We have a golf cart and our house is near a really steep hill.
Doing 16 MPH up to the top of the hill in my golf cart
The golf cart is limited to 25 MPH, even downhill (it engine-brakes to keep you from going too fast).
Unless you turn the ignition off…
Then you can zoom down as long as you have guts before stomping on the brake or turning the car back on:
racing to the bottom of a hill in my golfcart
But when you turn the ignition off, you lose your speedometer, so you don’t know how fast you’re going.
I was curious how fast I could get it to go down the hill, & realized I could just look it up in GPS Insight:
Running an Activity Detail Report for my golfcart
And I can easily see the max speed of 45:
Going 45 MPH in a golf cart meant for 25
The reason the device keeps reporting even though the ignition is off is because I wanted an easy install & just wired it straight to the battery and programmed it to only report when the vehicle is moving.
This helps me to see that my golf cart hit 45 MPH max on the way down the hill. And notice that it interprets 5 minutes of non-movement in my garage as “Off” and stops reporting.
And the next step? Create an alert to let me know any time this is happening so that if my kids try it, they’re in huge trouble:
Alert to let me know any time the golf cart goes > 30 MPH
Any time “Rob Gemcar” goes > 30 MPH (only possible down a hill with the ignition turned off — otherwise it hits 28 or so absolute max), WITHIN our subdivision called Forest Highlands, I will get an SMS text message instantly, as well as an email, alerting me to this fact (along with a map of the location in the email). I included it in our subdivision so that if it’s ever put on a flatbed for transportation to the dealer or something, it won’t alert as it’s going > 30 MPH on surface streets outside our community (it’s not licensed for streets > 35 MPH).
By the way, we’ve worked with companies in the past to prove that their vehicles were going DOWNHILL when they exceeded the supposed maximum set by them in their rig — they did it by putting the truck in neutral and coasting to more than the max allowable speed. That’s where I got the idea to check GPS Insight to see how fast the vehicle was actually going (it felt more like 50!). I promise, it wasn’t that unsafe though… I value my life.
Don’t try this at home!
Rob.
[Update: I was late for dinner last night & at a friend's house, & in a hurry, so I performed the "go fast downhill" trick and predictably, got an alert emailed and via text to my phone -- here they are:]
GPS Insight alert email for speeding down the hill
And here’s the text I got:
GPS Insight SMS alert for speeding down the hill
Note that the actual reporting time of the point as 6:47:32 PM, and it was sent at 6:48:30 PM, which is why the alert appears to be 2 minutes later [it was only 58 seconds, which is typical]. We round “down” and the email/sms round “up” with dates:
Raw GPS Data for golf cart speeding event
Running an alert report shows it was sent at 18:48:30:
Running an alert report
Alert sent at 18:40:30
Just a good example of how much information we have available to support the alerts we send.
Rob.
July 3rd, 2012 6:36 pm
Speed and GPS can be very useful. Once I was selling a SATCOM-based system that had to be on the vehicle roof for comm satellite visibility. We used magnetic buttons on the bottom of the unit to make a relatively universal n=mounting system.
The contact approving official, an Air Force general officer, complained that our idea of magnetic mounting was “somewhat less than optimal”.
Thank goodness for rental cars and wide open Montana highways.
Next morning I showed him a printout of me going 115 with a demo unit on the roof. He never complained about the security of the mag mounts again.
Whatever it takes to make a sale