SPOT Satellite Messenger - Google Earth Update
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I had a great early season soaring flight out of Williams Soaring Center on March 1st, with an over 4 hour, 460km flight along foothills on the eastern edge of the Mendocino Mountain range. This was a chance to try out my SPOT Satellite Messenger again. The SPOT messenger is capable of sending manual “OK” and emergency messages my interest is using the messenger in “SPOTcast” mode where position reports (latitude, longitude and time, but not altitude) are sent automatically every 10 minutes.
SPOTcast messages are available on the SPOT website but unlike the manually sent messages they cannot be sent through email or SMS messaging. There is no ability to preview the web site before you purchase a SPOT so people often believe the SPOT web site can do a lot more than it currently does, and for example people assume that the SPOTcast messages get automatically displayed on a map and updated as new position reports come in. What is actually available is much simpler, current SPOTcast messages are displayed in a table, you select the ones you want plotted and click a button to plot on a Google map. See images of this user interface in my previous blog post on SPOT.
The SPOT messenger appeared to work flawlessly, as it has previously. An interesting recent addition to the SPOT website allows the SPOTcast reported locations to be saved in Google Earth kml file or GPS Exchange (GPX) formats. If you are interested in playing with this in Google Earth, here is spot_messages.kml the file containing the SPOTcast position reports from the SPOT web site and 831c4fv1.kml the kml flight trace produced from my flight logger submission to the OnlineContest (OLC). Just open both files in the same Google Earth session and you should see them overlaid as in the large screen shot image linked to the thumbnail above. In Google Earth you can click on each square “Track” point to show the corresponding time and latitude and longitude coordinates.
I’m still on my first set of Energizer AA Lithium batteries after several flights of several hours each. So while I’d have prefered the ability to use external 12 volts DC power, it does not look like battery life is an issue.
Darryl, I’m glad your SPOT is working great. Mine was a dog. Check out this video on youtube I found about the different types of survival gear you might want to consider.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2IQrQxmv00
Comment by DaveP — October 10, 2008 @ 1:38 pm
The above comment was posted from an IP address of IP: 64.80.84.114 that resolves to mail.acrelectronics.com
Hey “DaveP” you asshole, if you work for ACR Electronics and want to criticize one of your competitor’s product on my blog you need to start by identifying yourself as an employee of ACR - and then I’d welcome any cogent comments you have. And you can let everybody know if you are speaking officially for ACR or for yourself.
I am a fan of PLBs and carry a McMurdo PLB on my parachute harness, and a SPOT in my glider cockpit for tracking (SPOTcast). ACR is clearly worried by the SPOT messenger, given their exaggerated anti-SPOT claims made in past marketing pieces. Some of the claims in the video posted on YouTube in the link above are irrelevant FUD, such as alkaline battery claims (Energizer lithium batteries are easy to obtain). My post was about the SPOTcast tracking feature of the SPOT messenger which is a compelling feature for sailplane pilots, 406 MHz PLBs do not and cannot offer this. BTW my original post is now out of date and the SPOT website has added shared pages with nice update features etc., a big improvement but there is still more SPOT could do in that area.
Darryl Ramm
Comment by darryl — October 10, 2008 @ 4:46 pm