GPS Insight Blog » GPS Navigation

Mar 26 2012

Getting to my kids’ Flag Football Game using GPS Insight

Category: Ad Hoc Reports,cell phone capabilities,Company Efficiency,Ease of use,Garmin Integration,Google Earth,GPS Insight Employees,GPS Navigation,Landmarks,New Garmin Features,Reports — rdonat @ 8:47 pm

I knew my boys had flag football practice this evening and that my wife was bringing them, but didn’t know where, and didn’t want to have to ask her for directions.

A few text messages (while parked) later and I was on my way to meet them.

Here’s what I did using GPS Insight to get going within a minute (less than asking my wife for detailed directions or an address): [note that 477-477 is "GPS-GPS" and our 6 digit short code]

Using GPS Insight SMS text messaging

Texted “gps nav2″ to get my wife’s location (she was just pulling in when I talked to her)
Texted “gps nav2 landmark flagfootball” to create a landmark named “flagfootball” within GPS Insight, corresponding to her location
Texted “gps rubi dis flagfootball” which told GPS Insight to dispatch my Garmin in my vehicle (Rubi is short for Rubicon) to the “flagfootball” location

At that point my Garmin showed a “flag” in the top right corner indicating I had a dispatch item:

Garmin Dispatch Item to my kids' flag football field

Clicking it I see the item at the bottom of my dispatch items (many show a green check indicating they are complete):

Dispatch items in GPS Insight's Garmin integration

Clicking that item (which shows I need to go 7.2 miles SouthEast to get there), I am given a choice to “Edit Stop” or “Go.”

Choosing to "Go" to "flagfootball"

Note that GPS Insight receives exact timestamps for when we send the dispatch, when the Garmin receives it, when the driver views it, then chooses to go there, when they arrive, and when they mark the stop as “complete.” I’ll show that later.

Choosing Go, I’m now given visual and turn-by-turn directions on how to get to the destination:

Garmin takes me to "flagfootball"

So as I’m driving there, I was stuck at a light and decided to take a picture to show what it looked like on the way there:

Almost there

And as I arrived at the site where I “landmarked” my wife’s Navigator (nav2) the Garmin shows my location, even though it’s technically in a parking lot:

Arriving at flagfootball

So when I ultimately got home, and put this blog article together, I logged in and was able to show my path and 3D map history (with pins for just this trip, but a progressively darker/thicker blue line indicating my vehicle’s entire day’s route):

My route from Best Buy to Flag Football

And clicking on the detail area of the Garmin Dispatch & Messaging Dashlet on our main interface shows the times I received/arrived/cleared the “stop” :

Timestamps for Garmin Dispatch Statuses

The stop report shows what time I left and what time I arrived (as well as the fact that I dropped my car off in the AM to get it washed and left it there all day so they needed to move it a few times):

GPS Insight stop report with details on trip to flagfootball

And since the default landmark definition is simply a 750′ radius circle, I decided to go in and modify it quickly (under Mapping->Landmarks -> Manage Landmarks)

Manage (Edit) GPS Insight landmarks

Loading the “flagfootball” landmark, I can change the type from Circle to Polygon, change the “address pin” to the actual entrance address, and re-draw it more precisely to match the parking lot:

Change a circular landmark

And here’s the end-result: [note that the address changes to reflect the new pin location -- this allows for more accurate dispatch directions]

Accurate Polygon "flagfootball" landmark

So now the next time I need to get to that park I can just dispatch myself with a simple SMS text message to “GPS GPS” (477-477) of “gps rubi dis flagf” (note that since rubi and flagf are “unique enough” for rubicon and flagfootball I can shorten the SMS string).

It took me 1 minute to dispatch myself, 23 minutes to get there, and probably 30 minutes or so to put this article together. It’s really intended to show you how just a minute’s worth of “interaction” with GPS Insight can make your drivers’ (and my) life easier, and how much information you can get derive from their driving, automatically, should you need to go back and get more in-depth information about it.

