Dec 05 2011

Landmark import now 40x faster in GPS Insight

Category: Landmarksrdonat @ 2:21 pm

GPS Insight has always emphasized landmarks as a core capability of our GPS Tracking solution.

Landmarks are helpful because they make reports and real time location much more intuitive.

It’s easier for users to understand “Home Depot SW Phoenix” than it is “12525 W. Glendale Ave., Phoenix, AZ.”

But getting all your landmarks into the system used to take a lot of time (well, 5-10 minutes or so for a few thousand landmarks).

We spent some time optimizing this process so that large customers (or small customers with lots of landmarks) don’t need to wait so long.

We have made landmark spreadsheet import roughly 40x faster.

Now instead of 4 landmarks per second, you can expect over 175 per second (peaking to 200+).

Here are the results from today vs. 5 days ago (from our activity log):

Landmark Import in GPS Insight

Landmark Import in GPS Insight

If you need information on how to upload spreadsheets of landmarks, always feel free to call our support, or try it yourself here (it’s very intuitive):

Import landmark spreadsheet into GPS Insight

Import landmark spreadsheet into GPS Insight

Import landmark spreadsheet into GPS Insight

Import landmark spreadsheet into GPS Insight

Enjoy!

Thanks,
Rob.

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Sep 07 2010

Going to Vegas with some GPS Insight employees!

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

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

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.

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May 25 2010

Good LA Times article on the history of GPS & the new system going in soon

Category: GPS Navigation,Miscellaneousrdonat @ 1:09 pm

Here is a really good article about how GPS works, and the new satellites going up to replace the aging ones out there now:

GPS has become critical to EVERYTHING (to include GPS Insight...)

GPS has become critical to EVERYTHING (to include GPS Insight...)

It’s really worth reading if you are interested in this world-changing technology.

Rob.

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May 24 2010

New “Recent Alerts” dashlet in GPS Insight

Category: Alerts,dashboard dashlets,New Featuresrdonat @ 11:04 pm

A couple weeks ago, a customer with ambulances asked if we could give them a dashlet which showed a list of recent landmark visits.

Presumably they wanted to know when their medical personnel arrived/left certain hospitals.

That was too “specific” to just their one particular request, so we opened the requirement up to fit more than just that one need.

I had our developers work on an “alert ticker” (we call it “Recent Alerts” on the Dashboard).

It looks like this:

GPS Insight Alerts ticker

GPS Insight Alerts ticker

Like all dashlets, you drag and drop it onto the dashboard where you want it to go.

Then you configure the settings (which vehicle group, which alert (or all alerts), how far back you want to see, and how many lines you want to see at once):

New GPS Insight Recent Alerts Dashlet

New GPS Insight Recent Alerts Dashlet

You will notice that for our account, we have multiple redundant alerts, and many of our devices are temporary so they go “out of range” since they aren’t installed into our vehicles permanently since we’re constantly testing on our own vehicles (e.g. they lose power when we shut the vehicle off).  This is why there are some duplicate alerts and we have a few “Out of Range” alerts, battery voltage alerts, etc.

The point though is to show you that when alerts are triggered, you can see them on the dashboard as well as receive them on your cell phone/email.

In fact, we made it so that you no longer need to send alerts to an email/SMS phone # — you can leave that blank, & they’ll only be viewable on this dashlet.

Since our “fleet” of employees tends not to idle or drive off-hours (at least not right now for me to show you), I pulled up another customer & they had a few recent problems with their drivers.  Notice that I “hid” the Alert Type column, since it’s only there until you figure out what the various colors represent, and can be “unchecked” along with “Alert Name” in the edit properties area (click on the pencil to get there):

Odd Hours & idling alerts on the GPS Insight Recent Alerts Dashboard Dashlet

Odd Hours & idling alerts on the GPS Insight Recent Alerts Dashboard Dashlet

If you want, you can create a dashboard full of these for all of your various alerts, and segment them into different areas:

This one I created quickly for our account:

GPS Insight Multiple Alert History Dashboard

GPS Insight Multiple Alert History Dashboard

And always remember to save your dashboard!

Save your Dashboard after creating it!

Save your Dashboard after creating it!

So now next time you log in you can recall it!

So now next time you log in you can recall it!

This is a pretty useful capability.  And it took us only 5 days to create based on this requirement — make sure to ask us in case you ever have a need you would like help with.  Usually it’s in the product, where you might not know we do what you require, and if it isn’t, we’ll typically put it on the list of new capabilities and sometimes get to it as quickly as within the week.  We’re really that quick!

To learn more about GPS Fleet Tracking Alerts visit  our website.

Thanks,

Rob.

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May 24 2010

GPS Insight works in an iPad (and iPhone/iPod Touch too…)

Category: Mapping,New Featuresrdonat @ 10:21 pm

I finally received my 3G iPads today for myself & a few developers (and my wife…).  The iPad is VERY cool.  I’ll still stick to my Kindle for reading (minimally my constant emails will distract me from the Kindle App), but everything else will be iPad.

