GPS Insight Blog » Garmin Integration

May 01 2010

New Route Creation/Sending to Garmin capability

Category: GPSI-4000, Garmin Integration, Mapping, New Features, Routing — rdonat @ 2:10 pm

Now if you have Garmin integrated into your GPS Insight implementation, you can optimize a list of addresses or landmarks, then send that entire route via wireless to your driver’s Garmin on his or her dashboard. It’s this easy:

Route a Set of Addresses to a Garmin as well as Add Landmarks to a Route

A route made from a list of addresses, and some landmarks, can be sent to a Garmin. Using the Route Dashlet, addresses can be pasted to create a list of destinations that are not yet landmarked:

Additional destinations for the route can be added from the list of landmarks on the account:

An optimized route is then created by clicking Get Route:

The Route is sent to the specified Garmin by selecting the vehicle with an attached Garmin and clicking Send:

If you would like to look at the route, you can click on “Map This” to show it on a map and adjust/email it if necessary:

Once you “Send” the route to a Garmin, the NUMBERED stops show up with the Route Name for you to easily determine where to go and in what order. You may call them “Monday,” “Tuesday,” etc. in order to help distinguish. Note that they should not be a very long name since Garmin screens aren’t always wide enough to show the full name (as in the case with my small, inexpensive Nuvi 205).

Here are screen shots of the Garmin when it receives the route:
The “Stop” icon shows up and the Garmin “dings” to let you know you have a new stop (or multiple stops). Click on it to show your stops in numbered order:

Then, you can click on the one you want to go to (ideally in the order specified, or based on whichever one is closest to your existing location (which is shown in the right column) [note I had to edit the image since my nuvi didn't have enough space for the full number -- why you should buy a W model (which stands for widescreen)]:

After clicking on it with your finger, you get more details, and can choose to “Go” there at this point:

At that point, the Garmin will take you there with turn by turn audible and visible instructions. If you have a Traffic enabled Garmin, it will optimize for existing traffic.

Note that addresses, latitude/longitude, and Landmarks may be combined within the GPS Insight route dashlet.

This is a real time-saver and using GPS Insight to get the route order optimized will absolutely save you miles — 5-10% is reasonable, and more if your dispatcher really doesn’t have a way to visualize the order on a map.

Down the road, we will start allowing customers to save routes & compare the route SENT to the actual route DRIVEN.

Bear in mind that the GPS Insight GPSI-4000 and newly introduced GPSI-3900 are our 2 Garmin capable devices.

Click for more information on our Garmin Integration.

Rob.

Tags: dispatch, garmin integration, gps fleet tracking, GPS Tracking, gps vehicle tracking, Routing

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Feb 21 2010

Better GPS Tracking than EZ-1000’s for Skiing

Category: Arizona, EZ-1000, GPS Navigation, Garmin Integration, Google Earth, People Tracking, Skiing — rdonat @ 10:14 pm

I took my boys (7 & 9) skiing (snowboarding they correct me every time…) up to Flagstaff AZ this weekend.

I brought my Garmin Edge 705 (a Garmin for bikes, basically) & put it in my coat pocket to get a really good feel for where we went during the weekend. It logs every 10 seconds for eventual upload (vs. once a minute in real time for the EZ-1000 I brought along as well).

Garmin EDGE 705

They are really nice, and we don’t sell them — I bought mine at the bike shop. [We do sell Garmin's for vehicles and can integrate them with our GPSI-4000 GPS tracking solution though...]

The Garmin is an optimist, and thinks I ran up all those hills & burned 5248 calories in the process (had I brought the wireless heart monitor it would have known better):

Garmin's interpretation of my Skiing with my kids

This is a great image of GPS Insight vs. Garmin (bear in mind we are an “ACTIVE” tracking system whereas the Garmin is “PASSIVE” and needs you to upload the data eventually):

GPS Insight vs. Garmin for ski tracking

The “pins” are EZ-1000 points [every minute while in cell coverage, which is spotty on the mountain]. The yellow circles are Garmin points (a LOT more of them).

Here is the Garmin unit track of where we went (and where I remembered to turn the unit on…):

Skiing at Snowbowl in Flagstaff AZ

It’s nice to have that for sports usage. But if you want to track your vehicles in real time, that’s not an option — you need an active tracking solution like GPS Insight. Both are great products — just for entirely different needs.

And here are my cold kids. Lots of snow this weekend, and way colder than they’re used to living in the desert.

Rob's kids in their cold-weather snowboarding attire

Rob.

Tags: gps fleet tracking, GPS Tracking, gps vehicle tracking

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Jan 23 2010

Lots of new dashboard features just released!

Category: Garmin Integration, New Features, Routing, dashboard dashlets — rdonat @ 11:25 am

We have been busy this month and released several new features to the dashboard (as well as posted speed limit reports/graphs which I will talk about separately).

First, there are new dashboard layouts, and they are more intuitively labeled:

Intuitive dashboard styles

Choosing “2 wide L” will give you a wider column on the left and a thinner column on the right. Choosing “4 wide” will give you 4 columns. These various layouts are useful depending on what type of style you like for your dashboard setup.

