GPS Insight Blog » Google Earth

May 17 2012

Direction Arrows you can “trust” in Google Earth (if you know how they behave)

Category: Ease of use,Google Earth,GPS Tracking,Mapping,New Features,New Features — rdonat @ 9:39 pm

A highly-dispatch-oriented emergency services customer recently asked us to add arrows to the icons in Google Earth (3D Mapping) so they could better see the ambulance’s direction of travel.

We made some additions to allow for this, shown below (this is me at the mall after work this afternoon):

Arrows and Direction Text for 3D History and Current Status Icons

Here is a map of multiple vehicles, and provided you’re looking at them with the map faced “North -> Up” they are going to be helpful.

Arrows and Direction Text for Current Status 3D Icons

The problem is once you “rotate” the Earth within Google Earth’s 3D mapping, the icons still point the same direction, even though that direction has moved. These two pictures illustrate that point:

North is "up" in the map for this icon

When North faces “Up” then the arrow is headed in the correct direction (in this case West by SouthWest, or down toward the bottom left of the screen).

But when the Earth is “turned” to where West is now “Up” (or North is “Left”), the icon still looks the same.

North is "Left" but icon shows up the same

This is a problem unless you know to ignore the arrow. The “WSW” is still accurate, which is why we included it.

Also notice that the direction “circle” is available for all icons, as shown on this “truck” style icon above.

When you leave North “Up” the direction isn’t ever a concern. It’s just worth mentioning.

My preference is to put a “trail” on the vehicles so that that 5-15 minute trail (configurable) gives an intuitive feel for direction of travel within GPS Insight’s 3D Google Earth Mapping:

Choosing a "Trail" to follow your vehicle in GPS Insight 3D Mapping

Which looks like this:

Choosing a "Trail" to follow your vehicle in GPS Insight 3D Mapping

Have it your way at GPS Insight! We provide multiple options so that regardless of what you and your users of our product prefer, you have those options (speaking of, we are adding an option to hide the arrow/direction text which will be there shortly as well, if you like the old style better).

Thanks,

Rob.

Tags: 3D Mapping, new icons

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May 06 2012

Have it your way! — Add data you want to GPS Insight now!

Category: Ad Hoc Reports,Custom Categories and Attributes,Ease of use,Extreme Return on Investment,Google Earth,GPS Fleet Tracking,GPS Tracking,Landmarks,Mapping,New Features,New Features,Reporting,Reports — rdonat @ 2:43 pm

We just released our newest feature — CUSTOMER SPECIFIC CUSTOM CATEGORIES AND ATTRIBUTES.

This is a big deal.

Here’s how it works (silly example — but you’ll get the concept & can adapt to your needs):

Say your company is an ice cream delivery company and you need to know what type of ice cream each truck carries.

Launch Custom Categories and Attributes here:

Open Category/Attribute creation screen

Then click on “Create new Attribute” (you can choose to treat it like a category, which is a set of pre-populated values, in the next screen):

Create a new Attribute (or category)

Then make some changes in the highlighted fields and create your category (this is for Ice Cream Type).

Create a Custom Category

Do the same to create your Attribute (Freezer Capacity in Gallons):

Create a custom Attribute within GPS Insight

Then click on one of the available green “checkmarks” to assign values to your vehicles. Note that Custom Categories and Attributes can be assigned to Users, Vehicles, Drivers, Landmarks, and Hierarchy Nodes:

Click on a category "checkbox" to assign values

Click on a category "checkmark" to assign values

Now you can assign your pre-determined Category values by clicking on each vehicles’ list of options and choosing one. Soon, you will be able to use a new interface to choose multiple options, and we will allow for spreadsheet import assignment of custom values to vehicles & other GPS Insight Object types.

Assign Ice Cream Types to your trucks

Then assign your freezer capacity values:

Assign freezer capacity values

And now, you can click on the “Custom” tab within GPS Insight’s 2D mapping to see the custom categories/attributes and the vehicle’s values. This is helpful when referencing business specific information on a particular truck, and can be customized to keep track of ANYTHING you want.

