Dec 12 2011
We finally have an Android App under development.
I can’t guarantee it will be available soon, but hopefully by January we’ll have something our customers can start using.
Here’s a very simple preview:
GPS Insight Android Application
We’ll let you know when it’s available in Beta.
Thanks,
Rob.
Aug 06 2011
So I didn’t want to wait very long in the 111 degree humid, sunny, disgusting weather for the Branson Trolley (which we happen to track using GPS Insight). so I pulled up their location on my phone and was able to wait inside Bass Pro Shop (stop #3) until it was close, then go out and get on:
Waiting for the Branson Trolley
I had some pictures of it closer on the map, and of my kids and I waiting as it pulled up, along with the stops map. I deleted them rather than sending them from my iPhone. One wrong push… You’ll just have to trust me.
Anyway, it’s nice to have GPS tracking on public transportation vehicles and be able to pull them up on Smart Phones. I’m not sure if Branson makes this available or not. They should, & we will let them know about that capability so they can advertise it to their riders.
They claim the trolley makes it around all stops every 15 minutes. I may investigate that and make that a future blog article. With the kind of traffic I experienced in Branson (worse than LA !!!), I am not sure I believe that claim. We’ll see, and GPS Insight has all the data to prove (or disprove) that claim.
Rob.
Aug 06 2011
I am on a Summer trip with my 2 boys for their vacation to Branson, MO. It’s like Disneyland for kids in the Ozarks in Missouri.
As we were getting onto the Trolley which shuttles you around “Old Town” Branson, I realized they were a customer of GPS Insight’s, and asked a support person to send me the Mobile Map link to their vehicles so I could “track myself” and see how close the trolley was later when it was time to get back on. [Mobile Mapping is a free capability within GPS Insight under the "Mapping/Mobile Mapping" menu. You just need to retrieve the unique, secure link and you can view your vehicles from any smart phone or tablet]
Here is a picture of the boys on the Trolley:
My boys on the Branson Downtown Trolley
So within a minute or so my support person was able to text me the link to use from my smartphone to see the Trolley position:
Where the Trolley is according to GPS Insight
Then quickly I clicked on Street View to see where Google thinks it looks like out my Trolley Window:
Google street View from Trolley Location
And quickly I took a picture with my iPhone to show it was EXACTLY like that at the moment:
Actual picture I took from the Trolley window
Not bad, Google (or GPS Insight)!
The Branson "Downtown Trolley"
I got off at the Bass Pro Shop stop so my kids could look around in advance of their big fishing trip the next morning. I’ll talk about how I was able to minimize my wait for the Trolley (it was 111 degrees and HUMID) in the next article.
I’m glad we’re able to help Branson with their Trolley Tracking initiative. Great town to visit with your family. For more information click here!
Thanks,
Rob.
Jun 30 2011
Using your smart phone, you can now attach a picture from the field to any stop’s detail.
Here’s how it works:
Take a picture that you want associated with your stop (or someone else’s stop, if you’re a supervisor in the field) — this can even be a screen shot from a dispatch system, etc.
Send that picture to our GPS Insight notes email address [you generate this in the system here under User Management:]
Add an inbound email address for GPS Insight queries/notes
You want to use our “gps [vehicle] note here is my note detail” format to annotate the note and minimally let us know which vehicle the picture should be associated with.
send a picture to GPS Insight to attach to a vehicle's activity
Once we receive the photo and note, it becomes available on our mapping and on the stop notes report:
Picture under the "notes" tab of the vehicle detail in mapping
When you “hover over” the note, the picture pops up to give you more information — this could be a picture proving service, showing a problem which justifies further time/billing, or just a reference photo to remind you later on about your customer.
Field pictures show up in Stop Notes Report
Adding pictures from the field into our mapping and reports will help better document (and verify) working conditions as well as pick-ups/drop-offs from stop to stop.
