the next point it reconnects? thanks for your help
Signal user great stuff I've yet to convert most of my contacts to it only my bro in law users it.
I don't use what's app either and wont be any time soon. What I can tell you is if your not on facebook / don't want to be and feel like using what's app. FB have now changed the log in for new users. You now have no choice but to use a FB account.
 

jiberjaber

Veteran
Location
Essex
I knocked up a tasker app on my Android one night in my tent when I was touring this year so Mrs Jiberjaber could have some peace of mind I hadn't fallen in to a river or some such between campsites.
Garmin livetrack worked but the battery drain on the phone wasn't ideal - something that transmitted a location every 45 mins was the best compromise, but you can't adjust the update frequency of the livetrack unfortunately.
I did quite a lot of searching to try and find something that would meet the use case I had, in the end I remembered I had Tasker installed on the phone so a few lines of configuration later and it just sent her a text SMS with a google maps link to my current location - I also sent it to myself as well to confirm the right location had been sent. I went for SMS as I had unlimited roaming SMS on my contract :smile:

If I had thought about it before the trip I suppose I could have knocked something up a but more fancy with a web page and the locations joining up to show a route, but she was just interested that I was still moving along :smile:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.dinglisch.android.taskerm&hl=en_GB

Profile "Daytime tracker" Active between 07:32AM every 45mins till 4:31PM which runs a task called "Every 45 mins"
Task "Every 45 mins" runs 3 things in sequence:
1. Get location using GPS with a 60 second timeout
2. Send SMS to Mrs J with message: "http://maps.google.com/maps?q=%LOC" (%LOC is the GPS co-ordinates)
3. Send SMS to myself with message: "http://maps.google.com/maps?q=%LOC" (%LOC is the GPS co-ordinates)

That's it. I also added the ability for Mrs J to send a SMS with QTH in it to get the phone to run the "Every 45 mins" task to ping my location should she want to.
 
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