As for my boys’ flag football team, well, I think they need to practice more… They have practice twice a week, and in a month I’ll run a landmark report to show you how frequently I attended.

Rob.

Tags: find truck, find vehicle, garmin dispatch, garmin integration, geofences, GPS Insight walkthrough, landmarks, truck directions, vehicle directions

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Feb 21 2012

View Garmin Message/Stop status within the Garmin Dashlet

Category: Garmin Integration,Garmin Messaging,GPS Navigation,New Features,New Features,New Garmin Features — rdonat @ 11:04 pm

I send myself test and actual messages/stops all the time in my car. I have a Garmin in my cars (even the one with the in-dash Garmin) so I can easily use and test our Garmin capabilities, which are really useful.

I looked at the Garmin Dashlet on our account today and noticed I had a number of unread/inactive messages/stops which I KNOW I read. But in order for them to show up as read or allow the driver to reply to them, you need to actually click on them, which I hadn’t done.

Garmin Dashlet shows several unread/inactive messages and stops

I went out to my car, turned it on, and did a couple things. I read the “Good Evening” message from 11 days ago and responded “Yes It Is!” I also deleted the Desert Ridge (a mall) stop, as I already went there, but deactivated it before arriving, since I got tired of listening to the Garmin tell me how to go once I was close. I also responded “Ok” to the “We have a meeting…” message which I also hadn’t clicked on.

When I came back into my office, the screen had changed (as it’s supposed to…) to this, reflecting the changes I had made by interacting with the Garmin in my car. Note that the messages have changed from “Unread” to “Read”

Updated Garmin Dashlet

The red lines are to indicated new messages (they turn white once you acknowledge them by clicking the message). If you like, you can have a pop-up message appear by turning on this option within the edit properties screen, and you can see that once I clicked on the top line, it turned back to white:

Click on a new message to clear the "new message" color

When clicking on each of the various statuses, the history and timestamps show up for each line, such as the time I just now read the “good evening” message:

Timestamp for when a message was read

Here we can see what time the stop was received, read, selected (Active), de-selected (Read Inactive again) then deleted (just now):

Full history of a stop sent to my Garmin

And if more information is required, there is a dedicated Garmin interface under the “Custom-> Garmin” menu option. It gives more details and may be more suitable than a dashboard dashlet for a full-scale dispatch operation, depending on your requirements:

Full information in the main Garmin screen

It is highly configurable, and better suited to historical queries about past messages/stops and their history.

Rob.

Feel free to contact us if you are interested in seeing a more in-depth demonstration of our GPS fleet tracking solution.

Tags: Fleet Tracking, Garmin, Garmin Messages, Garmin Stops, gps fleet tracking, GPS Tracking, Message History, vehicle tracking system

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Jul 29 2011

New Timestamps in Garmin Dispatch/Messaging Module

Category: Driver Accountability,Ease of use,Garmin Integration,Google Earth,GPS Insight Employees,GPS Navigation,GPSI-4000,Landmarks,New Features,New Features,New Garmin Features — rdonat @ 11:44 am

With our new timestamp functionality you can now check the time a Garmin Message or Dispatch Item (stop) was:

Sent by Dispatch or GPS Insight automatically or via text
Delivered to the Garmin
Viewed by the Driver
Accepted by the Driver
Marked as complete by the driver

Here’s how:

The other day I Dispatched myself by texting “gps rob dis robhouse” which is short for “gps [rob 4000] [dispatch] [landmark named robhouse].”

Here are the timestamps of each of the status changes (available under the “Custom->Garmin” menu):

View Garmin Dispatch Status Change Timestamps in GPS Insight

Note all I need to do is “hover over” the “Done” status at the end of the Message field, and the date-stamped statuses are visible.

After dispatching myself at 4:09, it instantly appeared as a stop on my Garmin.

