SPOT Review

[welsmj64]

Personal Locator Beacons are devices that transmit a distress signal that allows emergency and rescue personnel a means of locating a victim in need of aid. For groups or individuals that travel beyond the limits of cell phone coverage, PLBs provide a critical safety margin. Those back home are more comfortable knowing their love ones have some means of communicating distress in an emergency.

This review was done after several months of field testing in southeastern Utan and in Honduras.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vvWCHY3fU4

[ExpUt]

A good friend of mine spent half a year touring from Canada to the tip of South America in his Land Cruiser, returning earlier this year. He set up a SPOT dispatch list that would periodically send emails to his usergroup. Click the link and google showed his exact location :cool:

Very worthwhile product IMO!

[welsmj64]

I carry one with me every time I go out just for that extra security. I also have used the tracking feature to track my route so that my family can see where I'm at when they log into my account. They are a really good tool, and as long as you know and understand the limitations, or weaknesses of the unit I too think it is a great tool to have. I can't remember if a person can advertise on the forum or not but I know where you can pick this unit up for $125.99 (NEW) while supplies last.

[Alex]

Ya post the link dude, if it saves us money, of course you can :2thumbs:

I use one religiously now. It's in my emergency bag now. I usually send an OK signal when I launch on my daily excursion and send an OK message when I finish for the day, so my family can sleep without worry.

I love it.

[Alex]

Does anyone have a good pouch for it? And does it work well in a pouch?

The clip that the SPOT comes with is totally worthless in my opinion. My friend adam almost lost his the way Dan lost his camera a while ago (same spot and slot canyon).

[welsmj64]

OTBPMAPS has a sale going on the SPOT for the OTBPMAPS Members in the Members Store for $125.95 while supplies last. The following link will direct you to our Members page that explains our member

[welsmj64]

No there isn't a pouch for it that I know of and from my experience they don't work well in anything. I tried it in a shirt pocket and it didn't work, and I have tried it in vehicles as well. The only sure way I found it to work in a vehicle was to have it on the dash with a clear view of the sky.

I have also not had it send the signal if I don't have it flat in my hand (on occasion), so I would have to say that at this point I wouldn't trust it to work 100% in a case. Now I have attached it to the top of my pack and it worked fine taking readings within a 10 to 20 minute intervals. I have attached it to my gear on my ATV and it worked fine. One thing a person could do is put it in a small camera type case on their belt so it was handy or maybe use a rubber band strap like on military packs to help secure it to your gear along with the clip. One thing I should mention is that performance can vary between units as well. Despite all this I still feel strongly that it is a good tool.

[RedMan]

ATVUtah.com has the only decent pouch I have seen for the SPOT.
I have one and its perfect. Rugged and holds two spare batteries.

He gives you a pouch for free if you buy the SPOT from him.

http://www.atvutah.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=1&products_id=153

I use it inside the pouch at all times and it works just fine in tracking mode.
You have to remove it from the pouch to use the buttons.

Monte: your SPOT must be defective. I use it in the vehicle, in the pouch, and inside my jacket pocket and it works fine.

[welsmj64]

That

[KapitanSparrow]

Is this thing water proof?

[welsmj64]

They are waterproof up to 1 meter for up to 30 minutes. The device also floats.

[Last Child]

Seeing as how most of my mountain biking and skiing are done solo I purchased one of these so that I can let my wife know where I am and that all is well. She really likes the fact that I can and do send her my location several times day. It has brought her, and me too I guess, great piece of mind. I have a tendency to push myself pretty hard sometimes and that may some day prove to be problematic.

The only issues I have with SPOT are that it is very sloooow to get a gps location and you need a pretty clear view of the sky. It does not seem to work very well if you have any tree cover whatsoever. But for the price and piece of mind it is very well worth it.

I would really like to see Trimble or Garmin make something similar to this. GPS technology has really come a long way and has some great things coming in the future. With the new satellites they are sending up we will someday be able to get gps signals under tree cover. That will be so great. The last Trimble seminar I went to I think they said it would be somewhere around the year 2020.

I highly recomend this unit.

[Joe Gardner]

I set up my spot to email our blog when checking in. We had our friends and family subscribe to our blog and they got emails with links to see our location.

It worked great, there were two or three check-ins that did not make it online due to bad campsites under 200' tall pines.