Close up of added Photo
Give us a call if you have any questions regarding this functionality. There is a “wizard” which is launched when you choose the option at the top from the Admin->User tab. It asks you to choose a user and a vehicle group, then provides you the email to use (and store in your phone for easy access in the future). For your convenience, you can click on that email to send to it, cc’ing yourself or your drivers so that they can just save it as a contact for future use.
Then all they need to do is email photos to that address in order to have them associated with their GPS tracking records for the day, available in both mapping and reports.
This is included in basic GPS Insight functionality, and available for all users at this time.
Enjoy!
Rob.
Oct 25 2010
We just added a few new features to our SMS text messaging dashlet.
First, now it auto-refreshes so you don’t need to press “refresh” to get new messages which have come in.
More importantly, to get your eye, new messages show up in RED:
New Messages show in Red
Once you click them, they are turned back to white:
New Messages turn white when clicked
Last, you can now send EMAIL to your drivers as well from the SMS text messaging dashlet (now called the SMS/Email Messaging dashlet):
Send an email to your drivers from GPS Insight
Received Email from GPS Insight Dashboard
In order to edit your drivers’ SMS & Email addresses, choose the following option:
Edit your drivers' SMS & Email Addresses
Now we allow up to 50 SMS text messages for free per vehicle per month, so please make sure to use this useful and valuable service, and let your salesperson know if you will require more than that if you’re not already subscribing to it.
Thanks,
Rob.
Oct 02 2010
GPS Insight’s cell-based capabilities are now a part of our baseline offering for customers.
There are 3 capabilities:
Here are VERY basic overviews, followed by 3 more detailed instructional links.
These are very powerful capabilities within GPS Insight, and we want to ensure all of our customers know to use them.
Cell Phone Maps:
Set up a link which you can input (once) into your Smart Phone (e.g. iPhone, Android, etc.) and you can see your vehicles or just a group of them on the phone map (you may need to load Google Mobile Maps first):
Mobile Mapping in GPS Insight
For detailed instructions, click here.
SMS Text Messaging (free access limited to 50 messages per vehicle per month, aggregated — for more, speak to your salesperson)
You can set up associations between your vehicles/drivers and their cell phone numbers.
Then you can text your drivers and receive their response from within GPS Insight’s interface:
Use GPS Insight to send and receive messages between drivers and dispatch
For detailed information, click here: Bear in mind there is also a messaging page under “Custom/Messaging.” There is also a training topic at http://training.gpsinsight.com.
SMS Queries [free access limited to 50 messages per vehicle per month, aggregated]:
Last, you can send text messages from your phone to find out a vehicle’s location, see which vehicles are closest to others, set movement alerts, create landmarks, and much more:
Use SMS text to find manage your fleet
For basic and detailed capabilities and instructions, click here and here.
Please start using these capabilities, as they are now included with the basic GPS Insight offering.
Thanks,
Rob.
Sep 24 2010
We just added the ability to select a vehicle group and send an SMS message to all those drivers from the dashboard.
Simple stuff, here are a couple screen shots:
Send a message to all/some of a group (only those with cell #’s assigned show up):
Here is where you send the message
And look at outbound/inbound messages
here's where you see the past messages in & out
And here’s what I sent earlier/just now on my iPhone:
here is what it looks like on your phone (my iPhone)
Easy stuff — send messages to your drivers, and when they reply, you get it.
You don’t need to do anything except enter their cell # once, either by driver or by vehicle.
And they can send SMS to you at 477-477 (GPS-GPS).
Rob.
Sep 23 2010
We’re putting the final touches on our new iPhone App which will be available free to all GPS Insight users.
Here are some highlights of improvements to the first version:
First choose a group (in this case we’ve chosen ALL VEHICLES) and then choose a vehicle [we'll choose "Ray" who is at a landmark named "BowlingAlley" -- landmark names can be turned off as a setting and addresses will show up instead]
Color coded list of vehicles (color indicates recent activity)
Once we choose “Ray” we see the following status on a map:
Close up of Ray in hybrid map mode
The icons on the bottom let you change map mode, zoom in/out, create a landmark, or zoom to your own location using the iPhone GPS.