Custom Category and Attributes displayed in GPS Insight maps

We also show this data in free-form format within 3D mapping when choosing a vehicle:

GPS Insight 3D Mapping with custom category and attribute information

And you can re-use that category in order to assign it to landmarks (or anything) — let’s say our distribution centers need to ALSO be labeled with a particular Ice Cream type:

Edit a Category to assign it to another object category

Check the “Landmark” checkbox:

Add Landmarks to a custom Category

And now you can click on the NEW green checkmark to start editing the values for your landmarks:

Edit Landmark Category Values with one click

Just click, enter, and OK each landmark (this will use our new rapid edit screen soon for even quicker entry):

Edit values for a landmark's Ice Cream Type

And now when looking at that landmark, it will show you that information informationally:

Show custom information about a Landmark within GPS Insight using Categories and Attributes

And when it’s time to “clean up” (as I need to do after using a customer for this example…) you just click on the trash can to delete the Category/Attribute and all associated data (we ask you to confirm first):

Delete a Category/Attribute after you're done with it

And coming soon, you’ll be able to use Categories and Attributes when filtering vehicles on a map, vehicles to appear in a report, and as parameters and filters in alerts (e.g. you’ll be able to set a “max number of minutes idling before alert” on different vehicles and alert whenever that threshold is exceeded).

Here is a sample screen (proof of concept):

Filter vehicles using Category and Attribute values

This is REALLY POWERFUL STUFF and will help us to do even more custom work for our customers easily. Between the Hierarchy capabilities and the Custom Categories and Attributes, the sky is the limit as to how granular we can get in your mapping, reporting, and alerting capabilities.

Please let us know if you need some training on this powerful new capability.

Thanks,

Rob.

Tags: attributes, categories, custom categories and attributes, Fleet Tracking, fleet tracking solution, fleet tracking system, fleet tracking systems, gps fleet tracking, GPS Tracking, gps tracking system, gps vehicle tracking, highly customizable, Vehicle Tracking

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Apr 24 2012

New Vehicle Icons available now!

Category: dashboard dashlets,Dashboard Maps,Fleet Tracking,Google Earth,GPS Fleet Tracking,GPS Tracking,Mapping,New Features,New Features — rdonat @ 1:25 pm

We have just added many new icon choices for you to use to distinguish your various types of trucks:

New Vehicle Icons in GPS Insight

It’s very easy to associate various vehicles or groups of vehicles with the different truck types and shapes within GPS Insight:

Hover over an icon to see it close up

You just need to limit the vehicles with filters (e.g. group, text), and select them (with ctrl or shift to select multiple vehicles), then drag and drop the icon onto the selected vehicles to make the icon change:

Filter your list of vehicles

Drag and Drop to change Icon Shape

And once you assign them and label them as you need to for your business, remember to use the legend to show you what they all mean:

GPS Insight icons dashboard legend

GPS Insight 2D Mapping legend

And of course they’re also compatible with our 3D Google Earth mapping:

3D Icons in GPS Insight

Enjoy, and if you have any ideas for new shapes or icon shapes, please feel free to ask.

Rob.

Tags: customization, Fleet Tracking, fleet tracking software, fleet tracking system, gps fleet tracking, GPS Tracking, icons

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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 08 2012

Ease of Use is hard to find

Category: Ad Hoc Reports,Company Efficiency,Ease of use,Google Earth,Mapping,Reporting,Reports — rdonat @ 3:40 pm

I use a lot of web-based applications — checking, CRM, email, etc.

Not all of them (in fact few of them) are easy to use and many require you to do the same thing over & over again which wastes a lot of time.

I am happy to say that at GPS Insight, we do everything we can to make it easy to use our product efficiently.

I needed to look into a customer’s question earlier today and this attention to usability made my life easy.

I needed BOTH a 3D map AND an activity detail report — these exist on 2 separate menus on the Mapping & Reporting tabs.

I ran the first one:

Running a 3D History map for a vehicle for 3 days

Then all I needed to do was move my mouse over to the Reports Menu, click on “Activity Detail” and both my vehicle AND date range (several months back, which involved a few clicks to achieve the first time) were carried over to this report. Then one last click on “Run Report” and VOILA, my report:

Running an Activity Report for a vehicle for 3 days

Now I could stare and compare the 3D map vs. the Activity Detail Report easily and see what my customer was curious about — he wondered why the latitude/longitude wasn’t changing for multiple lines in the Activity Detail Report:

GPS Insight Activity Detail Report

We don’t recommend trying to “interpret” latitude / longitude, as it doesn’t make any sense to us humans, but in our mapping, it shows what happened very obviously:

17 minute idle event

The vehicle didn’t change latitude / longitude for all those points since it was idling for 17 minutes! The map made that clear.

And it only took a few clicks, due to our interface which “remembers” what you’re doing. If you have 10 different reports for the same group of vehicles or single vehicle, for the same range of dates, it takes only a few clicks. You don’t need to re-select the group/vehicle, then re-select the date range. What a drag it is when I have to use someone else’s interface and wish they did the same things we do to make our customers efficient and happy to use GPS Insight.

