Follow the Bread Crumb Trail

Follow the Bread Crumb Trail

June 17, 2020

I’ve been a gadget guy my whole life, electronic whizz bangs have imagination since the first home computers came out. I love messing with them and trying to implement them into my life.

I remember the first GPS I had. It was a blank screen, but you could download waypoints from a map on the computer. When you looked at the GPS, you would see the way with a straight line to the next waypoint and an arrow of where you were currently. It was never on that straight line, so you would maneuver yourself to get to the line or at least toward the waypoint.

When GPS really got cool, they had a map and your route actually followed the road to get you to the waypoint, and you could save not only your route but also your track. If you want the details on one of Garmin’s newest GPSs for motorcycles check out Greg Rice’s web page.

In addition to a GPS there are also tracking devices, that will plot your bread crumb trail and even allow others to see where you are. There are two or three main gizmos that work together to make this happen. First, is an amazing free program called SpotWalla. There may be other such programs available but, SpotWalla is the leader and they support motorcyclists tremendously. Please send them a few bucks to help support them. The second item is an electronic gizmo such as your smartphone, both Apple and Android work, a Spot device, a Garmin InReach device, and again, many others will work too. Third, if you use your smartphone, then you will need another app on the phone, SWConnect for Apple IOS or Bubbler for Android. Both are free but Bubbler has a pro model that is worth the $10 they charge for it. That’s everything you need now comes the part that drives everyone crazy, making these computers work together! It’s not hard to do after you have done it a few times, oh the cost of knowledge.

Let’s look at setting up these devices and programs. The first thing you need to do is set up SpotWalla.

Here are the directions from Spotwalla: Creating a SpotWalla account is simple and straightforward. From the homepage, click the +Register button in the upper right corner of the screen. The following information is required to set up an account:

• Email Address - Please use a valid and operational email address to which you have access and read regularly. We will never SPAM you, but SpotWalla does communicate with you via email. For instance, if you have a faulty device, SpotWalla will email you with the details. So please use a valid, working email.
• Password - Your password can be just about anything except one or more whitespace characters. Additionally, all whitespace characters at both the beginning and end of the password will be trimmed. Your password can be between 1 and 64 characters.
• First and Last Names - You can lie, but why? Your name will not be shared with other users unless you configure your account to share that information.
• Username - If you choose to create public trips and/or join public location pages, your username will be displayed rather than your first and last names. Your username can be just about anything.
• Region and Timezone - Setting your region and timezone allows SpotWalla to properly timestamp your location data. This value can be overridden at the device level.
• Please read the SpotWalla User Agreement. You should read the user agreement. It's short, sweet,      and to the point. Go ahead. Check it out.

After completing the form, you will need to solve a captcha. The intention of this step is to validate that you're an intelligent being rather than an intelligent program poking around for something. When you think you're finished filling out the form, click the Create button. If all goes well, your account will be created, and you'll be logged into the system.

The next step is setting up your device to interact with SpotWalla. Here is their list of supported devices and how to set up your type of device. Here is a link directly to that page.

Currently, SpotWalla supports the following devices and location interfaces:

• APRS Device
• Bubbler GPS for Android
• Garmin/DeLorme inReach
• Email
• Generic Device with GPX Support
• gibbyTrip for iOS
• INMARSAT Communications Device
• SPOT Personal Tracker
• SWConnect for iOS
• The Wirie pro Device

The bolded items above are what I’m familiar with.

Here is a YouTube video from MMMMMMMMMMMMM on setting up Spotwalla.

Also, here is another great site that can help with SWConnect, RV Tech Tools.

Now, with everything set up, it’s time for a test ride. There was always an issue when I first started because, of things I forgot to do to make things work. Here are a couple of issues I had and maybe you can learn from my mistakes. I used an Apple phone from 2014 until this year. On the Apple phone, make sure your location is “ON” and under “LOCATION SERVICES” the SWConnect app is set to be “ALWAYS ON.’” I also pug my phone into the bike and set my “DISPLAY & BRIGHTNESS AUTO-LOCK” is set to “NEVER”. This makes sure I can keep the app running and plugged in because actively using location uses a lot of battery. Sometimes, running several apps at the same time, music, SWConnect, Facebook, Waze, etc., etc., can cause some apps to stall.

Here is my first trip in 2014 testing my setup:

If you do Iron Butt Association rides, having a Spotwalla link, helps to support your other documentation and issues where you may have lost or didn’t get a receipt.

There are some issues in using smartphones that I found. The first is, the loss of cell signal. I believe that this has improved greatly over the years. The programs used on the phones store up the bread crumb locations when they lose cell coverage and then when back in coverage they send those store locations to Spotwalla. This works very well almost all the time. Almost. The second issue deals with what your data plan is. If you have an unlimited plan or a fixed plan could be a problem. It never was for me and I had a small data plan. The issue here for me was crossing into Mexico or into Canada and paying the high cost of coverage that was an addition to my data plan.

I posed a question on the Iron Butt Association Forum on why should I spend $150 - 500 dollars on a new gizmo to do what my phone was doing. Other than some issues I was aware of, my phone did a great job doing what I needed. There are some new gizmos out there and I must justify my need. Besides the cost of the new gizmos (Spot and Garmin), they also require a monthly service plan too.

So, here is what I learned: The new gizmos work directly with Spotwalla, no other software apps or programs are involved. They also can send a text message when you are out of cell coverage. And, the key difference, is they have an SOS button to summon help, i.e. rescue, ambulance, paramedic, etc., to come to save your butt when needed. Both the Spot and the Garmin units do these things and their monthly plans are pretty close in costs. They even let you select plans that are a month at a time for an additional cost. So, if you want to just have the coverage for the summer, you can set that up and not pay for the rest of the year.

One other little tidbit I learned was that you can set a trip in SpotWalla, for example, “2020”, that will always be active (set date and time to cover the year) and will record everywhere you went that year (See my home page sidebar, Where Am I). You could do it for each month if you wanted, I think you get the idea. In addition, you can set a trip for a specific trip at the same time. The information from your device will get recorded on all active trips.

As I said earlier, I made a change from using my phone to one of the new gizmos. I bought a SpotX based on the cost of the unit. All of the Spot units were on sale at the time and the Garmin units cost more at the time, some a lot more (you more features too). I will say, Garmin has the best worldwide coverage and uses the Iridium® Network for coverage, Spot units use the GPS satellite system which doesn’t cover quite as much as the Iridium system.