GPS Insight Blog » GPS Insight Employees

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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Aug 06 2011

Waiting (shortly…) for the Trolley in Branson MO in 111 degree heat!

Category: cell phone capabilities,GPS Insight Employees,mobile mapping — rdonat @ 8:53 am

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.

Tags: branson, Fleet Tracking, gps fleet tracking solution, GPS Tracking, mobile fleet tracking, mobile mapping, trolley tracking, truck tracking, vehicle tracking system

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Aug 06 2011

Tracking (and using) the Branson MO “Downtown Trolleys”

Category: cell phone capabilities,GPS Insight Employees,Miscellaneous,mobile mapping — rdonat @ 8:38 am

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.

Tags: branson, business vehicle tracking, car tracking, commercial vehicle tracking, Fleet Tracking, fleet tracking device, fleet tracking software, gps fleet tracking, GPS Tracking, gps tracking devices, mobile mapping, trolley tracking, truck tracking, vacation, Vehicle Tracking

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Jul 29 2011

New Timestamps in Garmin Dispatch/Messaging Module

Category: Driver Accountability,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 19 2011

GPS Insight customer satisfaction survey

Category: GPS INSIGHT COMPANY SPECIFIC,GPS Insight Employees,PURCHASING CONSIDERATIONS — rdonat @ 11:17 am

We recently hired a dedicated representative to proactively contact all our customers regularly.

She will:

Determine customer satisfaction
Take note of (free) training requests
Inform customers of new functionality
Review the account for where there is potential for more usage/ROI
Be the customer’s dedicated resource for things non-support-oriented

Her name is Shelly, and she’s at extension x8060 (877-477-4321 is our toll free #).

I was pleased with the initial results of our customer satisfaction:

Initial GPS Insight customer satisfaction survey results

Of 59 customers surveyed, 39% were Extremely Satisfied, 54% were Satisfied, and only 5% were Dissatisfied.

One customer stated they want to cancel their service. When asked why, they stated that it was too expensive.

This particular customer has been threatening to quit unless we reduce their price since they became a customer in June of 2006.

Over 5 years later, we haven’t reduced (or raised) their price, and they’re still a customer.

In any case, over 93% of our customers asked are satisfied or extremely satisfied.

Maybe we should count that customer as satisfied, since they have remained a customer over 5 years.

That makes us 95%, which I think you’ll find is as good as it gets in this industry.

Even so, we now have someone to ask those 5% of customers why they aren’t satisfied, and I hope we can get that up to 100% by following up and fixing their complaints.

Rob.

Tags: customer satisfaction, Fleet Tracking, gps fleet tracking, GPS Tracking, gps tracking devices, gps tracking software, gps vehicle tracking, Vehicle Tracking

Comments (1)

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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Jun 30 2011

You can attach pictures to stops now in GPS Insight

Category: cell phone capabilities,GPS Insight Employees,Mapping,New Features,New Features,Reporting,Reports — rdonat @ 8:09 am

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.

Tags: Fleet Tracking, fleet tracking software, gps fleet tracking, GPS Tracking, gps tracking software, gps truck tracking, gps vehicle tracking, photos, stop notes, truck tracking, Vehicle Tracking

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Apr 16 2011

Automating ‘I’m coming home’ messages to avoid calls while driving

Category: Alerts,Arizona,GPS Insight Employees,Landmarks,Safety — rdonat @ 11:15 am

Most days I leave work around 5:30-6:30 and call my wife to let her know I’ll be home in 10 minutes or so (nice commute, huh?).

I typically call her on Scottsdale Rd., which is busy, and it’s obviously distracting to do so. I shouldn’t be calling people while driving (nor should your drivers be).

I am finally just going to automate an email/text message to her which tells her I’m leaving the office between 4-7 so she’ll have a heads up (e.g. I can pick up a kid from baseball, get home in time to eat with everyone else, etc.).

You can do this for any landmark arrival/departure in an effort to make fewer calls and be proactive about telling someone you’re on your way/arrived/etc.

This is SUPER-EASY to do in 1 minute and may save me from getting into an accident or getting a ticket for talking on the phone while driving.

Here’s how you do this in GPS Insight:

Choose Account: Schedule: Alerts:

Open GPS Insight Alerts Admin Area

Add a Landmark Alert:

Add a Landmark Alert

Then customize the particulars:

Only my vehicle (Rob 4000)
My wife’s email AND cell phone (note this is a true SMS, not an email to an @txt.att.net, so you don’t need to know the carrier)
Only during weekdays between 4 PM and 10 PM
All day during the weekends (so she knows when I’m heading home all day Saturday/Sunday)
Only when I LEAVE (not enter) the landmark “GPS Insight Headquarters”

How to customize a Landmark Alert

Then it instantly starts checking, once per minute:

Alert is running now to notify my wife when I leave work automatically

Just to make sure the landmark definition includes where I would normally park, I’ll check that also:

Ensuring the landmark is accurate to where I park

Now when I leave, an automated text and email will go out to home, letting them know I’m on the way (e.g. save me some dinner…).

And I won’t need to be distracted on the road while heading home any longer.

Rob.

Here’s the first message, within a minute of me leaving the office:

"I'm Coming Home" Alert through GPS Insight

And the stop report to back it up:

Rob leaves the office at 5:35 and the alert is delivered at 5:36

Rob.

Tags: cell phone usage while driving, coming home alert, Fleet Tracking, GPS Tracking, landmark alert, safe driving, Vehicle Tracking

Comments (2)

Apr 07 2011

GPS Insight — proud sponsors of my 2 boys’ baseball teams…

Category: Arizona,GPS Insight Employees — rdonat @ 9:08 am

Well, it’s not exactly sponsoring the Diamondbacks (or the Cubs for that matter) but GPS Insight now has the proud distinction of being the Mets sponsor in both of my kids’ little leagues.

Pictured here is my son Ryan’s new GPS Insight uniform on their first game day.

GPS Insight sponsors 2 Mets teams

They won their opening game 8-3. Go Mets! (never thought I would say that)

My other son starts his games this weekend (I’ll be in NAFA in Charlotte, NC, unfortunately) and I haven’t seen their uniforms yet.

Let’s hope they, and GPS Insight have winning seasons this Summer (I consider it Summer already, as it’s hit 100 degrees already in Phoenix this week).

Rob.

Tags: Fleet Tracking, GPS Tracking, Vehicle Tracking

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Sep 21 2010

Idling can cost you $2k in New York City!

Category: Alerts,Fuel Savings,GPS Insight Employees,New York City,reduced idling,Scheduled Reports — rdonat @ 9:01 pm

I took a trip recently with my 2 boys to the greatest city on the planet (that I’ve been to yet, that is, & I probably haven’t been to your city yet so don’t get mad at me for saying that).

The Big Apple — New York City.

Everything is idiotically expensive in NYC, especially the fees for idling! $2,000!

$2k if you get caught idling in New York City

With most GPS fleet tracking solutions, a quick idling alert sent to you or weekly idling report will easily and quickly help you avoid such fines. As well as the $4 or so per hour in fuel/wear & tear idling costs your company. Times hundreds of hours per year per vehicle, those savings really add up.

So then you will be able to afford paintings like the one here with my boys (can you tell where we went the night before…?)

Afford a Van Gogh with the money you're not spending on idling and fines!

Or at least enough to take a trip to NYC with your kids & see it for yourself at the MOMA.

Rob.

CEO & highly active founder of GPS Insight

Tags: Fleet Tracking, fleet tracking idling, fleet tracking system, gps fleet tracking companies, GPS Tracking, real time gps tracking, Vehicle Tracking

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