Rob.

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

Tags: dashboard features, ease of use, fleet reports, fleet tracking software, fleet tracking system, gps fleet tracking, gps insight dashboard, GPS Tracking, gps tracking device, track vehicle map, vehicle data, Vehicle Tracking

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Dec 26 2011

Be sure you pick the right cellular coverage for GPS tracking!

Category: Ad Hoc Reports,Arizona,Availability,Cellular Coverage,Google Earth,Reports — rdonat @ 4:40 pm

Not all companies who track their vehicles need to worry about which cellular provider they use. Most don’t even know they may have a choice.

But if you do work in remote areas, you should pay attention and work with your GPS provider to ensure you get the right network.

I went to see ‘Mission Impossible’ today with my son and drove into town (Flagstaff) from our house which is in EXTREMELY bad AT&T coverage.

On the way home, I drove a couple miles around in our neighborhood to try to compare the reliability between AT&T and Verizon coverage.

My vehicle has both a Verizon-based device (labeled Rubicon) and an AT&T device (labeled Rubicon PNP).

We have a couple of internal mechanisms for determining how good the coverage ACTUALLY by:

Viewing purported AT&T or Verizon coverage
Showing ACTUAL cellular “lag” on a map
Generating a report of ACTUAL cellular “lag” with a graph

Below is an actual AT&T coverage map showing the area where I typically lose coverage in “light blue” which is not ideal coverage. In the “dark blue” area, you can see there are very few places where the time for the device to report through the cellular network is more than a few seconds. In my area, you can see some “tall” pins which visually represent how long it took the device to report (which is really a measure of how far the vehicle had to move before forwarding that data once it recovers cellular coverage):

AT&T coverage vs. time it took for a device to report

Note that the Verizon device (Rubicon) has a “pink” line and the AT&T device (Rubicon PNP) is in white. Verizon shows perfect coverage throughout (not pictured).

Here is how I pulled up the “lag report” version of the 3D map within GPS Insight:

Choosing both Rubicon devices once at a time

Choose the "Lag Report" option for a 3D History Map

[note this functionality is internal to GPS Insight support staff and is only available to end-customers upon special request]

Here is the display of my drive WITHOUT the coverage map. Notice that there are very few “tall” pins meaning very few “lagged” points:

Slight lag (24 seconds to 3 minutes) for remote AT&T device

Next I will run a quantitative analysis of today’s data, for just the 2 devices in this vehicle, after quickly creating a “Rubicons” vehicle group containing them both:

Create a "Rubicons" Vehicle Group containing both devices

I can then run this (internal use) “Lag Report” on the “Rubicons” for today:

Cellular "Lag Report" between AT&T and Verizon

Note there is a “landmark” option where we could restrict the report to ONLY data within a certain area we define, such as a mine, or wherever a customer may be concerned about coverage. Also note above, that GPS Insight still thinks I am driving, since when I pull into my bad coverage and put the car in the garage, sometimes the final ignition off event doesn’t get transmitted until I drive back into coverage the next time I leave. This is normal behavior for poor coverage areas, and is unavoidable (unless you know enough to choose Verizon when purchasing in these cases, which is the point of this article).

Here is the output, showing 100% coverage for Verizon and 95.8% coverage for AT&T for today’s drive:

Verizon 100%, AT&T 95.8%

The AVERAGE time to report for Verizon is 2 seconds, whereas AT&T averages 7 seconds. The max for Verizon is 4 seconds, and for AT&T, the max times are 51 seconds and 3 minutes, for when the report reports within 1 minute or 10 minutes (we break it out into 1, 10, 30, 30+ minute “bands”).

Here is the past week, since I drove up to Flagstaff for vacation from Scottsdale, driving through notoriously bad AT&T coverage in the mountains (I know this because my iPhone is AT&T & worthless for that drive) — note that the percentage of < 1 minute reports is 100% for Verizon and only 83.7% for AT&T:

Poor AT&T Performance in mountains between Scottsdale and Flagstaff

However, the week PRIOR to me leaving for vacation, driving around the more populated Scottsdale/Phoenix area, shows a much better 95.1% performance for AT&T vs. a 99.9% availability percentage for Verizon:

AT&T vs. Verizon coverage in Phoenix/Scottsdale

The moral of the story here is threefold:

BEFORE you purchase GPS Tracking devices for your fleet, make sure to determine A) if you have coverage issues in the areas your vehicles travel and B) whether or not you can afford to wait the minutes, hours, or sometimes overnight before the device reports in these areas.