As always, after making changes, make sure to save your dashboard settings!

Next, we have added the ability to send routes to Garmins from the Route Dashlet.

After optimizing a route with the route dashlet (and optional feature), just choose a Garmin-integrated vehicle and click on send — the optimized route is sent instantly to that Garmin:

Send a full optimized route to a Garmin

Last, we made our “closest to” dashlet more useful by adding both drive distance and drive time, in addition to the “crow flies” distance which is all we previously supported. You can sort by any of the columns, choose your vehicle, and click on the “dispatch” button if you are using Garmin integration:

Closest To Dashlet includes drive distance/time now

And for users of the dashboard map book tool which turns an address into a map book page/grid coordinate, you can now “sanity check” the location by clicking on “Map Address” — it will pull up a convenient map for you to make sure you typed it correctly & have a reasonable address:

Sanity check your mapbook addresses now in the dashlet

And another recent dashlet worth mentioning again — the legend. Now you can have a convenient reference to what the various colors and vehicle icon shapes mean:

GPS Insight map legend

Thanks for using these new capabilities and we appreciate your feedback which has led to their creation.

Click for more information on our GPS Vehicle Tracking Functionality.

Rob.

Tags: closest to dashlet, dashboard, dashboard dashlets, gps fleet tracking, GPS Tracking, gps vehicle tracking, legend, map book dashlet, new capabilities, New Features

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Jan 09 2010

New Routing Dashlet capabilities — save fuel by streamlining your drivers’ daily route!

Category: Fuel Savings, Garmin Integration, New Features, Routing, dashboard dashlets — rdonat @ 11:32 am

This feature really helps to make sure you are saving miles/hours/dollars by streamlining your drivers’ daily route!

Before I talk about this, please realize that the routing dashlet is not a standard feature, and is included with our routing package, which is an enhancement to the base GPS Insight product. You may not have access to it currently. Call your salesperson for information.

Here is a new ability we added to the Route dashlet:

You can enter multiple addresses as always, as well as a start/stop landmark.

GPS Insight routing dashlet

Click on Optimize to get the proper order (which you can cut and paste into an email to the driver, etc.):

Click on GPS Insight's "Map This" button for optimized directions

Here is the result:

Map and directions for optimized set of destinations

You can click on print, send (email), or link (to cut/paste a direct link) at the top right for your convenience.

We will add more functionality to this dashlet over time (e.g. more landmark/landmark group inclusion, optimization options, Garmin integration, etc.).

If you would like to try it out and you are not an existing routing customer, please call us for a 14 day trial.

To learn more visit our Fleet Tracking Routing.

Thanks,

Rob.

Tags: gps fleet tracking, GPS Tracking, gps vehicle tracking

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Aug 16 2009

Live Garmin Dispatch Demo (REALLY FAST DISPATCH!)

Category: GPS Navigation, GPSI-4000, Garmin Integration — rdonat @ 12:41 pm

This is a quick camera video I took to show just how fast messages make it to the GPS Insight Navigation solution using Garmin.

I simulate a dispatch event using an SMS text message from my iPhone, which sends both a “dispatched stop” (to GPS Insight Headquarters) in the form “gps rob dis headq” (which is short for “dispatch GPS Insight Headquarters”). Then I send a text message using “gps rob gm hi there”and “gm” is short for “Garmin Message.” You can see it takes literally less than a second to receive the message, and about 2-3 seconds to receive the dispatch (the “lag” is due to the text messaging infrastructure but 2-3 seconds is pretty good regardless).

Here is the video, and below it, I will show how a customer would “typically” send a message or next stop to a driver.

Here is the message I sent back using the Garmin in the demo (visible here in the Garmin message history):

There is another Garmin demonstration here for a more thorough look at how the Garmin Integration with GPS Insight works. This video is to really show the solution “in action” to illustrate how quick and powerful it is for dispatch oriented organizations.

Thanks,

Rob.

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Jun 14 2009

Camelback Mountain hike helped by GPS Insight

Category: Arizona, EZ-1000, GPS Insight Employees, GPS Navigation, GPS Tracking, Garmin Integration, Google Earth, Landmarks, cell phone capabilities — rdonat @ 9:32 pm

I decided to hike Camelback Mountain today — I’ll try to make this short (shorter than the 1 1/2 hour hike up & down the toughest mountain I’ve done in the Valley).

I couldn’t remember where to go so I looked it up on the internet & then dispatched myself via my Garmin from my PC:

Then I created a landmark as well, while I was at it (note I put the “route me here” address where it should go, but then I outlined the whole mountain) :

Then I routed myself there with my Garmin by wirelessly dispatching my vehicle’s Garmin to that location:

Turns out it was the wrong entrance — I go to the other one typically, so I drove around aimlessly finding that, plus the REI sports place where I bought a new water backpack (called a Camelbak, coincidentally…) .

