SPOT Satellite Messenger | digital. stories. by Patrick Brown

Another GPS based device I recently acquired (also thanks to my REI refund) is the SPOT Satellite Messenger. It is generally considered a sort of personal locator beacon (PLB), but those who know better quickly point out that it is based on completely different technology, so it is really in a category of its own.

I got to use it for the first time in earnest when I rafted the Green River through Desolation and Gray Canyons two weeks ago with John Leventhal. Thankfully, even when I choked on a Triscuit, there was no need to use the emergency 911 feature that would have notified a 911 dispatch service of an emergency at our location. However, I did use the OK Check-In feature on a daily basis. I had set up a list of 10 email addresses of friends and family who I thought it would be fun and/or useful to check in with throughout the trip. I should mention that as the name of the canyon implies, it is extremely desolate in this part of the country and there is no hope for a cell phone signal while on the river. But since SPOT sends its text messages via the Globalstar satellite system, if the unit is in North America or Europe and has a clear view of the sky for sufficient time, it should be able to send out a message even where cell phones have no hope.

Each day when I arrived in camp, I would turn on the SPOT, press the OK button, and leave it for the recommended 20 minutes with a clear view of the sky. And each time, it dutifully sent a message to my friends and family that looked like this:

We are safe and having fun rafting Deso/Gray on the Green River! Will try to check in tomorrow! See you soon!
ESN:0-7368439
Latitude:39.6595
Longitude:-109.9886
Nearest Location: Fairbanks Crossing, United States
Distance: 23 km(s)
Time:04/14/2008 19:26:59 (US/Mountain)
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=39.6595,-109.9886&ie=UTF8&z=12&om=1

Everyone commented that it was fun and reassuring to see our location, but they all also said that it was unfortunate that they weren’t able to monitor our progress from one day to the next by seeing each day’s waypoint on a common map.

That being said, there was a way to view all the waypoints on a common map, but it left a lot to be desired. I was able to view all my waypoints on the SPOT website like the image below, but I had to enter my username and password that was also the same one that manages the rest of my SPOT account including my credit card information. I obviously wasn’t going to hand out my personal information to everyone I knew, so this feature was essentially non-existent. What was needed was something similar to my Blogger account or my Motionbased.com account, both of which allow me to share my information with either a selected group of people or the whole world.

Well low and behold, as I write this I find out that all the customer requests to SPOT for a shared page has been answered! My shared page can be seen here. Unfortunately, it is only trying to display messages from the last 24 hours, so my Deso/Gray trip isn’t visible. Hopefully, this will be fixed soon and I can provide an update on how useful the sharing is. Till then…

digital, gps, SPOT, web