Heres what our blog post looked like: http://joe-and-heather.blogspot.com/2008/08/ok-esn0-7400745_26.html

[tmartenst]

A friend of mine used it as he ran the AT this summer and it worked pretty well. It was spotty (no pun intended) at first and there were a few days it did not transmit but overall it worked well.

http://www.whereskarl.com/

[Jaxx]

Love the SPOT. Question for you SPOT pros. How do you set up the cookie crumb function so my wife can login and see the "crumbs"?

[Last Child]

Love the SPOT. Question for you SPOT pros. How do you set up the cookie crumb function so my wife can login and see the "crumbs"?

First of all you have to had purchased the "Premium Upgrade Service" which is an additional $50 upon the basic $100 service. If you have done that then all you need to do is press and hold the ok/check button for 5 seconds or more. It will then begin sending out your location every 10 minutes.

The person checking on you will need the password to your SPOT account in order to access the feature. Pretty simple really.

Go to http://www.findmespot.com to read up on it.

This is really a cool gadget. I'm glad that I bought one. Very well worth the money.

[Jaxx]

First of all you have to had purchased the "Premium Upgrade Service" which is an additional $50 upon the basic $100 service. If you have done that then all you need to do is press and hold the ok/check button for 5 seconds or more. It will then begin sending out your location every 10 minutes.

The person checking on you will need the password to your SPOT account in order to access the feature. Pretty simple really.

Go to http://www.findmespot.com to read up on it.

This is really a cool gadget. I'm glad that I bought one. Very well worth the money.

Thank you very much. I did pay the extra $50 so next outing I will give it a try.

[Cirrus2000]

They don't actually need the password to your spot account. When you log in, click on the "Share" tab. Create a share page, then at the bottom choose whether to send out the page yourself, or have the page do it. If you do it yourself, just copy the URL you get, and e-mail it to the person you want to see the page.

On the "Manage shared pages" tab, make sure the page is activated. That's it!

My family watched me drive and hike all over WA, OR, CA, NV, AZ, UT, and ID over the last month. Really nice feature!

[moab mark]

Ive got a question on the spot. If I understand it correctly if you need assistance or want to notify someone of your location you just push a button to transmit, but the unit has no way of telling you if your transmission went through? Seems like in an emergency you could think help is coming but in reality they are not. I guess it is better then nothing but if someone was really injured I would be concerned to depend on it.
I have a globalstar sat phone (globalstar is the company spot uses) and you would be suprised how out in the open you have to be to make a call. The reception is no where as powerful as a gps.

Does anyone know if spot keeps transmitting until it connects? I read in one of the posts that it will send every 10 minutes, is this to search and rescue or just your friends? By reading some of the posts on here it sounds like this is why there is a time lapse between when the message is sent and when it is received as email etc.
Globalstar is having sat problems right now which could also effect spots transmissions. There problem is so bad they have reduced the monthly bill for the phone in half and have set up a web page that you can go to and type in a zipcode and find out when your phone will work. The site will show went the sats will be in your area.

Several of my buddies have been looking at spots and it sounds like most of you are happy with the unit but we have the above mentioned concern. But something is better then nothing especially for the price.

Mark

[RedMan]

Mark,

If you press Help or 911 it continues to send the message over and over.
It will send the 911 until you press the button again, or until the battery is dead. An LED indicator by the button confirms it is sending.

The SPOT does not require nearly the open sky that your sat phone does.
Your phone is trying to find one satellite and hook up with it.
The SPOT broadcast its short message and can be picked up by many satellites at a time.

The 10 minute thing is for tracking mode. Its just like pressing the OK button every 10 minutes but it doesn't send the email/SMS to your friends. I think tracking is a toy feature. It only sends the message once so if trees blocked it it won't try again for another 10 minutes. No big deal for tracking.

As far as I know there are no spot related issues with the birds.
Don't confuse the sat phone problems with SPOT. They are completely separate. I have had my SPOT over a year now. It goes everywhere with me.

I am not a sat phone fan. The SPOT is a no brainer, get one.

[moab mark]

Who does it 911?

[RedMan]

A call center in Texas staffed 24x7
They call your assigned contact just to make sure that your grandkids aren't playing with things, tell your wife or whatever that you pushed the 911 button and ask if there is any reason they should not send the cavalry out.

Then they determine who the local 911 authority is for the area you are in and dispatch. They stay involved until you are safe.

If you buy there rescue insurance and you are somewhere that they cannot get you help then they will contract private support. Helicopters or whatever, up to $50,000 worth of help per rescue attempt.

Its worth $7.95 year, but you MUST buy it in the first year or it gets expensive.