Running an efficiency report, I ran 58% more time and 20% more miles (since the miles I went extra were on surface streets, not highways, this makes sense):

Here is my driving around aimlessly, wasting time & fuel (green dots, vs. blue “optimal path”):

Then I get to Camelback, and send a couple SMS notes when I start, get to the top, then get back to the bottom:

Here is my track of the 1 1/2 hour climb to the top and back (using an EZ-1000 at 10 second updates):

Here is an iPhone picture of me at the top, mapping both my iPhone GPS location (blue) and the EZ-1000 location (red pin):

But here is the good part:

Toward the bottom:

And at the top:

I’m a little sore after the 1 1/2 hour long trek up & back down, but the view is worth it.

And I even wore a GPS Insight hat…

Rob.

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May 30 2009

Rob gets a speeding ticket — GPS Insight proves the speeding activity unfortunately…

Category: Arizona, Driver Accountability, EZ-1000, GPS Insight Employees, GPS Navigation, GPSI-4000, Garmin Integration, Google Earth, Identifying and eliminating speeding, Mapping, Routing, cell phone capabilities — rdonat @ 1:41 pm

So yesterday I took my 9 year old son, a friend and his son to the Diamondbacks game (they lost…). Thanks to Mike Greco at bluemedia for the tickets…

On the way home, after dealing with the 101 being closed (Arizona doesn’t know how to work on roads without closing them entirely), yours truly got pulled over 2 miles from home after punching it to make a stale yellow light. In my defense, there was no one around (except the police officer apparently, who I never saw).

Anyway, I got pulled over shortly thereafter and was informed I did 67 through the light in a 50. Oops.

I haven’t had a ticket for 15 years, so there goes that streak.

I got home shortly thereafter & guess what, he was right.

My GPSI-4000, which takes speed samples once a second, got me doing 68.

Here’s a picture which pretty much tells it all:

Here is my idle stop while receiving the ticket:

I pulled over near a community’s entrance to get over from traffic:

I brought an EZ-1000 with me for my son to hold on to at the game in case I lost him, & it was set for 10 second updates.

It got me at 67 MPH going through the light too (and shows I immediately slowed down):

So, the moral of the story is: I was speeding. It was literally for just a few seconds to catch a yellow light rather than slam on the brakes and wake the kids up (that’s my story), but both the police AND my GPSI-4000/EZ-1000 caught me. FYI, the GO-3000 is equally accurate, and our 3500 lineup checks speed every 20 seconds, so it catches speeding, just not the rapid up & down speeding like I exhibited yesterday — it got me at 62 MPH. To put it in perspective, many of our competeitors check speed once every 5 minutes and don’t report max speed — just instantaneous. We report max, instantaneous, and average, and this is detailed in several “speeding” related blog articles.

On a less depressing note, we had a nice time at the ballgame, and stopped at Alice Cooper’s Cooperstown before which we tracked on the EZ-1000. I landmarked it while I was there by sending a text message of: ‘gps rob 1000k landmark cooperstown’ so now it shows up here like this:

A quick landmark report shows we were there for 41 minutes:

41 much more worthwhile minutes than sitting on the side of the road waiting for a ticket 2 miles away from home.

I’ll let you know how traffic school works out.

Now that I think about it, had I been using my new Garmin routing capability I would have been directed to take the shorter path home after getting detoured, and would have avoided this ticket altogether… Grr…

Never mind all those other light green speeding dots where thankfully there weren’t any police or speed cameras.

Rob.

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May 14 2009

NAFA 2009 in New Orleans

Category: EZ-1000, GPS Insight Employees, GPS Tracking, GPS Tracking Industry, Garmin Integration, Miscellaneous, New Features — rdonat @ 12:32 pm

At NAFA 2009 (National Association of Fleet Administrators), we unveiled several new hardware and software offerings. Notably:

Garmin Integration
Driver Log/DOT Hours of Service application coming in 2009
EZ-1000 & PNP-1500 hardware
Switches & Sensors capabilities

This year’s conference was in New Orleans. Here are some pics of our booth and

The 5 of us who attended (Ryan, Jolene, Rob, Alissa, & Elliot) (wearing our Bourbon Street beads…)

Then Elliot donned a Mardi Gras outfit & joined in the parade…

We had a good time & the show went well.

Here is a video interview of me which Automotive Digest published after the show.

Rob.

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Mar 21 2009

GPS Humor… (and connected GPS navigation devices)

Category: GPS Navigation, GPSI-4000, Garmin Integration, Humor — rdonat @ 8:31 pm

I don’t come across much GPS humor, but this was in The Onion today (The Onion is a great satirical newspaper originally from University of Wisconsin – Madison). In case you don’t remember, Kenny Loggins sang “The Danger Zone” as the theme song to Top Gun back in the ’80s sometime:

http://www.theonion.com/conttent/radio_news/50596

In late April, 2009, we introduced support for Garmin integration with GPS Insight, which allows dispatch to now send drivers’ Garmins their next stop(s) as well as send and receive messages to and from a Garmin connected to a GPS Insight GPSI-4000 tracking device.

Here is a demo of that. It is a huge advancement for the GPS Insight product and is invaluable to companies who need to send orders/pickups to their drivers throughout the day. We also support sending and receiving text messages and driver/job statuses using a Garmin as well.
Rob.

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