I saw it, but then drove a bit so it would have a different timestamp when it became “active”, at 4:10, as I was about to turn North onto Scottsdale Road. Note the change to “Active” at 4:10. Here is where everything happened, after running a 3D history like this:

Run a 3D Map History for a day for my vehicle

Leaving Work, accepting a stop to go home

It took me until 16:18, and 5.8 miles to get home, where I was prompted by the Garmin to mark that stop as “complete” (we shorten it to “Done”):

Getting home and marking the stop as "complete"

Even if I didn’t mark the stop as complete, we still have the timestamp of when I reach that landmark available in the landmark report, and will eventually incorporate all of this information into a single “dispatch report” which allows our customers to get a single-stop summary of all their Garmin dispatch activity.

Here’s how to run that landmark report:

Running a GPS Insight Landmark Report

Note that our “1 day” landmark report extends backward and forward automatically to show you how long the vehicle was there prior to LEAVING (if it started the day in that landmark) and how long it stayed there through the end of the stop, if it was parked there at the end of the day. These are the kind of “nice to have” features our customers (and we) insist on, so we provide it.

You can easily tell I left (late for the day, really…), then forgot something, came back, then left, and eventually came back, precisely at the same 4:18 PM time I marked the stop complete via the Garmin interface:

Times in and out of my house, matching the Garmin "Done" timestamp

At least I left early the next day to make up for it — 6:22 AM.

This new capability is very helpful for proving service to a customer, determining how quickly your drivers react to dispatch items, and other investigations about your drivers’ daily activity.

Enjoy!

Thanks,
Rob.

Tags: Fleet Tracking, garmin dispatch, Garmin Timestamps, gps fleet tracking, GPS Tracking, gps tracking devices, gps tracking software, Vehicle Tracking

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Mar 19 2011

I’ve (We’ve) Been busy! — lots of new capabilities

Category: Ad Hoc Reports,dashboard dashlets,Garmin Integration,GPS Navigation,New Features,New Features,Reporting,Reports,Scheduled Reports — rdonat @ 1:22 pm

Sorry, it’s been a while since I put any new blog articles up.

I had knee (ACL) surgery 5 weeks ago (the day I dispatched myself to the hospital here).

Not fun, don’t tear your ACL. And don’t think you can play paintball with your 11 year old when you’re 41, not 22 like when you were in the Army.

So, in the meantime though, we’ve added a few new capabilities which I want to let everyone know about.

Dispatch multiple vehicles at once

We had a customer ask if they could dispatch multiple vehicles to the same place (e.g. a fire) using Garmin. The next day we put that in place for them via our “Closest To” dashlet.

Here is how you do that:

Dispatch multiple vehicles at once to an address/landmark/vehicle/lat-lon

Use the familiar “Closest To” dashlet to find the closest vehicles to your site, then sort by the appropriate column (driving distance, travel time, or absolute distance), then choose your threshold (in this case 30 minutes or less) and un-check the ones you wish to exclude (or toggle them all using “Check/Uncheck All” — then just click on “Dispatch Selected Vehicles” and they are all dispatched. Note that ONLY Garmin enabled vehicles are eligible, and you can still click on the Garmin logo (blue triangle) in order to dispatch just a single vehicle. Pretty cool, and convenient (beats clicking 5-20 Garmin icons to dispatch everyone). We are working on allowing you to “un-dispatch” drivers and it will be available in a month or so. This will delete the dispatch items from the drivers’ Garmin.

Run a favorite/saved Report with 2 clicks (maybe more)

We added a “Scheduled Reports” dashlet which allows you to simply click on a saved/scheduled report and run it in the browser at that time.