Clicking on the pin’s blue “>” we get more information about Ray:
Information about the "Ray" vehicle to include setting alerts
From here we can “bookmark” Ray, call Ray (using his cell phone information within GPS Insight), or open his location in Google Mobile Maps on the iPhone itself [to get directions to, check street view, etc.]
Here we click the phone icon and can either SMS text message or call Ray directly:
Call or text your drivers from within the GPS Insight iPhone App
You can easily click (“press”) here to open the vehicle’s location within Google Mobile Maps:
Open a vehicle's location within Google Maps in GPS Insight's Vehicle Tracking iPhone App
And really cool, if the vehicle has a Garmin, you can send a message to that Garmin instantly using the GPS Insight iPhone App:
Send a message to any vehicle's attached Garmin with the GPS Insight App
We will get the final version of the app onto the Apple App Store sometime in early October.
It’s free, and you will be able to search for it in the “App Store” or go here for information: (click below to go there)
Where to go in GPS Insight to find information on the iPhone App
We plan to continue improving this application for all of our customers’ use — enjoy!
Rob
Aug 30 2010
GPS Insight includes the ability to group vehicles and assign shapes to them, and also color-codes them based on what their activity is.
Now that works on most mobile mapping platforms – but NOT on the iPhone, which isn’t up to date yet 
Additionally, we reduced the length of the URL you need to type (once) to get to your vehicles on GPS Insight on your smart phone.
Here are some screenshots:
Here is a list of your vehicles — scroll and choose one to drill down to see it on the map:
New Shapes, Colors, and Directional Arrows in Mobile Maps
Viewing many vehicles, most stopped > 1 hour (red) at GPS Insight headquarters. No idea what Google thinks “House Hangout” is.
Lots of stopped vehicles at GPS Insight Headquarters
Note that now we show the direction of travel on the phone as well with an arrow:
One moving up in Seattle
Clicking through gives more information:
Detailed information about a vehicle
If you are a GPS Insight user, here is how you access the administration area to create your unique URL which you can then use to see current locations of your vehicles on your phone running Google Mobile Maps (most phones):
GPS Insight Mobile Map Administration
Enjoy!
Rob.
Aug 11 2010
My wife loves the fact that she’s a guinea pig and has a GPS tracking device in her car… (not really)
But it comes in handy really often to know where she & the kids are. This article shows how quick and convenient it is to use GPS Insight to answer real questions in a useful way, daily.
I was heading out of the office, waiting at the light to head to the store, and a car that looked like hers drove by toward our home. All the cars in Scottsdale look the same and all the windows are tinted, and we don’t have a vanity license plate I can remember (which probably is the way to know it’s my car…). I wasn’t sure if it was her heading home from somewhere or just one of the other thousand SUV’s in town.
I thought maybe she would want to turn around and grab dinner with the kids where I was going.
But I didn’t know if it was her car or not, so I pulled out my iPhone & checked the map of all our vehicles.
Within seconds, I knew it was her, thanks to the GPS Insight fleet tracking product.
Here’s how I did it in 10 seconds:
I simply refreshed the link for GPS Insight’s “Mobile Maps” then “zoomed down” to my location using the “zoom to me” button (I don’t know what it’s called, but I have an arrow pointing to it below). Clicking on the vehicle just North of the intersection shows it’s my wife’s vehicle (Nav2):
Quick map tells me it was my wife (Nav2) who just drove by
Then just to show I’m really at the light waiting to turn left, I click on the pin there (I have 2 devices in my car so both are me):
Me at the light waiting to turn left
Then I can show where the cars & the office are using Google Maps’ street view (by pressing the little orange guy shown above):
Google mobile Maps shows the intersection where I'm sitting, etc.
This isn’t life & death or even business, but gives a good illustration of how fast you can answer questions about where people are at (or perhaps which of your techs just blew a red light in front of you a second ago).
10 seconds, and you’ve got your answer.
Rob.
