GPS Insight | GPS Fleet Tracking Blog » GPS Insight Employees

Apr 16 2011

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

Category: Alerts,Arizona,Ease of use,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

Comments (1)

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!):

Mapped route with a start & 3 sequential stops

Now I need to pack & get some sleep for a very busy conference full of learning and such…

Rob.

Tags: Fleet Tracking, gps fleet tracking, gps fleet tracking system, GPS Tracking, gps tracking system, gps vehicle tracking system, Vehicle Tracking

Comments (0)

Sep 05 2010

How to not forget things and get in trouble with your wife…

Category: Ad Hoc Reports,Garmin Integration,Garmin Messaging,GPS Insight Employees,GPSI-4000 — rdonat @ 2:34 pm

I was working yesterday (and today) and my wife sent me an email to pick some stuff up from the grocery store.

Email asking me to get things from the store

I knew I would forget & get home, & have to drive back, so here’s what I did:

Send myself a reminder to go to the store via Garmin Message to my car

Here’s what I sent only 2 minutes after getting the email:

Modern day GPS Insight "ribbon tied on my finger"

This means when I get in my car, the Garmin will be beeping at me, with this message, and I won’t get home and forget.

Here’s what the Garmin screens looked like:

I have a message waiting for me

Click on it for the full message

Full message to remind me to go to the store

And did I remember?

Yep, and I can pull up a stop report to show it:

Run a stop report for "Rob" vehicle for yesterday

Note the 24 minute stop near the grocery store:

24 minute stop at the store to get groceries

Why did it take me 24 minutes to get 7 things?

Because I need GPS in a supermarket — I made 5 trips from aisle 1 to aisle 20 — I have no idea where anything is & am worthless in a grocery store.

That would be a very useful product for guys like me.

Rob.

Tags: Fleet Tracking, fleet tracking systems, garmin dispatch, garmin integration, gps fleet tracking, GPS Tracking, gps vehicle tracking, messaging, Vehicle Tracking

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Aug 21 2010

$90 Parking Ticket is proven ridiculous (but we still have to pay it)

Category: Arizona,Driver Accountability,Google Earth,GPS Insight Employees — rdonat @ 1:10 pm

One of our employees who drives our GPS Insight Scion in a car pool took it Saturday morning to a remote area of the desert to go for a run.

He parked off the road, on a pull-out which was nowhere near where cars drive.

He came back to this $90 parking ticket (with my name on it since it’s my car officially…):

$90 ridiculous parking ticket

So here’s how you prove that Maricopa County Sheriff’s are scrounging around for money for our broke County, using GPS Insight:

Quickly run a 3D vehicle history for the Scion for that day

Open the “Time Slider” to the first trip of the day & show just the dots (green) on the map corresponding to the drive to the first stop and 45 minute stop (yellow):

History shows the drive to go to an early AM run

Then Zoom down & see the vehicle was parked off the road itself:

Parking off the road yields a $90 ticket

Then go to Street View mode & see that it’s a paved pull-off. Why wouldn’t it be ok to park there to go for a run/ride/hike?

Did they pave it just to lure people in to give them $90 parking tickets? Thanks Deputy Thompson.

Street View shows this is nowhere near the road

I’ve paid it since it’s got my name on it, but I will definitely send a copy of the blog article to the Judge & see if we can get it refunded.

How ridiculous, though.

Even though politics and a County with financial issues trumps GPS evidence sometimes, at least you can clear the suspicion that your driver did the wrong thing.

Also, using our DriverID, you know which driver was in the vehicle at the time of the ticket so you know who to talk with, if the original got “lost.”

Rob.

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

Comments (0)

Aug 18 2010

GPS Insight makes the Inc. 500 List at #281

Category: GPS INSIGHT COMPANY SPECIFIC,GPS Insight Employees,PURCHASING CONSIDERATIONS — rdonat @ 9:44 am

We are very happy to make the prestigious 2010 Inc. 500 list of fastest growing privately held companies in America. Here is the link to our Company Listing.

We made the list at #281 with 3 year growth of 1,075.7% growth and 2009 revenues of $7.7 million.

GPS Insight included in this year's Inc. 500 List

My “words of wisdom” were somehow chosen as #1 on that page:

* Rob Donat will not be held responsible if you take these words of advice and drown, literally or figuratively...

And, drum roll please, here is the citation:

GPS Insight in the Inc. 500 at #281

We’re in good company:

Past Inc. 500 Honorees

Huge thanks to everyone who has helped us make this list, and more importantly, grow and thrive in this miserable economy, as we have — self-funded and privately held.

Thanks to our Customers, Employees, Partners, Families, and Friends.

Now on to trying to stay on this list for next year… (we may slip to the Inc. 5000 — 1075% 3 year growth is hard to sustain — just ask Google.)

Thanks!

Rob.

Tags: fleet tracking companies, gps fleet tracking, GPS Tracking, gps vehicle tracking, inc 500, telematics

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Aug 11 2010

Was that my employee that just drove by…? (or my wife?…)

Category: Arizona,cell phone capabilities,GPS Insight Employees,mobile mapping — rdonat @ 10:26 pm

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.