Using GPS Insight on the iPad works pretty well.

Here are a few screen shots:

GPS Insight dashboard, reports, maps, & landmark creation screens on the iPad

GPS Insight dashboard, reports, maps, & landmark creation screens on the iPad

The dashboard allows you to run reports, click to zoom into specific vehicles, minimize and delete dashlets, as well as edit properties:

GPS Insight dashboard on an iPad

GPS Insight dashboard on an iPad

Edit dashlet properties within GPS Insight on an iPad

Edit dashlet properties within GPS Insight on an iPad

Running and clicking through reports, creating landmarks, and several other capabilities are all supported natively.

Right now you can’t add or move dashlets, since that requires a “drag” action which isn’t really available on a touchscreen Apple device.

So we will add functionality to allow customers to do that — a simple click event on the available dashlets, as well as arrow buttons on each dashlet and map will help to fix that limitation of these devices.

I’m not sure how many of our customers use iPads (we’ve had several requests for support though).  They should be happy once this is complete (maybe by the end of this week).

We also have an iPhone App which is installable through iTunes — we haven’t gotten it on the App Store yet, but it’s a simple install if  you want to contact us for a copy.

Here are a couple more screenshots of GPS Insight on the iPad (note this vehicle is parked slightly outside the landmark — easy to adjust though, with or without an iPad):

GPS Insight mapping on the iPad

GPS Insight mapping on the iPad

Editing a complex landmark within GPS Insight on the iPad

Editing a complex landmark within GPS Insight on the iPad

Let us know how you like using the iPad within GPS Insight.

One tip: set up your dashboards in advance, then choose between them on the iPad — it’s easy to pull up several saved dashboards.

Thanks,

Rob.

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May 08 2010

More Driver-Centric Reports released to GPS Insight

Category: Driver Assignment to Vehicles,Mapping,Reporting,Reportsrdonat @ 4:55 pm

From our support page:

We just added several new reports so that you will know which of your DRIVERS (not just vehicles) were associated with certain activity:

Drivers Are Now Shown in Most Utilized Reports

Driver-to Vehicle assignment information is now shown on the majority of our most utilized reports and maps.

(If you’d like to learn more about Drivers, please read Driver-to-Vehicle Mapping!)

The Driver was previously an option to be shown in dashlets on the website and to be listed in the Activity Detail Report:

Map and Location Dashlets

Activity Detail Report

The Driver information has been newly added to four more reports:

Begin/End of Day Report

Drive Time Summary Report (It replaced the VIN on this report.)

Run Time Report

Stop Detail Report (It appears only in the exported spreadsheet version of this report.)

GPS Insight allows you to assign drivers 5 different ways:

  • Web Interface
  • Automatic DriverID fob/reader
  • Garmin login capability
  • SMS Text Message from driver “assigning” himself/herself to the vehicle
  • Application Programming Interface (API) to allow your systems to automate the assignment of your vehicles to your employees

This makes reporting much more useful if your drivers aren’t always tied to the same vehicle.

Rob.

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May 01 2010

GPS Insight exhibits at NAFA 2010 in Detroit (4th NAFA for us)

Category: Conferences,GPS Insight Employeesrdonat @ 1:58 pm

6 of us just got back from NAFA 2010 in Detroit.  NAFA is the National Association of Fleet Administration (now known as the “Fleet Management Association”).

It’s a great conference for us to meet with existing and new customers, as well as partner vendors.

We were so busy this year, that for the first time, we forgot to get a group photo!  Doh.  Better than being bored I suppose.

Here are a couple photos of our booth this year:

GPS Insight exhibits at NAFA 2010 in Detroit

GPS Insight exhibits at NAFA 2010 in Detroit

GPS Insight exhibits at NAFA 2010 in Detroit

GPS Insight exhibits at NAFA 2010 in Detroit

Sorry to Alissa & Evelyn who didn’t make it into the picture (Evelyn was taking it).

All I got was the back of my head this year.

Here are some articles about the past 2 two years (Salt Lake & New Orleans)

Rob.

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Mar 15 2010

Finishing the Atacama desert race in Chile

Category: Chile,Google Earth,People Tracking,TT-1900rdonat @ 2:33 pm

Keir finished the Atacama Crossing “4 deserts” race — 250 km across the Chilean desert.

We tracked him using a GPS Insight TT-1900, and here is the track of his entire journey:

GPS Track of Keir Oxley finishing a 250 km race in Chile

GPS Track of Keir Oxley finishing a 250 km race in Chile

Here is a picture of him crossing the finish line:

Picture of Keir Oxley finishing a 250 km race in Chile

Picture of Keir Oxley finishing a 250 km race in Chile

He finished in 64:13:23

Congratulations Keir!

Rob.

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