If you may be affected, and aren’t sure, then make sure your GPS Tracking provider can provide not just multiple coverage options, but ALSO the tools to determine if there is a need for one coverage or another, as shown above.

As a point of reference, Verizon devices cost roughly $50 more than AT&T devices (due to additional modem and CDMA licensing costs). But that’s a onetime cost and will probably amount to less than 5% over the life of the device and service.

If that $50 keeps you from experiencing occasional cellular delays due to poor (typically) AT&T coverage, then it, and finding a company which provides the right coverage (e.g GPS Insight…), is certainly worth considering.

Thanks,

Rob.

Tags: AT&T, cellular coverage, Fleet Tracking, gps fleet tracking, GPS Tracking, gps tracking devices, Vehicle Tracking, Verizon

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Aug 16 2011

BEWARE! – Not all idling calculations are created equal!

Category: competition,Fuel Savings,Google Earth,reduced idling,Reporting,Reports — rdonat @ 7:01 pm

We have been in the GPS Tracking industry for almost 7 years now. Enough to learn and FIX the limitations of GPS to ensure the highest quality data possible (e.g. 99.x% — if anyone tells you they’re 100%, well, guess what, they’re not).

So, today I found a perfect example to show the lengths to which we go to make your data 100% reliable (well, 99.x%…).

I had a 7:30 AM phone call and an 8:30 offsite meeting.

I had to get to my meeting by 7:30 so I could sit in my car and get on the call, then be there for my meeting & the breakfast prior.

So I had to idle for almost 40 minutes in order to avoid baking in my car in the hot Phoenix heat.

Here’s my stop report for 2 separate devices installed in my vehicle, both showing a ~37 minute idle stop:

GPS Insight Stop Report

One device (Rob) gets its speed data from the engine’s computer, and is more expensive because of that. One device is less expensive but has to “interpolate” its speed from GPS Satellites traveling 9 THOUSAND miles per hour at over 12 THOUSAND miles in space. And it’s remarkably accurate, but there is unfortunately what we call “positional GPS drift” of up to 20 feet typically.

So when the devices move 5-10 feet due to this “drift,” we interpolate a speed of 1-3 MPH typically. But that means the device doesn’t look like it’s stationary, therefore it’s not idling.

Thankfully GPS Insight has a formula (which can be tweaked for different types of fleets, e.g. slow-moving street sweepers) which “consolidates” multiple drift points into a single idle event and position.

Our customers would never see this “inaccurate” GPS data, but here’s a picture of the REAL LOCATION REPORTS to include the drift for both the 3500 (talks to the engine for speed but not as accurate with GPS) and the 3900 (much more accurate GPS which it derives speed/distance/acceleration from):

175' of drift for the diagnostic device (we fix that)

The “drift” in the picture above is corrected over long idle stops to the “center” point which typically has the most reports.

175' of drift which we "correct" for diagnostic GPS device

15′ of drift for the more accurate 3900 GPS device

For the 3900, the drift is MUCH smaller — only 15′, and again, we “consolidate” that into a single 38 minute idle stop with a single “pin.”

The corrected map looks 100% accurate (well, 99.x%…):

"Fixed" stop locations and idle time

This shows my 2 devices in my car both stopped for ~38 minutes, and 29 feet apart (vs. the 175′ we saw above on the 3500).

And my car is 12′ long, with antennas in the front/back of the vehicle, so that’s not too bad (they show in the right locations +5′ or so each).

We consolidated the GPS drift into a single “valid” point, both in terms of position and time spent idling.

This is a HUGE distinction between GPS Insight and other companies who will either show you that your vehicle was someplace it really wasn’t, or far worse, show you that it wasn’t actually idling when it was.

Without doing all of the processing on “drift points” at 1-3 MPH, you wouldn’t know that the vehicle was actually idling, and you would lose a HUGE component of your potential ROI using GPS Insight.

This is fairly low-level, but I wanted to make sure the extent to which our product validates and consolidates data to make it actionable and insightful (and ACCURATE) isn’t lost.

There’s a big difference between this type of product and a typical “dots on a map” product. You should know there are major differences OTHER than price when it comes to GPS Fleet Tracking.

Thanks,
Rob.

Tags: Fleet Tracking, fleet tracking software, fleet tracking system, gps fleet tracking system, GPS Insight accuracy, GPS Tracking, gps tracking devices, gps tracking idling, idling accuracy, truck tracking

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Aug 14 2011

I got caught speeding to Sedona

Category: Alerts,Driver Accountability,Google Earth,GPS Insight Employees,Identifying and eliminating speeding,Safety — rdonat @ 6:54 pm

Thankfully not by the police, but by GPS Insight.