Tags: gps fleet tracking, GPS Tracking, gps vehicle tracking, iPhone map, mobile mapping

Comments (1)

Jul 18 2010

Always making things better

Category: Alerts,Google Earth,GPS Insight Employees,Mapping — rdonat @ 3:10 pm

After our new “Late Arrival Alert” was launched last week, we got some feedback & changed it a bit to make it easier to read. The time it SHOULD HAVE TAKEN is now shown (e.g. “…taken less than 6 min.” in this alert).

new alert additions

Additionally, a map is now shown for the start/end points which generated the alert, so you can easily see the context of the alert. We embed maps in all location-based alerts (e.g. odd-hours, speeding, etc.).

This alert was generated because I took 18 minutes getting from my house to the office today, since I took “the long way” to stop by and pick up something at a convenience store.

This caused me to take 18 minutes vs. 6 to make it the 4.5 miles to the office from my home, and trip this alert.

Here’s a map of the “out of the way” route I took to get to work today (just to get a few things done before I head out of town for the week):

extra stop at a convenience store

You can see the way the red line starts “thin and light” and gets “thick and dark” with the direction of travel, which makes it easy to see the activity at a glance. I clicked on the yellow “pin” which shows all stops less than 60 minutes. It shows I stopped for 1 minute.

The red pin down at the bottom is my car stopped for > 1 hour.

It’s Sunday & I’m heading home now to hop in the pool & get ready for my trip, but wanted to show off this new alert functionality first.

By the way, here are the 2 alerts I got which now are “obsoleted” by this alert — I had one for every time I enter/exit either home or work — now I can see ONLY when I get to work when it’s too long of a trip. (not that I really need to track myself — it just makes for good examples when showing our functionality to customers):

RobHouse & GPS Insight Headquarters arrival alerts

Rob.

Tags: dashboard dashlets, fleet tracking software, gps fleet tracking, GPS Tracking, gps vehicle tracking

Comments (1)

May 18 2010

Sneak peek at our new Trip Efficiency Report!

Category: Alerts,Company Efficiency,detecting unauthorized vehicle usage,Driver Accountability,Extreme Return on Investment,Fuel Savings,Google Earth,GPS Insight Employees,Reporting,Reports — rdonat @ 10:21 pm

This is a REALLY exciting report, and is the culmination of months of work on top of years of getting ready for this report.

>>> REALLY — It’s A BIG DEAL <<<

This suite of reports will essentially pinpoint your inefficient drivers on an overall as well as a trip-by-trip basis.

Here’s a an early version (the final reports are on the way & will also include an overall vehicle-by-vehicle comparison/summary):

Run the Efficiency Summary Report:

New GPS Insight Trip Efficiency Report

Up comes a graph showing all your drivers’ trips for that period of time (a work week in this case) & how efficient they are relative to both SHORTEST and FASTEST routes which we determine WOULD HAVE BEEN IDEAL:

GPS Insight Trip Efficiency Graph

Then looking at the detail, we pick on the top “most inefficient” driver (sorting on # of unnecessary miles beyond the fastest route from A to B):

GPS Insight Trip Efficiency Detail

Then hovering over an entry, it tells us that the “James – Garmin” vehicle went 34.2 miles, but only needed to go 19.03.

Difference between actual and ideal fastest route

By clicking on the 3 entries, we instantly pull up the actual (pink), shortest (red), and fastest (blue) routes for a visual comparison:

Visual Representation of Driver Inefficiency

In reality, the “turnaround” out of the way is where several of our employees meet to car pool every day:

Reason for inefficient driving is a carpool drop-off

So this behavior is all right, since it saves a lot of miles and cars on the road.

But look at #2 and #3 on the list (and there are countless more inefficient trips):

Driving way out of way (in Purple) to get from A to B

Driving way out of way (in Orange ) to get from A to B vs. fastest/shortest routes in blue & red

These are our employees & our own cars, so it’s not exactly the end of the world that we’re sometimes driving all over the place inefficiently, & we have our reasons.

But if you run this against your fleet, you will find drivers who:

Get Lost
Make Wrong Turns
Intentionally Take the Long Way (padding hours)
Literally Drive In Circles (and should be probably be fired for fraudulent wasting of fuel/mileage and padding of hours)

This report will be available in late May, and is going to surprise a lot of customers. And probably a lot of drivers too.

It will save our customers a HUGE amount of money on drivers they didn’t know were this inefficient, or were specifically defrauding them of labor hours.

Additionally, it will be available in June as a real-time alert to supervisors as well as drivers to “coach” them on better ways to complete their trips when they do so inefficiently.

Oh, and by the way, on a slow development server, for all 50 of our vehicles for a full work week, that report only took 1/3 of a second to run:

FAST (.36 second) Report

Look forward to it soon!

For more information on our main GPS Fleet Tracking Reports visit our website.

Thanks,

Rob.

Tags: fleet tracking comapnies, gps fleet reporting, gps fleet tracking, GPS Tracking, gps tracking reports, gps vehicle tracking

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