This is pretty self-explanatory and available in the “Utilities” dashlets, as shown below:

Drag and drop new scheduled reports dashlet to access it

[by the way, note the top right -- as I was writing this in the passenger seat of my vehicle Nav2, I checked quickly to see what exit I needed to take to get to where we were taking the family for the weekend -- we use GPS Insight all the time ourselves, even from a moving vehicle on an aircard while getting some past-due blog articles published!]

list of scheduled reports - filtered to only ones containing the word "Landmark"

Choose one (we chose the bottom one — the rarely used “Unmarked Landmarks Report” which shows stops NOT IN a known landmark:

Choose a report and then change the vehicle group/dates if necessary

Then run the report and out comes your result. This dashlet helps you run frequently-run reports very easily. Here’s the report, 4 seconds later:

Easily run report!

This is available now for all customers to use. You can also edit the settings to show ONLY/BOTH active/inactive reports, as well as how many reports to show per page.

Vehicle Selector filters now change the vehicles shown on the dashboard maps

When you filter the list of vehicles in your vehicle selector dashlet now, any maps it is tied to (via dashlet group letter) now restrict which vehicles are shown. This is convenient if you have a large number of vehicles, but only want to see a certain number of them by either filtering or un-checking them in the vehicle selector dashlet:

Way too many vehicles on the map

Now after filtering by adding “*3000″ (or you could uncheck some as well):

Just the vehicles you want to look at

And of course clicking on one will zoom you straight to that vehicle, as always:

clicking on a vehicle takes you right there

That’s it for this (long) update on what’s new. We have several other features I’ll get around to highlighting shortly as well.

Rob.

Tags: dispatching multiple vehicles, Fleet Tracking, fleet tracking software, Garmin, GPS Tracking, gps tracking system, New Features, saved reports, Vehicle Tracking

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Feb 11 2011

Add a stop name to a Garmin dispatched address

Category: Ease of use,Garmin Integration,GPS Navigation,New Features,New Features,New Garmin Features — rdonat @ 6:07 am

We added the ability to “name” your address now within GPS Insight’s Garmin dispatch module.

Add a stop "name" to a Garmin dispatched address

Now your drivers will see the name, as well as the address (so they’ll still know which building to go in).

Rob.

Tags: Fleet Tracking, fleet tracking software, Garmin, GPS Tracking, gps tracking system, named addresses, stop name, Vehicle Tracking

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Feb 05 2011

New Garmin Canned Messages interface

Category: Company Efficiency,Ease of use,Garmin Integration,Garmin Messaging,GPS Navigation,New Features,New Garmin Features,Safety — rdonat @ 4:38 pm

We have recently given customers the ability to store “canned messages” on their drivers’ Garmin in the vehicle.

This allows them to choose from a list of commonly sent messages, rather than have to type each one out on the mini-keyboard on each Garmin.

Here’s how you do it:

Open the Garmin page:

Open the Garmin interface

Choose the Canned Messages tab and then create new messages, assign them to message groups, and assign those message groups to vehicles:

GPS Insight Garmin Canned Messages Interface

Create a message:

Create a Canned Message

Assign it to a group of messages:

Assign Garmin canned messages to groups

Then assign them to vehicles:

Assign message groups to vehicles

Then press “Sync Now” and your messages will be “pushed” to the appropriate vehicle’s Garmin.

To send one from your Garmin to dispatch, follow these steps:

Push Dispatch

Push Messages

Push "Quick Message"

Then up comes a list of “your” quick (canned) messages. Scroll through to select the one you want:

Choose a Canned Message

The Garmin will then prompt you if you want to send OR EDIT the canned message, so you can make small changes, such as add an amount, change a time, etc.

This definitely beats using the small on-screen keyboard to send free-form/ad-hoc messages:

Edit a canned message

Keyboard interface for editing a canned message

And here’s the message, in “red” to indicate it’s new and un-read. Once you click on it, it turns back to white:

Canned Message in the Garmin dashlet

This will help our customers enable their drivers to communicate more effectively, and help avoid the potential for distracted texting on their Garmin.

Rob.