I was heading to Sedona this afternoon with my family and got this alert by email, showing that I was doing 61 in a 35 MPH zone, along with a map showing I’m coming up on a curve:

Posted Speed Limit alert for me

I thought there was no way I would go that fast over the speed limit so when I got home from my trip, I checked GPS Insight to see if we had the right posted speed for that area.

We have an internal-use-only “pincushion” tool we use which shows the various speed limits based on which direction you’re traveling, relative to the roads nearby and some reasonable assumptions.

The pin says it changes from a 55 to a 35 a little way before my vehicle location was sent with instantaneous speed of 61:

GPS Insight "pincushion" posted sped limit tool

I thought that was unlikely, so I went down to street view, and found a 35 MPH speed sign right there (above, it’s the yellow pushpin):

Proof that it's a 35 MPH zone

I guess I was speeding.

So what’s my defense? I didn’t see the sign? At least I can measure the distance until the turn and see that there was LOTS of room to slow down before the curve that 35 MPH zone was put there for:

Rob speeding (61 in a 35)

You can see I measured 600 feet before the BEGINNING of the curve, which is plenty of time to get from 61 to 35. That’s 2 football fields. And since my prior max was 65 (in the info bubble) I was slowing — just not fast enough for the speed limit… But at least you can drill down and get some better context for the posted speed alert. That’s ideal — without the ability to easily drill down for more information, you don’t know the context of the speeding alert, and can’t make good decisions on how to approach (or not to approach) your drivers about these alerts.

So even GPS tracking company owners speed. Maybe it was so I had some good material for a blog article? Yeah, that was it.

Here is a picture from Sedona, by the way:

Sedona, Arizona

And I didn’t speed on the way home, as evidenced by the alerts report I ran for today for my vehicle (Nav2):

Run an alert history for my vehicle for today

But I did idle for 8 minutes while we stopped for snacks for the ride home (and my device went out of range when I pulled into the garage, since I live in the middle of nowhere, and my oil change and rotate tires maintenance items never got updated…):

My alerts for today

This is the point of having a GPS fleet tracking solution — set the alerts, and wait for your drivers to do something you want to be alerted to.

I’m paying for my own tickets and gas, and I know I’ve got a 4×4 and 600 feet to slow down before a curve in a pretty desolate area, so no real issues here. But you certainly want to know these types of things about your drivers.

Especially if it’s your money for fuel, drivers’ licenses at stake, and your liability should they be driving too fast.

Rob.

Tags: Fleet Tracking, fleet tracking software, gps speed tracking, gps tracking devices, posted speed alerts, truck tracking, Vehicle Tracking, vehicle tracking systems

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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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Jul 17 2011

GPS Insight saves my wife & daughter from 3 hours stranded in traffic

Category: Arizona,Google Earth,GPS Insight Employees,Safety — rdonat @ 6:21 pm

As my wife was driving back home after dropping my boys off for a week at sleep-away camp, she hit the worst traffic you can hit. Cars were stopped dead on a divided mountain road, and people were getting out of their cars since no one was going anywhere.

She called me up to check traffic online through GPS Insight (since she has a device on her car (named “nav2″).

I got “directions” from our directions dashlet, then turned on Traffic :

Directions from my wife's car to mine

I was able to instantly pull up the fact that there was an accident 3 miles ahead of her which had the road completely closed, and it was estimated to be closed another 3 hours.

Pulling up crash data from Google Traffic within GPS Insight's directions functionality

Then I pulled up her location and recent 30 minutes of history within our 3D mapping (Google Earth):

Pull up Nav2's current status and recent history

She said people were turning around and driving on the shoulder of the road BACKWARDS to get to the nearest off-ramp. I told her it was .5 miles.

My wife, .5 miles from the nearest offramp

She called me back and told me everyone was going the wrong way down the on-ramp to get over to the other side of the highway.

Within 3 minutes she had escaped a really bad traffic-jam, before it got jammed up too much behind her.

Then she needed alternate directions which I was able to get her instantly, as well as watch her progress on a route only about 20 miles out of the way.

Which sure beats waiting in traffic for 3 hours.

And a quick right-click “directions from/directions to” in Google Earth tells me she’ll be home in 39 minutes.

Directions/ETA and recent history

So I can fire up the grill and have dinner ready when they get home. As I was typing this, she texted me the same thing:

Better go make dinner

Now I really better make dinner.

Rob.

Tags: accidents, GPS Tracking, gps tracking device, gps tracking software, gps vehicle tracking, re-route employees, traffic, Vehicle Tracking, vehicle tracking device

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