Clydesdales/Athenas (200+ lb / 91+ kg) - App so family can track where I am?

I use my iPhone to track my rides with Strava. Is there an app anyone is aware of that will allow my wife and kids to know where I am on the road?

Thanks!

I use Glympse when riding solo. Text it to my wife or son, and they can follow me.

What provider do you have? AT&T has the FamilyMap app that should work.

Edit: Just looked at Glympse. I'm going to have to give that a try, and it's free. That's my favorite kind of app.

RunKeeper pro. I think Mapmyride also has a live version. Be worth checking if you are looking for fitness tracking apps as well as your family being able to find where you are.

Google latitude works well in urban areas. Rural accuracy is not so good.

I use cyclemeter. It's configured to send an email when I start and when my ride is done. The initial map url is updated in close to real time so by refreshing that page my wife can see where I'm at at any given time.

Map My Ride suports live tracking.
Your family will have to register (free) and you need to accept them as a friend.
Works petty well - but does drain the battery.

I think you can do that with endomondo. And they can send messages.

For those of you with androids, GPSMyDroid will respond with a message containing a link to google maps when you send the code word (as a text) to the phone.

Google latitude works well in urban areas. Rural accuracy is not so good.

I've had really good luck with Google latitude everywhere as long as the GPS is on. If you're using the triangulation feature, then yea it's off by a mile sometimes in rural areas.

That being said anything that's constantly monitoring and transmitting GPS coordinates is going to drain the battery.

I'm gonna have to check out the Glympse and GPSMyDroid though, since I like the idea of something that's not necessairly real time but my wife can check when she wants.

I use my iPhone to track my rides with Strava.

Does your wife have an iPhone? Then use the Apple Find My Friends app, if you don't want her continuously tracking it has a feature for temporary tracking.

If she doesn't and you don't have issues with it, give her your .Me/iCloud credentials and she can use Find My iPhone on the iCloud site.

If you are open to other biking apps, Cyclemeter (and I'm sure others) can email people a link to a live-ish updating Google map of your ride.

I'm sure there are a multitude of other 'Find My Friend' type apps, although since they have to follow app store rules they might run your battery down faster, and in many cases may have to be the active app to work properly due to limitations in background processing in iOS.



That being said anything that's constantly monitoring and transmitting GPS coordinates is going to drain the battery.

If he is already tracking with Strava, then the GPS is going to use the battery whether he allows his family to track him or not. :) Yeah, it might use a bit more data, but compared to the GPS that is a drop in the bucket battery-wise, unless he would otherwise turn off his data connection for some reason.

Free app, Find IPhone.

I rode with a guy last week telling me his wife can track him online in case something happens. If the dot stops for too long she knows to come get him. Well, he cramped up like crazy and had to stop. I think she knew her husband well enough to know that eventually it would be needed...

Make sure they don't freak out if there is a malfunction or lost signal, dead battery or whatever and call the police believing something has happened to you. There has been more than one instance of such a freak out when someone hasn't heard from a touring relative for a few days. Simulated forum post: "If anyone has seen my [insert relative] please get in touch with me. He is missing. He is riding his bike across the country and was last heard from two days ago in North Dakota." Turns out he fell alseep with his phone on, the battery went dead and he wasn't able to charge it for two days.

I use my iPhone to track my rides with Strava. Is there an app anyone is aware of that will allow my wife and kids to know where I am on the road?

Thanks!

Set up "find my iphone" on your iPhone (I think you have to download the app, but it's an Apple product, not a third party app) and you're all set. Your wife can login into icloud.com with your Apple ID and your location will pop right up. My fiance used it to great effect on a century I did a while back so she could cheer me on with a cowbell. The guys I was riding with just didn't understand how she knew exactly where we'd be all the time.

A friend of mine has one of these...
http://www.findmespot.com/en/

Allows a bread-trail and 911 functionalty... Pretty cool although I have not used one

Wow, lots of options, thanks!

Right now I'm not that worried about battery life. If I get to that point I'm an electronics hobbyist and will try to work something out for power on my bike. I'll worry about the extra weight when I lose 100 pounds. :)

Anybody know for SURE how well Glympse does in rural (limited cell tower coverage) at tracking accurately? Or is it as mediocre as Latitude when riding rural?

Anybody know for SURE how well Glympse does in rural (limited cell tower coverage) at tracking accurately? Or is it as mediocre as Latitude when riding rural?

A GPS signal is accurate almost everywhere.

Latitude has the option to triangulate using cell phone towers and that's really inaccurate. I think an early release of my first Droid didn't let latitude use the GPS for some reason, but that got fixed in a software release and it was accurate within 4 meters most of the time. Before that it was off by miles when it tried to triangulate.

If the GPS isn't accurate, it's either your phone or the software. In either case, I the only way to find out if different software works better for you is to try it.

I just put Glympse on my Android. Seems like a well thought out app. Of course on the tandem my wife knows where I am, but our local son is our emergency contact: no rescue, no inheritance (as if there will be anything left).

A friend of mine has one of these...
http://www.findmespot.com/en/

Allows a bread-trail and 911 functionalty... Pretty cool although I have not used one

I had a friend who needed one of these recently. He crashed his motorcycle on a back-road and was severely injured. Despite being only about 15 miles, as the crow files, from one of the more populated areas in the country nobody had cell reception. Luckily, one of the guys had a Spot GPS Messenger and pressed the '911' button as soon as he saw the accident. Another guy rode back toward town trying to get cell reception. By the time he was able to make a call, emergency services were well on their way...