Tags: gps fleet management software, gps fleet tracking, gps garmin integration, gps insight garmin tracking, GPS Tracking, gps tracking devices, gps vehicle tracking

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Nov 08 2010

Torn between two Garmin’s

Category: Garmin Integration,Garmin Messaging,GPS Navigation,New Features — rdonat @ 6:03 pm

I just got a couple new Garmin GPS Navigation device models which are both very cool but neither does everything:

2 new Garmin models

One knows all about Truck Restrictions:

Garmin Nuvi 465 T knows about trucking restrictions

And the Garmin Nuvi 1490 T has “EcoRoute” which helps you know how “Green” you (or your drivers) are driving:

Garmin Nuvi 1490 T tells you how "green" you are driving

So both are cool, and both work with GPS Insight to allow you to send and receive messages, as well as send destinations and routes wirelessly to your drivers.

Both have real time Traffic to help you decide which is the quickest route to your destination (although to make Traffic work with GPS Insight, you should buy the Traffic AND Fleet Management cable from GPS Insight, and buy the “non-T” version of these devices).

If I was a truck driver (I’ll pretend I am for now) I would like the 465 since it allows you to set truck-specific attributes such as width, length, height, hazardous material status, weight, and number of trailers. Then it keeps you from taking incompatible routes where you won’t make it under a bridge, or somewhere you’ll be fined for driving a commercial vehicle:

Truck Friendly Routes

It also helps you to optimize your route for the day (although so does GPS Insight with its Garmin integration):

Optimize your Route using your Garmin

As far as saving fuel the Garmin 1490 with EcoRoute (many other models support EcoRoute) will tell you when you are accelerating, braking, and speeding in a way which either wastes or saves fuel — it does this in real time. You can even purchase a module which plugs into your OBD-II and gives the Garmin real time data about speed, RPM, acceleration, and fuel consumption. I haven’t gotten this yet, but it looks very accurate.

You can pull mileage reports and fuel consumption reports from the Garmin (although again, you can do this with GPS Insight as well without needing to use this Garmin for it).

The “Green” leaf turns yellow and ultimately red if you don’t drive “Green”:

Garmin "Red" leaf shows you're not driving efficiently

If you’re a truck driver, the 465 is a MUST. If you’re worried about fuel consumption and proper driving, the 1490 is ideal.

I like the bigger screen on the 1490 but it’s good to know that the 465 is around for our trucking customers’ drivers – it’s an absolute must have.

Best of all — they both integrate with GPS Insight:

GPS Insight / Garmin integration

You can dispatch your drivers using GPS Insight, and monitor their status in real time, with the assistance of Garmin Personal Navigation Devices (PND’s):

GPS Insight / Garmin integration

Great products — thanks Garmin!

Rob.

Tags: fleet tracking software, garmin integration, garmin nuvi 1490, garmin nuvi 465, gps fleet tracking, GPS Tracking, truck routes, Vehicle Tracking, vehicle tracking solution

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Sep 07 2010

Going to Vegas with some GPS Insight employees!

Category: Garmin Integration,GPS Insight Employees,GPS Navigation,Las Vegas,Routing — rdonat @ 10:26 pm

So I head out tomorrow morning to Las Vegas for the AFLA Conference (American Fleet Leasing Association), and probably won’t have much time for documenting GPS Insight in the blog.

So I have to pick up 2 GPS Insight employees tomorrow, & don’t know where they live (I won’t name names — what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas).

Easy enough — I just enter their addresses into the GPS Insight Route Dashlet on the dashboard, choosing a Start/End of my house & Sky Harbor Airport (both pre-defined landmarks in GPS Insight’s account):

How to route myself via Garmin to 2 employee homes & the Airport

Press “Get Route” and voila!

Create an optimized route to pick up employees before heading to the airport

Create and send an optimized route to my vehicle's Garmin to pick up employees and head to the airport

Now I am able to send the route named “Vegas” to my Garmin, which will have 4 sequentially numbered stops, and will take me in that order.

Also, I can always map it by pressing “Map This” and it will show the overall route, to include the time (1 hour & 10 minutes) and turn-by-directions (not that I’ll need them — that’s what the Garmin is for!):